Villa Latina

Until 1862 the village was called Agnone, and the sense of that name is still argued over: for some it comes from agnus, the place where lambs were pastured, for others from vagni, the dialect form of bagni, that is from the Latin balneum. The royal decree of 9 November 1862 renamed it Villa Latina, and the choice went decidedly on the side of the baths: the new name recalls the ancient thermal villa where the Romans came on holiday and the aqueduct that served it. The settlement was built around 744 with the name Anglone, in a place that had been the camp of the Samnites who escaped the battle of Aquilonia. In the ninth century a group of monks from San Vincenzo al Volturno settled along the Mollarino and built there the little church of San Mauro; shortly after, other monks added San Pietro and the monastery of San Valentino. In 881 the Saracen raids destroyed all three churches, which were later rebuilt; and on 20 March 1049 pope Leo IX came to consecrate the San Salvatore: it was the first time a pontiff had set foot in the Valle di Comino.

Today Villa Latina is known above all for a trade: here they make zampogne and pifferi, bagpipes and shawms, and in the village there is a museum that gathers their history and the techniques of making them. The rest of the story is that of a village on a border among mountains. The counts of Marsi, at the time of the incastellamento, made the people abandon their houses to build a fortified centre up on a height, the Rocca Malacucchiara: assaulted by the Angevins in 1422 and destroyed for good by the Riccio di Montechiaro in the thirties of the fifteenth century, it was never rebuilt, and the inhabitants took refuge at Atina until tempers cooled. In the second world war the Germans, standing behind the Cassino front, put the SS headquarters of the valley here and then had everyone evacuated: the village was freed on 29 May 1944 by the Italian Liberation Corps. On 7 May 1984 an earthquake destroyed part of it.