Sonnino has 7,279 inhabitants on the Colle Sant'Angelo, in the Ausoni mountains, and the name comes from the Latin summus, the top: the borgo sits on the summit. The first document that names it is a bull of pope Sylvester II of the year 999. It was born as a refuge — a place hard to reach and invisible from almost every direction, where men and cattle put themselves out of harm's way from raids and from the unhealthy air of the Pontine marsh — and in time the refuge became a castle.
In 1423 the count of Fondi and the community confirmed the statute of Sonnino, a code of fifty-eight articles of civil and criminal law. But the date the town has not forgotten is another one: on 17 July 1819 cardinal Ercole Consalvi, secretary of state to Pius VII, signed an edict ordering Sonnino to be destroyed and its inhabitants deported, to have done with the brigands infesting the area and with their chief, Antonio Gasbarrone. The village is still standing because, thanks to the work of Gaspare del Bufalo, the edict was never carried out.
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📅 Every year, on 21 October
On 21 October Sonnino celebrates Saint Gaspar del Bufalo and Our Lady of Grace, among its patrons; the third is Saint Mark the Evangelist (25 April), whose fair was already regulated in the 13th century.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
