Roccagiovine

Set into the castle walls there is a Latin inscription that says something precise: that castle stands on the remains of a Roman temple, and that temple was restored at his own expense by the emperor Vespasian. The temple was dedicated to the goddess Vacuna, and for that reason the place was anciently called Fanum Vacunae. It is not the only stone that speaks: it was a Roman inscription found here that made it possible to identify, not far away, the villa of the poet Horace.

The castle you see dates from 1280, but the village had already been a fief of the abbey of Subiaco since 1052; it then passed to the Orsini, who held it together with neighbouring Licenza, and in 1821 it was sold to the Del Gallo, who still own it and bear its name. For a village of a few hundred people, finally, two events that come as a surprise: a biennial devoted to vintage comics, among the chief ones in the province of Rome, and a national exhibition of art knives.