The name may come from a goddess: the parish church of San Michele Arcangelo stands over a pagan temple dedicated to Ops, a deity of the earth, an image of whom was found in 1912 — and in the Middle Ages the place was called Castellum Montis Opuli. Its first mention in the charters of the abbey of Farfa bears the date of the fourth of February 1055. In the town hall the Statuti terrae Montisopuli are kept, on illuminated parchment, from the sixteenth century.
The tower that dominates the village is of the tenth century and is called Ugonesca after Ugo I, abbot of Farfa, who had it built to defend the abbey: from up there the eye runs from the Terminillo and the Gran Sasso to Monte Soratte and, when the air is clear, to the dome of Saint Peter's. The oldest church in the village, attested as early as 817, served the people of the nearby castle of Bocchignano and was Montopoli's parish church until the end of the fourteenth century; once deconsecrated it became a lazaretto with a graveyard beside it, stood abandoned for a long time, and today houses the town library. And there is something here one does not expect: a museum of modern automata, opened in 2001.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Montopoli di Sabina celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel; the municipal territory lies within the Nazzano Tevere-Farfa regional nature reserve.
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.
Outside Montopoli di Sabina, but an easy day trip away.
