Morro Reatino

Morro Reatino stands on the western slopes of the Rieti mountains, looking out over the Rieti basin. In 1152 its castle was among the properties of the Nobili of Labro given to the chapter of San Giovanni in Laterano in return for help and protection against the Norman invasion; throughout the Middle Ages and until Italian unification it was the furthest outpost of Rieti, and so of the Papal State, before the border with the Kingdom of Naples. For that very reason, on 30 January 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi passed through: he was inspecting those borders for the Roman Republic, and slept in the village, at Casa Poiani, to meet the patriot Bernardino Blasi.

The memory the village carries, however, is that of the massacre. Between 31 March and 2 April 1944 German and fascist units combed these mountains to crush the «free zone» that the partisans of the Gramsci brigade had proclaimed a fortnight earlier: they killed eighteen civilians — among them a woman with a mental disability, shot in cold blood — burned the houses with heavy artillery and levelled the hamlet of Pacce. The names of the victims are on a plaque along one of the village streets. At Pacce today there is a spring that supplies water to half the province and reaches as far as Terni.