Monte Romano

The first settlement rose at the highest point of the territory: the Arx Montis Romani, a castle of the thirteenth century. The sources name it for the first time in 1344 and then in 1371; it seems to have belonged to the Prefetti di Vico, and it was destroyed between 1431 and 1435, in the war against pope Eugene IV. What has come down to us from those centuries is not a building but an institution: Monte Romano is the seat of an università agraria, a body that manages and maintains the patrimony of the community and is the heir of the medieval institutions of agrarian self-government. In the village there are the clock tower, the church of Santo Spirito and a fountain they call del Mascherone, and out in the country the seventeenth-century castle of Rocca Respampani.

In the fields just outside the built-up area stands the base of an army regiment which runs the largest training area in central Italy: the logistic compound takes up about six hectares and, added to the firing range attached to it, comes to forty-three square kilometres, spread administratively across Monte Romano, Vetralla and Viterbo. The village's year is a full one: on the seventeenth of January, for Sant'Antonio Abate, they ride the giostra del saracino; on the first of May there is the feast of the Merca, the marking of the cattle; on Maundy Thursday the Passion is acted in costume and on Good Friday the dead Christ goes in procession; and in the middle of May the patron saint, Santa Corona, is celebrated together with Sant'Isidoro. Between 1928 and 1961 the Civitavecchia-Orte railway ran through here and the village had its station: the building is still there, and is no longer used.