Castel Sant'Angelo

In the hamlet of Vasche there is a small lake that the Romans called Lacus Cutiliensis and that today is called the lake of Paterno. To the Sabines it was sacred, and Varro, who came from Rieti, called it the navel of Italy: the exact point at which the peninsula holds together. Around that water the Romans built the Aquae Cutiliae, the baths they called Vespasian's, and the villa of Titus, both of the first century: people came here to be cured, and those who could stayed. Before the Sabines, the ancient sources say, this land had belonged to the Aborigines. The village proper, instead, is later: it was founded by the Lombards in the ninth century as a fortified settlement, and from that fortification it took its name.

In 1309 the castle was one of those that contributed to the founding of Cittaducale, and to Cittaducale it stayed tied for centuries; in 1500 it was subject to the Mareri family. That bond also explains something that surprises today: until a century ago this was not Lazio. The district of Cittaducale belonged to the province of L'Aquila, and there it remained until 1927, when the district was abolished and the province of Rieti was created: only then did Castel Sant'Angelo pass from Abruzzo to Lazio. The village stands at the foot of the Terminillo, in a plain of waters where the mineral springs are still the ones the Romans came to drink.