San Gregorio da Sassola

San Gregorio is two villages side by side. The medieval nucleus stands on a base of volcanic rock and has the classic acropolis-spindle plan, a single central street with lanes running off it; here the street forks into a Y in front of the baronial palace, and the castle sits in the fork. The other half is Baroque, and it was born of an epidemic: after the plague of 1656 cardinal Carlo Pio di Savoia wanted an expansion, the Borgo Pio, and brought in ninety families from the villages round about. It is a straight street with five equal groups of terraced houses ending in an elliptical square made of four quarters, one of which was never built.

The name has two parts and both come from far off. The first from the fondo Ancesano, which Gregory the Great gave in 587 to the monastery of Sant'Andrea al Celio; the second, added after Italian unification, from the mistaken belief that the village corresponded to the ancient city of Saxula. Until 1872 it was simply San Gregorio. The castle, of the 10th century and reworked in the middle of the 17th, was bought in 1889 by the Brancaccio princes and has belonged to the comune since 1991: inside are 16th-century frescoes attributed to Federico Zuccari. On 17 January, at dawn, the pagnottelle of Sant'Antonio are handed out, kneaded with flour, oil, anise and ricotta.