Acqualagna

Acqualagna stands where the Burano torrent flows into the Candigliano, along the Flaminia, just past the gorge of the Furlo. Where the name comes from is not known: one hypothesis derives it from acqua-lama, that is marsh water, because of the boggy ground that once lay in the area of the confluence. The settlement probably grew up around the abbey of San Vincenzo al Furlo, which had a chapel and a hospital. Of that eighth-century abbey a good deal remains: Saint Romuald lived there in 1011 and Saint Peter Damian in 1042; the monastery was independent until the eleventh century, then came into the orbit of Fonte Avellana; the present church, Romanesque, was rebuilt in 1271 by abbot Bonaventura and keeps one of the two original naves, a crypt with three naves with ancient capitals and an altar of the ninth century, besides the remains of medieval frescoes. Close by there is also a small Roman bridge. In 1506 pope Julius II stopped at Acqualagna and ordered the building of the church of Santa Lucia.

The comune's arms, on the other hand, tell of a small ambition. The falcon perched on a three-peaked mount comes from the blazon of the counts Accomanducci of Montefalcone, who ruled the place from the fourteen hundreds. In 1867, though, the falcon was shown crowned and with one claw holding a small silver shield charged with a ladder: in the Comune's intention, that ladder was to recall the family of the counts Della Scala. When in 1960 the official civic arms were granted, the ladder had gone, and in its place there was a pale chequy of blue and red. Out in the territory, the villa of Colombara has yielded the remains of a Roman farm of the second century before Christ, with a large porticoed courtyard around which stood the dwellings and the rooms for processing farm produce, rebuilt in the early imperial age partly on top of the first one; and on the mountain of Pietralata there is an eleventh-century castle with the church of the Santissima Trinità still consecrated and a canon's house joined to the little church by a suspended passage. In 1901, in the hamlet of Farneta, the brigand Giuseppe Musolino was captured. Today the town is known above all for the truffle: the national fair is held three times a year, in February for the black, in August for the summer black and between October and November for the white.