Farnese

The name of this village comes from trees: farneto, that is a wood of farnia oaks, the oaks that covered the tuff crag it stands on. In the Middle Ages it was called Castrum Farneti, in the middle of the twelfth century it belonged to Count Ranieri di Bartolomeo, then passed into the Aldobrandeschi county; and from here took its name the family that would carry that name a long way, the Farnese. The village, meanwhile, remained a fief like many others: after them came the Chigi, in the nineteenth century a French marshal and finally the Torlonia. In the territory, far older than all of them, is the village of Sorgenti della Nova, inhabited at the end of the Bronze Age, with huts on the top of the rock, elliptical houses on the terraces and caves cut into the stone.

In the nineteenth century Farnese was brigand country, and not as a figure of speech: the place, all crags, clefts and woods like the Lamone, was convenient for hiding, and brigands such as Domenico Tiburzi, Domenico Biagini and Giuseppe Basili were born here. In the trials that followed many locals were charged with aiding them — among them the mayor himself, Pietro Castiglioni. The finest day, however, was neither of war nor of feudal lords: after several attempts that had come to nothing, in 1887 the water of the La Botte spring finally reached the village. It was celebrated on 25 September with religious and civil ceremonies and with the inauguration of the monumental fountain in piazza del Comune, which is still there.