Monte San Giovanni in Sabina

Its origins?

The first news of the castle of Monte San Giovanni is in a sales contract of 1240, when Giovanna de Radolfis, the last descendant of the consortia of Camponeschi, the great colonizers of the Sabine Mountains, sold to Napoleon Orsini the castles of Poggio Perugino, Monte San Giovanni, Montenero e delle Macchie. By the time the Orsini family bought this whole area, the settlement had been completed. Therefore the details of the foundation of Monte San Giovanni and the Castle delle Macchie remain obscure, even if its birth can be probably established between 953 and shortly after the year 1000. Due to its geographical position - right at the top of the Tancia valley, an obligatory passage for those who wanted to reach Rieti from the Tiber valley - Monte San Giovanni gradually became the main center of the Orsini family. Monte San Giovanni remained in the possession of the Orsini family until the early 17th century, when the castle returned to the apostolic chamber that, in the second half of the 18th century, granted it first to Adriano Antoniazzi Tomassi and then to Antonio Flavi. The life of this secluded Sabine village was shaken in April 1944 by the massacre carried out by fascists and Nazis in retaliation against the partisan bands sheltered in the mountains. On the morning of Good Friday old men, women and children were gathered in the chapel of the hamlet of San Michele Arcangelo, from where they witnessed the destruction of the village. In the afternoon eighteen of them were machine-gunned in the opposite square and left for a long time without burial: today they are remembered in a monument standing along the road that leads to the Tancia pass.