Hill towns near Rome: Ronciglione

If you are watching  the TV series  “The Borgias”  you are taking a virtual tour of  some of the  hill towns in the area north of Rome.  

Main gateway entering Ronciglione 

  Last night’s episodes  featured  a bull fight in the amphitheatre of Sutri and   a visit to the Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano. See more about this castle on the blog posts of the past couple of weeks. 

gorge  and medieval quarter, Ronciglione 

  

laundry  with cupola and bell tower 

Vignola's   fountain of the Unicorns 

exploring the back streets  of Ronciglione  

  The  film director  used some  good camera work  to make the view from the castle gardens  look like  the Bay of Naples.

Ronciglione  once had a  ghetto 

garden on the street 

Those of us who live here  have our personal favorites: usually they are the towns we know best…where our friends live, or where our  favorite restaurants are located.

castle of Julius II 

 Many of  the hill towns  in the Etruria area  coincidentally  begin with the letter “V”: Vignanello, Vallerano, Vitorchiano and  of course Vetralla.  I’d love to hear why from  a specialist in  linguistics.  

medieval  alley way 

 Last weekend’s outing  brought me to  an “R”  town; Ronciglione, known familiarly  by  the natives  as “Ronciò”, which is also the name of a typical farming utensil used  to hoe and cut crops. 

It has also been used  as  a murder weapon  in the dark days  when families such as the Borgia   lived and ruled in this area. 

Entering  the town through an imposing doorway topped with papal coat of arms,  we walked along the main street where colorful Baroque period  facades  made a sharp contrast  with the  dark stone  of the medieval houses. 

 Each February a terrifying  rider-less horse race is held  along this street to celebrate  Carnival time .   

bright Baroque 

The town is dotted with churches,  bell towers, palazzi, convents and castles and the medieval quarter  is intact and  perfect for a stroll , but watch out for falling roof tiles.

a green corner of the medieval quarter 

Ronciò  cat  

cats rule

Being  originally  from the mill town of  Lowell, MA where the rushing waters of the Merrimack river created  the Industrial Revolution  in the 1840s-60s and the famous “Mile  of  Mills”, I felt  quite at home in Ronciglione.
Which is your favorite hill town in Italy? 

The streams  which rush through the gorges were used  as a primitive source of water power which made Ronciglione an early industrial center with production of metal objects and printing. Playing cards produced here were famous around the world. The tradition is continued by the Spada  printing company  which produced  my book Etruria.    

The 1512 Vetralla Monument

                           

On Saturday, July  21^st  while showing a visitor from Scotland our town’s claim to English protection, I realized the  monument  was celebrating its 500^th anniversary-and no one in town was interested…except us.

500 years of  English protection  

  

detail of  Henry VIII's coat of arms 

 Five centuries may seem like a long time, but  not in the layer cake of  European history  and not in an area where Etruscan tombs and sanctuaries dating from 800-300 BC dot the landscape.   

detail of Cardinal Bainbridge's coat of arms 

The year  1512 was a very busy one. Among the happenings in Europe:   

- the battle of Ravenna on   April 11^th

- Pope  Julius II  opened  the Lateran Council in May

- Michelangelo’s  Sistine Chapel paintings were  publically shown for the first time in November

Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII 

- a baby named Anne Boleyn was born

-Niccolò Macchiavelli was expelled  from Florence by the Medici, newly returned  to power.

- Martin Luther was named  Doctor of Theology in Wittenberg.

In the new world the Spanish began importing black slaves to Hispaniola to replace the  local Indians  who were perishing at an alarming rate while along the coast of Newfoundland, European fishermen began exploiting the banks of cod fish, sending  the dried cod  back to Europe.

English ambassador visits Vetralla

 On July  20^th, 1512 Pope Julius II donated the Castle of  Vetralla, an  important post  between Rome, the papal port of Civitavecchia and the city of Viterbo,  to the English crown. 

Cardinal  Christopher Bainbridge, Henry VIII's ambassador to Rome during those years and the only English prelate at the opening of the 5^th Lateran Council, accepted  for his king. 

funerary monument of Cardinal Bainbridge, Venerable English College,Rome 

  In Vetralla, a sculpted marble monument and a smaller plaque with the date were set above the main portal of  the castle, thus sealing the alliance between  young Henry VIII and the Papacy in  the Cambrian League  against the French.

axes and squirrels feature on Bainbridge  coat of arms

 For the first time, Henry laid claim to some  French land, thus the title  King of  France  (REX FR) was included in the  inscription  of the Vetralla monument. 

Over the centuries  the heraldic  plaque was moved several times  and since the 1700s it has graced the  main staircase of the governor’s palace, now the City Hall.  

A few years ago volunteers cleaned the monument revealing the full beauty of its  heraldic motifs. Several coins  from the early  19^th century were found lodged  among the intricate carvings.

Andrea Natali  cleaning the  1512 English monument 

 Unfortunately no documents  concerning the monument have yet come to light and most of the local population continue to ignore its significance and its very existence.

 This post is part of my submission for Team Florens, a meeting to be held in  autumn  where themes such as boosting economy through cultural awareness will be debated. 

Hopefully local cultural identity can grow and use existing historical monuments, especially those with international connections like the Vetralla 1512 monument, to create opportunities for tourism  in  towns not on regular tourist circuits.  Learn more about Fondazione Florens here.     

Latest  visitors   to Vetralla from England were a group  of young university students who had cycled all the  way  from Manchester, through  Holland, France and northern Italy. They were amazed  at the English connections  we pointed out to them.

posing  beneath the English monument  and
the bust of Cardinal Henry Stuart, Duke of
York, protector of  Vetralla