Pofi

The arms of Pofi show a snake coiled round an oak, and there is an etymology to match: some derive the name from the Greek for «those of the snake», supposing the cult of Aesculapius and his temple beneath the church of Sant'Antonino — but, as the sources themselves note, a coincidence is not a proof. The name is first documented in 1019, in a parchment of the Montecassino archive, as a Castellum. What is certain is far older: the village sits on an extinct volcano, and this ground has been walked for some four hundred thousand years — at cava Pompi and other spots a human tibia and ulna have been found, along with tools of stone and metal and the bones of hunted animals.

Pofi's moment came with the Colonna, who reorganised their domains into two states: that of Genazzano and that of Pofi. The second took in fourteen villages — among them Ceccano, Sonnino, Amaseno, Castro dei Volsci and Supino — and Pofi was its capital, seat of the Uditorato generale, the highest authority after the baron himself. It lasted until 1734, when the Uditorato was moved to Ceccano and Pofi was left with the ordinary court alone. In the church of Sant'Antonino, built where the saint is said to have made a spring flow for travellers bound for Rome, the entrance wall is almost entirely covered by a fresco of the Dantesque trilogy, probably of 1443.