Arsoli

Beneath Arsoli there are springs that Rome has always known: from here the Romans tapped the water of the Aqua Marcia, the city's third aqueduct, built in 144 BC, and the Roman bridges of San Giorgio and Scutonico still stand on the via Valeria. For centuries, though, that water passed through on its way somewhere else: the village made do with wells, which were not enough. It took a sixteenth-century lord, Fabrizio Massimo, to have a new aqueduct built that would bring water to the village and to the fortress. It is a story repeated across half of Italy, but here it is unusually plain: the spring is the same, only the drinker changes.

The way the Massimo came to Arsoli, moreover, is unusual. The village had belonged to the monks of Subiaco since the ninth century — a bull of Pope Gregory IV of 864 confirms it — and their fortified monastery had become a castle; then it passed to the Passamonti, who held it until 1536, when they sold it to the Zambeccari of Bologna because they were ruined, the plague had almost emptied the village and their lord, Amico Passamonti, had been killed by Marzio Colonna. The Zambeccari took no interest, the houses fell into ruin and the fields turned uncultivated or marshy. At that point Saint Philip Neri, who was confessor and adviser to prince Fabrizio Massimo in material matters too, suggested that he buy it: the contract dates from 1574. The castle still bears that family's name, and the church was rebuilt from 1580 to a design by Giacomo della Porta.