Pico

Three explanations compete for the name of Pico: Picus, the mythical first king of Latium, begotten by Saturn; the pica, that is the magpie, a bird sacred to Mars; or simply picco, a peak, from the shape of the ground. The municipal coat of arms takes sides: it shows a castle with three towers, and on the central tower a magpie is perched. The castle is attested from the eleventh century, and the first settlement grew around its walls; earlier still the fortified place appears in the documents as castrum Lupica, or Pica, within the Lombard county of Pontecorvo.

In 1123 the lord of Pico, Riccardo Pignardo, lured here by deceit Leone, consul of Fondi, and his son Pietro, and shut them in the fortress in order to hand them over to the duke of Gaeta. The following year pope Callixtus the Second ordered their release: the abbot of Montecassino besieged and stormed the castle, and received the lordship of Pico from the pope. Eight centuries later the village produced literature: here, on the ninth of August 1908, Tommaso Landolfi was born, who set many of his stories in it, and in March 1939 Eugenio Montale, after a stay in the writer's villa, composed the Elegia di Pico Farnese.