Pignataro Interamna

The first half of the name is a trade: pignataro, attested from 1308, is someone who makes or mends cooking pots, and the village probably grew around a kiln that made them. The second half is a city that no longer exists. Interamna Lirenas was a Latin colony founded in the fourth century before Christ to keep the Samnites in check; it declined under the empire and was destroyed during the late barbarian invasions, and of it there remain a bridge, scattered pieces of wall, and some columns that were taken and set to work again inside the church of the Santissimo Salvatore. Pignataro itself is traced back to a new settlement raised by part of the population of Interamna, and the name of the dead city was added to that of the living village on the twentieth of December 1862.

The oldest document, of 997, names a borgo and a parish here, and it names them because the people had rebelled against the abbot of Montecassino. In the same period a small castle appears, and in 1018 the Benedictines put groups of Normans in it as a garrison, against the ambitions of Aquino. In the clash between the papacy and Frederick the second the inhabitants abandoned the castle, which was destroyed; decades later they came back. Later Pignataro was reduced to a mere hamlet administered from San Germano, and it recovered slowly. In the last war it found itself on the front line and the bombing razed it; the people, scattered through the countryside, resisted the German occupation with a band of partisans, and when the war ended many emigrated. What was rebuilt shows it: the parish church has twin bell towers, and the town hall is a circle. Until 2014 the comune belonged not to a diocese but to the territorial abbey of Montecassino.