Serrone

The name comes from the serroni, the rocky and broken ridges of the Apennine, and the village grew halfway up Monte Scalambra. Higher up, at eleven hundred metres, almost sliding off a spur of rock, stands the hermitage of San Michele Arcangelo, with a Benedictine cloister that tradition holds was founded by Saint Benedict himself, who withdrew there in contemplation after being guided by three ravens. In the rock they still show a footprint that legend attributes to the devil, thrown down the crag after a fight with the archangel.

Then there is an episode about which nothing is known. The church of San Quirico was built in the seventeenth century for the Franciscan friars, and in March 1650 something serious happened inside it: serious enough for the church to be interdicted and deconsecrated, and only later blessed again. No document says what. The village keeps another memory with far more precision: the costume museum, with the stage clothes made by Beatrice Minori, a seamstress at the RAI and personal tailor to Eduardo De Filippo, who gave them to her own village; they were worn by Eduardo himself, by Vittorio Gassman and by Beppe Barra. On the second of January 1927 Serrone changed province by royal decree, passing from Rome to the new one of Frosinone.