Castelforte

At a place still called Vattaglia — battle, in dialect — in August 915 the league summoned by pope John X defeated the Saracens encamped on the right bank of the Garigliano. Troops came from all over the newly restored Kingdom of Italy, led in the field by the pope himself, and with them were Lombards and Byzantines: it was the closing chapter of the Islamic expansion in Italy. Castrum Forte was born before the year one thousand as a watchpost over that valley, and its plan is that of a parade ground: a wall with round towers, a single gate, and a keep that signalled to the other strongholds of the district. In 1079 abbot Desiderius of Montecassino granted the people of nearby Suio their charters of liberty.

On the twenty-eighth of December 1503, on this stretch of the Garigliano, Piero de' Medici, called the Fatuous, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was drowned: he was on a boat loaded with arms, bound for Gaeta with the French. The next day the Spaniards of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba won the battle that ended French rule over southern Italy. In 1799, after two companies of volunteers from Castelforte had fought with Fra Diavolo against the French, the Franco-Polish troops of general Dąbrowski besieged and stormed the village on Easter Day: thirty-four inhabitants died in the reprisal. And one quarrel outlives everything: the boundary dispute with Santi Cosma e Damiano, documented since 1620, is still open.