Roviano

The gate of the village is called Porta Scaramuccia, and the name comes from a brawl: the skirmish between the people of Roviano and those of Arsoli over the control of some springs in the territory. It was built in the second half of the fourteenth century, and today the football team of Roviano is twinned with the comune of Arsoli itself. The rest of the village is perched on a hill above the upper valley of the Aniene, near the border with Abruzzo, and has much older things beneath it: the polygonal walls of the end of the Aequian age or of the first Roman times; the Scutonico bridge, of the republican period, which the emperor Nerva had restored and on which the via Valeria crosses the Aniene; and the Roman station of Ad Lamnas, which appears even on the Tabula Peutingeriana. At the fork of the entrance stands the church of Santa Maria dell'Oliva, which goes back to 867.

The castle, on the other hand, has changed owner almost every century. It was born as a fortified rock of the abbey of Subiaco, passed to the Colonna and then to the Barberini, came back to the Colonna di Sciarra until the end of feudalism; in 1872 it was bought by the Massimo, lords of nearby Arsoli, who gave it over to the Brancaccio, and at last, in 1979, the comune bought it. The title of prince of Roviano, though, has stayed with the Massimo, who bear it by Brancaccio inheritance. In the middle of this story stands the plague of 1656, which decimated the village, and perhaps also the end of Rovianello, the abandoned medieval borough of which it is not known whether it was a place of its own or the Roviano of that time. The patron's feast, on 29 August, closes with the panarda: a dinner of pasta and beans that the confraternity of San Giovanni offers to everyone.