Torricella in Sabina

At Torricella in Sabina the church is inside the tower. The bell tower and the late-Romanesque parish church of San Giovanni Battista are enclosed in the great medieval tower, still well preserved, with its merlons in view, which in all likelihood gave the village its name; inside there are a stone rose window and the remains of the apse frescoes, brought back to light by a restoration in the nineteen-thirties. Tower and palace belonged to the Sforza Cesarini until the first half of the nineteenth century; earlier still, in the eleventh century, the place was among the possessions of the abbey of Farfa. The village lies on the Sabine hills beside the old course of the Salaria and a transhumance drove road, and of the Roman road there remain the Sambuco bridge, stretches of paving at Carnevale, a milestone and some ruins at Ornaro alto.

Two dates tell the rest. In 1867 the village welcomed the Garibaldian volunteers on their way to Mentana and, since they were badly equipped, the inhabitants gathered and gave them fourteen hunting rifles. In 1944 the war came through and did heavy damage: the retreating Germans destroyed the roads to stop the Allied advance, and inside the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie — recorded from 956, just outside the built-up area, with medieval frescoes near the main altar — they hid some tanks, breaking through part of the front to get them in. The restoration began at the end of the fifties and is not finished yet. The railway, on the other hand, never came: the Salaria was to have had one, planned several times from the end of the nineteenth century and never built.