Rotella

The name probably comes from the rotula, the round shield of Roman soldiers, and describes the rounded shape of the settlement on its terrace above the Oste stream. The village's history is hard to reconstruct because much of the municipal archive has been lost: the first certain document is from 967, when the Corte di Rotella appears among the holdings of the abbey of Farfa, which with the monastery of San Lorenzo held the village until the fourteenth century. In 1318 Rotella submitted of its own accord to Ascoli, and in 1586 Sixtus V attached it to the Presidato of Montalto.

The round shape that gave it its name, however, is gone. On the night of 16 March 1775, after days of rain, the whole eastern side of the village slid away as the Oste ate into the slope: the church of Santa Maria and the old monastery disappeared, along with part of the square and of the praetorial palace, and the houses and gardens around them. Only the bell tower was left standing, and for more than two centuries it has served as the civic tower and the emblem of the village; the walls, for their part, were raised again around what remained, to hold off the French.