Filettino is the highest municipality in Lazio, above a thousand metres, where the Simbruini mountains meet the Cantari and where the river Aniene rises. The name may come from the Latin filictum, the place of ferns, or from the Greek word the Byzantines used for fortified lookouts, or again from the line in which the houses arranged themselves along the ridge. The first certain record is an act of the eleventh century, when Pope Nicholas II suppressed the diocese of Trevi and gave its territory to Anagni.
In 1438 Bernardino of Siena stayed here, and legend has it that he defended the village from brigands with a miraculous rain of iron acorns: he has been its patron ever since. In 1602, with the death sentence passed on Prospero Caetani by Clement VIII, Filettino stopped having lords and became a community answering directly to the Apostolic Chamber, with a statute of its own written in 1604. Until 1860 the village sat on the border between the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and on the mountains around, the boundary stones with the arms of the two kingdoms are still in place. The border came back into the news in 2011: when a rule threatened to abolish municipalities under a thousand residents, the mayor launched a campaign to make Filettino an independent principality.
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📅 Every year, on 20 May (with a week of celebrations)
On 20 May Filettino, a municipality of 551 inhabitants in the province of Frosinone, celebrates its patron Saint Bernardino of Siena with a week of liturgies, food and wine stands and entertainment.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Filettino, but an easy day trip away.
