The name comes from a farm: under the Romans this part of the Sabina was the agricultural estate of a rich senatorial family, the Scandillii, and was called Fundus Scandillianus. Cicero, writing of these parts, praised the industriousness of those who worked them. In 1824 excavations at Monte Calvo brought to light a sumptuous villa of the first century after Christ: at first it was believed to be the imperial villa of Nerva, and others maintained that the remains were those of a vanished city, before it was identified as the villa of another senatorial family with wide holdings here. Along with the building a number of marble statues came out in good condition, and those statues have travelled: many are today in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, some in the Borghese Museum and in the Vatican Museums. Along the old course of the via Salaria there are still the milestones and a Roman bridge some thirteen metres high, built of fourteen courses of travertine blocks; near one of the peaks are the remains of a watchtower and of an altar dedicated to Jupiter Cacunus.
Tradition holds that Saint Barbara was martyred by her father in a place just outside the village that still bears her name, where a small country church stands; the martyr's body, however, was carried to the cathedral of Rieti in the first decades of the ninth century, and the village keeps her feast on the fourth of December. Her initials are in the coat of arms, an S and a B at the sides of a medieval tower. The bell tower of the church of the Assunta is built on the base of a Roman watchtower. When the Saracens came, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the castle was built to take in those fleeing the disorder of the valley, and on the slopes of another mountain there are still the remains of the houses the local people put up in those years. As for administration, Scandriglia has changed province twice: it entered the Kingdom of Italy in 1860 as a comune of the province of Perugia, passed to that of Rome after the taking of the city, and in 1927 ended up in the new province of Rieti.
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📅 Every year, on 4 December; the sagne festival in August
Scandriglia celebrates Saint Barbara on 4 December. In the summer season, the sagne festival is typical, held in August.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
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Outside Scandriglia, but an easy day trip away.
