Vitorchiano

In 1199 Vitorchiano declared itself free of every tie to Viterbo, and Viterbo besieged it; the village asked Rome for help and in 1201 found itself a fief of the City. In 1232 the men of Viterbo took it and laid it waste; then Annibaldi ringed it with new walls that made it all but impregnable, but his rule was more than the people of Vitorchiano could bear. Having begged Rome in vain to free them, in 1267 the inhabitants did something unusual: they reimbursed Giovanni Annibaldi out of their own pockets for what he had spent, and then made a solemn act of submission to Rome. The Roman Senate answered by naming Vitorchiano Terra Fedelissima all'Urbe, with wide tax exemptions, the right to put S.P.Q.R. and the Capitoline she-wolf on its arms, and the motto Sum Vitorclanum castrum membrumque romanum: Vitorchiano, a castle and a part of Rome.

The greatest privilege, though, was another: to furnish the men of the Capitoline guard. They are called the Fedeli di Vitorchiano, and they have done it without a break from 1267 to this day; Rome still pays an annual sum out of its municipal taxes to keep them. Their costumes, tradition says, were designed by Michelangelo, and the trumpets they sound at official ceremonies are called clarine — in Rome to sound the clarine has become proverbial for calling the people together for a fight. The village's stone, peperino, has travelled too: in 1990, since the original moai were crumbling, Italian state television went looking for a volcanic rock like Easter Island's and found it here. Eleven islanders carved a thirty-tonne block with hand axes and cutting stones: the moai is still in place.