What to do in the surroundings of Campagnano di Roma
t’s certainly an enchanting atmosphere – so much that the director Comencini considered this fabled landscape an ideal setting for some of the scenes of his film Pinocchio. Recently the area of the Martignano lake was declared a natural park, in order to preserve its unspoilt environment. The lake lies in the eastern part of the Sabatini mountains, and has been touched by the effects of the Lazio region’s most recent volcanic activity. Isolated from the main thoroughfares and with little human impact on this territory, the Martignano lake is a near-miraculous example of ecological integrity. The environment of this area, a particularly interesting natural site, is almost wholly untouched. It is a natural monument that has to be protected with energy and careful concern.
A village on the side of an impassable cliff, Calcata has managed to conserve its natural and historical heritage even though it is sited just 40 kilometers north of Rome. Its cultural significance was further enriched from the 1970s onward, as the current inhabitants of the historic centre took over from the original ones. The new residents coming from all over Italy – and all over the world – were attracted by Calcata’s nature and the knowledge of the old inhabitants, who had lived in equilibrium with this environment until a few years previously. The incoming inhabitants launched dozens of initiatives that contributed to giving the village fresh impulse. A number of creatives have their studios in Calcata: painters, sculptors, graphic designers, cultural operatives, musicians and actors. All this makes Calcata an ‘extraordinary anomaly’: a medieval village containing a very high concentration of artists in a small and attractive space. Calcata’s history, environment and artistic and cultural ‘aroma’ make it a unique example – an idyllic model village that we must conserve so that it can continue to be a precious inheritance for all.
A few kilometres from Rome stands the majestic Castello di Bracciano, one of the finest feudal dwellings in Europe. The castle was built by the Orsini family in the 1470s, atop an old medieval fortress dating back to the 1200s. Standing next to the southern shore of the Bracciano lake, and besieged by the Borgias and allied to the Medici family, the castle was the ideal communion between military and renaissance architecture. Today, thanks to the Fondazione Livio IV Odescalchi, the castle is open to the public, welcoming tens of thousands of tourists each year. A historic fortress and a renaissance abode, the Castello di Bracciano is an enchanting site for weddings, private events, photo shoots, filming and cultural performances.
The characteristic inhabited centre of Caprarola is enveloped by one of the most extraordinary natural spectacles in all of Lazio. It stands in hilly territory in the slopes of the Cimini mountains, just over 500m above sea level, and surrounded by the thick woodland close to the Vico lake, which lies in an ancient collapsed volcano. Dominated by the monumental Palazzo Farnese, the village spreads out around a straight road gradually rising up toward the palace, aligned by the buildings of the old medieval village and the palazzi of the renaissance period.