Alvito

In 1595 Alvito and much of the Comino valley became a fief of the Gallio, a family from Cernobbio who ruled the duchy until the end of the eighteenth century. They built the ducal palace, opened in 1666 the main street that still bears their name and enlivened the cultural life of the town — and they also had a book written about themselves. The Descrittione del Ducato di Alvito, published in 1633 and reprinted twice with different readings, tells the epic of the dynasty and the history of the fief down to the beginning of the baroque age; it was commissioned by the Gallio and it is attributed to Giovanni Paolo Mattia Castrucci, an imaginary writer. Before them the county had belonged to the counts of Aquino and then to the Cantelmo: to one of these, Restaino, is owed the rebuilding of the castle in 1350, the year after an Apennine earthquake had brought it down. The town holds the title of city by virtue of two acts of two different sovereigns, issued five years apart in the eighteenth century.

The first traces of a settlement here go back to the tenth century, under another name; the nucleus called Alvito dates from 1096, and the name seems to come from the mountain at its foot. In the second half of the nineteenth century the economy of the valley rose sharply, and at the same time emigration began: from Alvito people left for the Balkans — Turkey and Bulgaria above all — and for Brazil and the United States, while part of the labouring population went down each season to the Roman countryside. In those same years there were episodes of trafficking of minors towards continental Europe, and in particular towards France, where many children of Alvito were taken to work in the glassworks. In 1919 the first agricultural colony of the Terra di Lavoro was founded here for the orphans of peasants who died in the First World War, and it remained active until the middle of the thirties. In the Second World War the town was spared the air attacks, although the Cassino front was near and a German command was quartered here; but on the eleventh of May 1944, at a place called Fontanelle, the partisan Giuseppe Testa was executed, and awarded the gold medal for military valour in memory.