Fiano Romano

There are five theories about the name and no winner: the Latin flavus, blond, for the cereals grown here; the holdings of the gens Flavia; the Flavinia arva, the Flavinian fields that Virgil names in the Aeneid; the Fanum Feroniae, the temple of the goddess Feronia; or an imperial estate of Constantine's day, since Constantine had taken the nomen Flavus. The sanctuary, though, is a certainty: the Lucus Feroniae, the goddess's sacred grove, was so rich that in 211 BC the mercenaries of Hannibal's army came expressly to plunder it.

Around 70 BC Caesar expropriated much of the land around the sanctuary to give it to his legionaries; the operation was completed after his death by Mark Antony and Octavian, and out of it came the Colonia Julia Felix Lucus Feroniae. In the age of Augustus the whole area was reorganised by Lucius Volusius Saturninus, who built here the villa of the Volusii, the largest and richest of the many villas in the district: they were farms in the fullest sense, specialising above all in olive oil, in a countryside the Roman senators competed for because it was fertile and close to the city. In the Middle Ages control passed from hand to hand among religious institutions: San Paolo fuori le mura, the monastery of San Silvestro on Monte Soratte and the abbey of Farfa. The present name dates from 1872.