Viticuso

The name comes from a lake: in a charter of 928 the place is given as Lacum Vitecusum, and by one reading this is the vernacular form of the Latin Lacus Verticibus Clausus, the lake enclosed among the peaks. In the Middle Ages Viticuso was a crossroads between Molise and Montecassino, and you can still read that in the village: the main gate of the castle facing Molise can be made out, and the corresponding way out towards Cassino. The castle was built in the eleventh century by the counts of Venafro, inside the Terra di San Benedetto; and until 2014 the parish still belonged to the abbey of Montecassino.

During the war the village was occupied by the Germans, who controlled the Gustav line from here. Some families managed to escape towards Venafro and Pozzilli, where the Americans were; the others were deported to the north-east, mostly to Vicenza, and there they stayed until the end of the war, taken in by families from Vicenza. Towards the end the old centre was levelled by the bombs: only the square survived, the one where the German command was quartered. And it is there that the village museum stands today, with its relics of the war.