Labico has 5,979 inhabitants on the via Casilina, and until 1872 it was called Lugnano. Then in eight years it changed its name twice, first to Labicano and in 1880 to Labico, to claim descent from the ancient Labicum. The identification was the work of a local antiquarian, Francesco de' Ficoroni, born here in 1664, and it had already been judged groundless by scholars such as Nibby and Tomassetti. Today it is thought that the site was instead that of Bola, the Latin city taken by the Aequi and at war with Rome in the fifth century before Christ. The old name was more honest: Lugnano came from the fundus Longianus, the estate of a family called Longus.
Ficoroni himself, though, is worth stopping for. He spent a very long life on antiquity and put together a remarkable collection of coins, mirrors, graffiti, lead seals and small rare objects; he was a fellow of the Royal Society in London and of the royal academy in Paris, and he quarrelled with the French scholar Montfaucon so ferociously that in 1714 the Congregation of the Index had to step in and purge both men's publications of the most offensive passages. His name has stayed attached to a masterpiece: the Praenestine cista now in the Villa Giulia museum in Rome is called the Cista Ficoroni because he gave it away. An English gentleman had laid a handful of gold coins on his table for it; he refused, and wrote that he was giving it to the Kircherian gallery so that it might be preserved for ever.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on the Saturday before the last Sunday of August; the last Sunday of May brings Maria SS. del Rovo
Labico celebrates Saint Roch on the Saturday preceding the last Sunday of August, with a procession; the other patron, Saint Andrew, has the town's main church. On the last Sunday of May, Our Lady of the Bramble is also celebrated, with a procession.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
