Montelibretti

The village's name comes from an emperor's father-in-law. In Roman times there was a villa here belonging to Gaius Bruttius Praesens, father-in-law of Commodus, and the name of the Bruttii estate became the place-name: Castellum Britti, attested in 1018, which in twelfth-century texts turns into Montis Brittorum or De Brectis. That name has survived everything: the village football club is still called Brictense. Lower down, in the necropolis of Colle del Forno found in 1970, there are underground chamber tombs with an access corridor and the grave goods of wealthy people, between the seventh century BC and the first half of the sixth: they belonged to the ancient Sabine city of Eretum.

Today's village, though, was born a kilometre away. From the seventeenth century groups of shepherds coming down from the mountains of the Rieti country and from the Monti Lucretili settled north of the castle village and founded Montelibretti Casali, which is the built-up centre now. The old borgo kept the castle: it belonged to the Orsini from the fourteenth century and passed in 1664 to the Barberini, who turned it into a square palace with cylindrical towers. In 1867 garibaldini clashed here with papal and French troops, during the campaign of the Agro Romano for the liberation of Rome: a monument and marble plaques in the old centre recall it. And today one of the largest research areas of the National Research Council stands in the comune's territory, with a museum of crystallography instruments.