Torre Cajetani

The castle of Torre Cajetani has come back, after a thousand years, to the family that had it at the beginning. In the ninth century it belonged to the Teofilatto, the Roman senator who had a great many interests in the Campagna; at the end of the thirteenth century it was bought by the Caetani, who enlarged it on a great four-square plan with the main tower in the middle and founded there a branch of the family called della Torre, which died out at the end of the nineteenth century; the Marsica earthquake, in 1915, brought part of it down, and after a long abandonment, since 1959, it has been taken back by the Teofilatto themselves, who have restored it. Of the four old towers everything can still be seen. The village, for that matter, was born with it: a parchment of 1180 describes a fortified settlement already formed and organised, whose defence was entrusted to the inhabitants themselves.

The other thing that has made history here is the water. At the Fontanelle rises an oligomineral spring known since the thirteenth century, and pope Boniface VIII used that water to treat his stone disease: so much so that in the deed by which the Caetani bought the castle, in 1296, the purchase of the spring too is set down. It was worked for bottling until after 1920, then abandoned, and in 2015 the building was recovered and now houses a visitor centre. In the village there is also a museum one would not expect: that of the operetta, named after Sandro Massimini, with his collection of hand-made toy theatres, some of the seventeenth century, with puppets and marionettes.