The name probably comes from a Metellus — in the thirteen hundreds the village was written Metellanico — a Roman who is supposed to have had an estate here; the other explanation, which the sources give as a legend, is of a shepherd who sheared so much wool from his flock that it made a mountain of it. The first certain notices are two bulls: in 1154 Anastasius IV names the castrum Metellanici among the goods assigned to the Lateran canons, and in 1182 Lucius III confirms it among the properties of the bishop of Segni's jurisdiction. It is that same bull that first names the castle of Collemezzo, which today is a ruin — with a street and a house number of its own, in via Mazzini.
The village passed from the Conti to the Barberini and then to the Pamphili, and it was under the latter, in 1722, that it got its first civic statute. Then, between 1860 and 1870, it found itself on a frontier. The Lazio that stayed papal until the taking of Rome was, in those years, a place where the armed bands of post-unification brigandage could take refuge, pass through and reorganise: the troops of the Kingdom of Italy could not cross the border, and on the papal side the opposition to them was at first weak. With unification Montelanico became a comune of its own. In the village there is a fountain of putti by the Ciociaria sculptor Ernesto Biondi; and since 1963 the chestnuts, which are what these mountains give, have had their festival in the third week of October.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Montelanico celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel; the village is also known for the Chestnut Festival, held since 1963 in the third week of October.
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.
