Poggio San Lorenzo

At Valle Gemma, beside the remains of a polygonal enclosure said to have been the baths of the emperor Titus, grows a holm oak centuries old: in the village they maintain it is the largest in Europe. Of the medieval castle a wall remains behind the parish church, and lower down there are still stretches of Roman walls in reticulated work.

The village was called Vicus Nervae, and was a fortified station along the Salaria, the salt road. The new name, tradition says, was given to it by the inhabitants after the passage of Saint Emidius, who had preached the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. The railway along the Salaria was planned several times from the end of the nineteenth century and never built: here, as in the villages around, the train never arrived.