On the shores of the little lake, then called Janula, Adrian IV and Frederick Barbarossa met in 1155, as Barbarossa was on his way to be crowned emperor: and it was there that he refused to hold the stirrup for the pope as he mounted his horse. Five centuries later, in 1649, in the fields around the village, monsignor Cristoforo Giarda was murdered; he had been sent by Innocent X to persuade Ranuccio II Farnese to give back the duchy of Castro, and that killing was perhaps one of the reasons why the pope then ordered Castro razed to the ground.
The village came down from the hill: it stood on Monte Lucchetti, where Frederick II had a manor built, and around 1400, in a calmer time, it moved down to the valley. The war memorial carries five names: sub-lieutenant Ettore Rosso and the sappers Colombo, Zaccani, Obici and Trombini, who on the ninth of September 1943 blew themselves up with lorries loaded with explosive to slow the German advance on Rome. And the comune still has its università agraria, the body that administers the collective land, heir to the medieval institutions of agrarian self-government.
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📅 Every year, on 14 September and 22 January
On 14 September Monterosi celebrates Saints Vincent and Anastasius, also honoured on 22 January; early in the year the town also holds the Sagra della Pizzantiella, its typical stuffed crêpe.
A white wine carved into Etruscan tufa history, toasted by Garibaldi's Thousand: Orvieto has held Denominazione di Origine Controllata status since 1971.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
