Antuni – ghost town (RI)

Antuni is the uninhabited hamlet of the municipality of Castel di Tora, in the province of Rieti. You reach it from the turnoff for Castel di Tora on Provincial Road 34 Turanense, which runs along the whole of Lake Turano, and from there you climb on foot along a dirt track to the top of the mountain, at an elevation of 696 meters above sea level. There is no ticket office, no gate, no opening time: the village is an open-air site inside the Monte Navegna and Monte Cervia Regional Nature Reserve, and entry is free. The elevation gain from the starting point to the summit is about 130 meters, to which another 140 are added if you continue toward the hermitage of San Salvatore. The whole loop, village plus hermitage, takes about three hours of walking with stops. You need real hiking shoes, water and a hat in summer. The buildings are ruins: you look at them from outside, you don't go in, you don't climb the walls. For accompanied visits the association Camminando con organizes guided hikes to the village and the hermitage on Sunday mornings at 10:00, from June to September, with the meeting point at the Castel di Tora turnoff and registration at the number 389 6860142. The Municipality of Castel di Tora is at via Don Sabino Gentili 11, phone 0765 716313. The seat of the nature reserve is at Varco Sabino, via Martin Luther King 1, phone 0765 790002.

Whoever arrives up here for the first time has usually passed first through Lake Turano and the village of Castel di Tora, which is Antuni's twin town and its best observation point. From there the Antuni mountain appears for what it is: a cone of rock and broom almost entirely surrounded by water, joined to the mainland by a thin isthmus, with at the top a silhouette of pale walls that turns black against the sky in the evening.

Where Antuni is and how to get there

Geography matters more than history here, because it explains everything else. We are in the middle Turano valley, on the Lazio side of the Carseolani mountains, straddling the Rieti area and the Abruzzo border. The Antuni mountain is an isolated rise that before 1939 overlooked a narrow, deep gorge. Today the gorge is submerged and the rise has become almost an island. Lake Turano is about 10 kilometers long, has a perimeter of about 36 kilometers and its reservoir level is around 536 meters. The mountain reaches 696: barely 160 meters of elevation that, seen from below, look like triple that.

Antuni by car from Rome

From the capital the most direct way is the A24 Rome-L'Aquila motorway to the Carsoli exit, then Provincial Road 34 Turanense northward: you go up the valley, run along the reservoir and arrive at the Castel di Tora turnoff. It's a little over an hour's drive from east Rome, with the last stretch on a narrow, winding road, where there is no sense in being in a hurry. The second option is Via Salaria to Rieti and then down along the Turano valley: it lengthens the time but lets you fit into the same day the city of Rieti and its Holy Valley. A practical warning that no navigation system gives: the SP34 in winter, after rain, gets dirty with gravel and mud come down from the slopes, and in the shaded stretches it freezes. If you go on a short day, go in the morning.

Antuni from Rieti and from Abruzzo

From Rieti you go southeast along the valley: the road passes below Rocca Sinibalda, touches Posticciola, then enters the basin. From Abruzzo you come from Carsoli, where the Turanense begins. Public transport exists but is calibrated on the life of the towns, not on hiking: the runs are few and concentrated in school hours, and the nearest stop is in any case below the start of the trail. For Antuni, honestly, you need a car, or an organized trip.

Parking and the start of the trail to Antuni

You leave the car in the pull-offs along the provincial road at the Castel di Tora turnoff, near the bridge that crosses the arm of the lake. From here starts the little dirt road that climbs the flank of the mountain. On weekends in July and August the pull-offs fill up by 10 in the morning, because the same area serves the swimmers and fishermen of the lake. Whoever arrives late ends up parking on the roadside on a curve, which is the best way to get a fine or worse. Arrive early: it's a banal piece of advice and nobody follows it.

The trail that climbs to Antuni

The climb to Antuni is not a mountaineering feat and shouldn't be taken lightly either. It is a switchback dirt track that gains elevation steadily, exposed to the sun for a good part of the route, with no fountains along the way. The surface is gravelly and in some spots loosened by runoff.

How far you walk to reach Antuni

The elevation gain from the valley floor to the village is about 130 meters, and it is covered in a good half hour at an easy pace. Whoever continues to the hermitage of San Salvatore adds another 140 meters of climbing, on a route that turns from a dirt track into a mountain trail. The complete loop, out and back with stops to look and photograph, ends up taking about three hours. It's not a loop route: you return the same way, and the descent, with gravel under your soles, needs more attention than the climb.

What shoes you need for Antuni

Shoes with a lugged sole, period. Flip-flops and smooth sneakers are the number one cause of the sprains seen on this trail, especially on the descent. For the final stretch toward the hermitage hiking footwear is not a suggestion but a requirement: the path narrows, runs on rock and packed earth and in a couple of spots skirts the drop toward the lake. Add a liter and a half of water per person in summer, because up there you won't find any.

Safety at Antuni: ruins, fences and common sense

Clarity is needed here, because Antuni is a village in ruins and not a museum with handrails. Most of the buildings are reduced to perimeter walls, collapsed floors, rooms with no floor. Some portions have been consolidated and can be observed from outside. Others remain unsafe and are off limits. The rule to keep is simple and non-negotiable: walk on the marked paths, don't enter the ruins, don't climb over barriers, nets or prohibition signs, don't climb on walls for a photograph. The fences and closures you find along the loop are not an obstacle to get around: they are there because something, above or below, is not holding. If a sector is closed on the day you go, you look from outside and come back another time. At the edges of the summit, then, the mountain drops to the lake with no mediation: hold children by the hand and don't go near the edge to frame a better shot.

What you see at Antuni, step by step

Antuni is not a big village. You go around it in an hour, if you really look. And it is precisely the smallness that makes it readable: in a few tens of meters you pass from the medieval defensive layout to the 19th century noble residence, from the church to the well, from the boundary wall to the viewpoint. Few places in Lazio tell as clearly what a ridge castrum was.

The mule track and the gate of the village of Antuni

The historic access is the ancient mule track that climbs to the inhabited core, the same road along which for 900 years mules loaded with wood, grain and oil have passed. It is the first element to observe carefully: its slope, its width calibrated to an animal's pack saddle, the low walls that support it. Whoever arrives on this road understands immediately why the village was born here and not halfway up the slope. On the threshold of the core you can still read the remains of the entrance system, with the chokepoint that forced everyone climbing to present themselves one at a time.

The ruined houses of Antuni

The surviving dwellings form two rows set against the slope. They are houses of local stone, limestone quarried on the spot, with rubble-core masonry and small openings. You can still make out the shaped jambs of some doorways, the sockets of beams in the walls, the service niches, the chimneys. What strikes you, walking among these roofless rooms, is the domestic scale: rooms of 3 meters by 4 in which whole families lived, with the stable on the ground floor and the living room above, warmed by the breath of the animals. The rhetoric of the ghost village tends to paint Antuni as a romantic place. It was a very hard place, and its inhabitants left as soon as they could.

The small tower and the walls of Antuni

Of the medieval fortified wall substantial stretches remain, recognizable by the more regular masonry bond compared to the houses. The most photographed point is the small tower that guards the side toward the lake. From the ramparts opens the panorama that justifies the whole climb: the sheet of water that winds between the mountains, the bridge, the town of Castel di Tora perched on the opposite shore with its 15th century pentagonal tower, and further on the ridges of the reserve. It is a military viewpoint, before a tourist one: from here the obligatory passage between Abruzzo territory and the Rieti plain was controlled, which was exactly the castle's reason for being.

The Del Drago Palace at Antuni

The building that dominates the summit is the baronial palace that went down in history under the name of the Del Drago, the family of Viterbo origin that held the fief in the 19th century. It is the largest and most visible construction of the village: the silhouette you recognize from the lake, the compact volume that closes the summit. It has undergone a heavy restoration in recent decades, and it must be said frankly that the work has altered its features: whoever is looking for an intact ruin will be disappointed, whoever is looking for a recovered and reused building will find a working container. The palace has hosted and hosts cultural initiatives, screenings, meetings, and has also served as a film set. Our opinion is that the recovery saved the structure and sacrificed the atmosphere, and that it was an inevitable price: without those works, today there would be nothing to look at.

The church of Sant'Antonio Abate at Antuni

The village preserves the remains of the place of worship dedicated to Sant'Antonio Abate, the Egyptian hermit saint who in rural Italy was the protector of barn animals, celebrated on January 17 with the blessing of the animals and bonfires. It is not a random dedication in a settlement of shepherds and highland farmers: Antonio Abate was the saint of those who lived off the stable and the woods. Of the church remain the walls and the floor plan. The interior preserves no readable decorative fittings. You observe it from outside, like everything else in the village. It's worth stopping here a few minutes longer than necessary, because a castle chapel is the element that turns a military garrison into a community: where there is a baptismal font, there is a town.

The wells, squares and gardens of Antuni

Details that almost all visitors walk through without seeing. The wells and cisterns are the vital infrastructure of a ridge settlement: on a limestone mountain water doesn't surface, and every drop had to be collected from the roofs and stored. Looking at the mouth of a well at Antuni means understanding the physical limit that village had for 900 years. Then there are the open spaces, what we call squares and which were rather community threshing floors, and the cultivated terraces carved out above and below the houses, now reconquered by vegetation but still readable in the dry stone walls.

The labyrinth of Monte Antuni

Among the recent elements of the site is the labyrinth built on the summit of the mountain, the work of the artist Renata Garutti, inaugurated in 2015. It is a symbolic labyrinth, of the kind you walk without any chance of getting lost, with a single path that leads to the center and back out: the type that the Christian Middle Ages used on cathedral floors as a penitential walk in miniature. Placing it on top of an abandoned village is a choice that divides: some find it a gratuitous addition and some read in it the right gesture, that is giving a function back to a place that had lost it. It's a successful choice for a practical reason: it forces whoever arrives at the top to slow down and walk watching their own step instead of the phone, and in those minutes the landscape really enters.

The hermitage of San Salvatore above Antuni

If you have time for only one thing besides the village, it's this. The hermitage of San Salvatore is a 14th century building wedged into a rock wall plunging to the lake, a little over a kilometer's walk from the village, with another 140 meters of elevation to gain.

The trail from Antuni to the hermitage of San Salvatore

From the village the route continues at elevation, then climbs back up the slope. The surface changes nature: no longer a drivable dirt track but a mountain trail, with outcropping rock, roots and narrow stretches. It is not exposed in the mountaineering sense, but a badly placed foot costs dearly. Those who suffer from vertigo should think carefully before setting out, because in two or three spots the void toward the lake is close. The walking time, village included, brings the overall loop to about three hours.

What you see at the hermitage of San Salvatore

The hermitage is a small rock complex: minimal architecture set against the rock, which uses the rock face as a wall. Inside are preserved frescoes from the 17th century, and in the adjacent rooms an educational space dedicated to the nature reserve has been set up, with materials on the flora and fauna of the Navegna and Cervia mountains. Opening is not continuous: the hermitage can be visited inside on the days of accompanied hikes or when the volunteers are present. If you get there on your own on a weekday, allow for finding it closed and enjoy the place from outside, which is worth the walk anyway. The position is the real work of art: a shelf of rock hanging over the water, with the silence broken only by the wind and the ravens.

The history of Antuni from the year 1000

The story of Antuni is that of half of Apennine Italy, told however in an unusually compact form, because here modern growth did not cover the earlier phases. The village stopped, and so it can be read.

Castrum Antoni and the incastellamento

The medieval core was born at the beginning of the 11th century, within the great phenomenon of incastellamento that between the 10th and the 11th century led populations scattered in the countryside to concentrate on fortified heights. The reasons are two and must be kept together: defense from raids, Saracen and otherwise, and the lordly control of the territory and its strategic passages. Antuni is born exactly on a passage of this type, the bottleneck between the Abruzzo area and the Rieti basin. The place name Castrum Antoni is tied to the personal name Antonio. Historians also place in the vicinity the ancient Sabine and later Roman settlement of Thora, whose precise location however remains debated and shouldn't be passed off as certain.

1092, the Abbey of Farfa and the Guidoneschi

The first documentary mention of the Castrum Antoni dates to 1092, when historical and ecclesiastical sources record the donation of some holdings of the Lombard Guidoneschi family to the Abbey of Farfa. It's a passage that says a lot: in the 11th century Farfa was one of the landholding powers of central Italy, an imperial abbey with an estate stretching from the Sabina to the Marsica, and seeing Antuni appear in its register means seeing it enter written history. Whoever wants to understand the Farfa context fully would do well to dedicate a day to the abbey itself and its monumental archive, which is the reason we know the date of 1092 today.

The feudal lords of Antuni between the 1500s and the 1700s

Between the 16th and the 18th century the fief passes from hand to hand several times, following the geography of the great baronial families of the Papal State: Brancaleoni, Cesarini, Mattei, Lante della Rovere, Gentili. These are not just any names. The Mattei are the Roman family that left in the city an entire block of palaces. The Lante della Rovere are tied to one of the most famous late Renaissance villas in Lazio. The Cesarini belong to the patriciate that for centuries interwove cardinals and condottieri. For a ridge village like Antuni these changes meant little in daily life: the tax collector changed, not the bread. But they explain why on top of a mountain in the Rieti area a noble residence arose of a size out of proportion to the village.

The Del Drago and the principality of 1832

The decisive step for the present look of the village takes place in the 19th century. On June 19, 1832 Pope Gregory XVI raises the fief to a principality, which then passes to the Del Drago, a family of Viterbo origin. It is in this phase that the baronial palace takes on the role and in large part the physiognomy with which we see it today, and that the name Del Drago is forever welded to that of Antuni. The public acquisition of the complex and the start of the restorations belong instead to the 1990s, when the village comes into the orbit of the Municipality of Castel di Tora and the very long season of building sites begins.

Lake Turano and the end of Antuni's old world

There is a date that divides the history of this mountain in two, and it is not a war date: it is 1939, the year Lake Turano comes into operation.

The dam and the Turano reservoir

The dam was built in the Posticciola area and generated an artificial reservoir about 10 kilometers long, with a perimeter of a good 30 or so kilometers and a level around 536 meters. The purpose was twofold: to produce hydroelectric energy and to prevent the floods of the Turano river from inundating the Rieti plain, which is land of ancient reclamation. The system doesn't work alone: the Turano basin communicates with that of Lake Salto through an underground tunnel of about 9 kilometers, and the waters of the two reservoirs feed the Cotilia power plant, in the territory of Cittaducale, and are then returned to the Velino river. It's one of the most imposing hydroelectric works in Lazio, today managed by Enel Green Power, and it should be looked at for what it is: an industrial landscape that after 80 years has become simply landscape.

How the lake changed the geography of Antuni

Before 1939 Antuni overlooked a gorge: the river flowed below, cultivated fields climbed the slopes, the valley floor was the community's road and its farming resource. After 1939 the valley floor no longer exists. The mountain finds itself surrounded by water on almost every side, connected to the mainland by a thin strip. The view has become spectacular and life has become impossible: submerging the valley floor meant submerging the vegetable gardens, the mills, the paths, the trading points. The photographs everyone takes today from the bridge exist because a community was deprived of its economic base. This is the essential point: the marvelous panorama and the abandonment of the village are not two separate facts, they are the same fact seen from two angles.

The war, the bombing and the abandonment of Antuni

The final blow comes with the Second World War. An air raid hit squarely, by mistake, the medieval urban core, causing very serious damage to the houses and structures of the village. The military target of the area was the valley floor infrastructure, the bridge and the dam. The bombs, dropped from high altitude with the aiming systems of the time, went where they went. It's not an isolated case: the central Apennines are full of towns hit by approximation in the spring and summer of 1944, and civilians paid the bill.

The depopulation of Antuni in the 1950s

The village didn't empty in a day. Those who had stayed tried to return among the rubble, but without cultivable valley floor, without connections, without running water and without work the game was lost from the start. In the 1950s the depopulation became total: the last family left the mountain and Antuni ceased to be a town. From then on four decades of pure abandonment, with roofs giving way one after another, brambles climbing the mule tracks and the stone going back to being stone. Whoever speaks today of a ghost town is thinking of a stage set: the reality is that this is a piece of the great Apennine exodus of the postwar period, the same that emptied hundreds of villages across Lazio, Abruzzo and Molise.

The recovery of Antuni: what has been restored

The change of course comes in the 1990s, with the village coming into public hands and the start of works. Since then portions of the ancient walls have been consolidated, the baronial palace has been recovered, some historic buildings have been made safe and internal paths reopened. Today the village is visited from outside the buildings and the palace is used for cultural activities. The wells, the open spaces, the terraces and the road layout remain perfectly recognizable, to which has been added the labyrinth on the summit. The overall picture is that of a very long building site done in stages, typical of recoveries funded by successive programs: something is finished, something is stalled, something is waiting. Whoever climbs to Antuni expecting a tidy and fully equipped site will be thrown off. Whoever climbs knowing they are entering a recovery in progress will find one of the most intense places in northern Lazio.

The Monte Navegna and Monte Cervia Nature Reserve around Antuni

Antuni is not an isolated point: it is a fragment within a regional protected area established in 1988 and regulated by the Lazio regional laws number 29 of 1997 and number 28 of 1999. The reserve covers 3,563 hectares and involves nine municipalities of the province of Rieti: Ascrea, Castel di Tora, Collalto Sabino, Collegiove, Marcetelli, Nespolo, Paganico Sabino, Rocca Sinibalda and Varco Sabino. The territory spreads between the two great artificial reservoirs, the Turano and the Salto, on the rises of the Carseolani mountains. The main peaks are Monte Navegna, which reaches 1,507 meters, Monte Cervia with 1,438 meters and the Filone with 1,328.

Woods and flora of the reserve above Antuni

Forest formations cover more than 70 percent of the protected territory. The dominant species is the Turkey oak, accompanied by the manna ash, the hop hornbeam and a set of mixed broadleaves. As you climb, beech woods appear, which on the cool slopes of Navegna form mature, shady forests. Among the botanical highlights are the dry grasslands rich in wild orchids, a habitat that European legislation classifies as a priority. Whoever climbs to Antuni in April and May, if they raise their eyes from the village toward the surrounding slopes, walks through one of the most remarkable blooms of the Rieti area almost without noticing.

The fauna around Antuni

The reserve is home to the Apennine wolf, the red deer, the wild boar and a community of bats counting 14 different species, a number that by itself tells the environmental quality of these gorges and caves. Among the birds, the golden eagle, the peregrine falcon and several species of woodpeckers are reported. Among the amphibians appears the Apennine salamandrina, an Italian endemic tied to clean waterways. Don't expect close encounters during a Sunday walk: large fauna is observed at dawn and dusk, and more than seeing it you read it in the tracks. But knowing what lives around the mountain changes how you look at the woods.

Contacts and information for the reserve

The seat of the body is at Varco Sabino, via Martin Luther King 1, phone 0765 790002, email address info@navegnacervia.it. It is the right reference to ask about the state of the trails, any temporary closures and the calendar of environmental education activities. A practical tip worth gold: a phone call before leaving, particularly out of season, avoids 90 percent of the outings that go wrong.

Castel di Tora, the town across from Antuni

You can't understand Antuni without the town that faces it, and with which it shared nine centuries of events. Castel di Tora has a little under 300 inhabitants and is among the most beautiful villages in Italy. Its first documented name is Castrum Vetus de Ophiano, attested in 1035. The present name dates to 1864, when the reference to ancient Tora replaced the old place name to solve the problem of duplicate names in the newborn Kingdom of Italy. Tradition ties that name to the martyrdom of Saint Anatolia, placed in 251, and the patron saint is celebrated on the second Sunday of July with a procession and fireworks. In the village you can see the 15th century pentagonal tower, remnant of the castle, the Baroque parish church and the Triton fountain of 1898, which is the most photographed subject of the town after the lake. In recent years archaeological investigations have brought to light a necropolis of the imperial age in the area around the town, concrete evidence of a Roman presence in the valley. The town has also launched a project for a widespread museum that aims to tell local art and traditions in the very spaces of the village.

Why it's worth visiting Antuni and Castel di Tora on the same day

Because they are two halves of the same story. Castrum Antoni and Castelvecchio were born in the same span of years, for the same reasons, guarding the same gorge. One held out, the other did not. Walking among the inhabited houses of Castel di Tora after going around the roofless walls of Antuni is the most effective exercise I know for understanding what the word depopulation materially means. And the mutual view does the rest: from the ghost village you look at the living town, from the living town you look at the ghost village.

A curiosity about Antuni - ghost town (RI)

The least predictable curiosity concerns the documentary birth date of the village, 1092, and the name that appears beside Antuni's in that document: the Guidoneschi, a family of Lombard stock who dominated this portion of the valley and who chose to cede their holdings to the Abbey of Farfa. Behind an apparently devout act of donation there is a very lucid calculation. In the 11th century entrusting yourself to a great imperial monastery meant putting your lands under a legal and military protection that no local lord could guarantee, obtaining in exchange the management of the property and a recognized rank. Farfa, for its part, was thus building a territorial network that from the Sabina reached the Abruzzo borders, and Antuni became a control node on a strategic pass.

There is a second layer, even more curious, concerning the very long duration of this setup. The castle born for reasons of road control keeps the same function for eight centuries, changing master about 10 times without changing role, until within barely five years, between the end of the 1930s and the mid-1940s, two events wipe it out: first the water that covers the valley, then the bombs that hit the houses. 900 years of slow history and five years to finish. Told like this it seems a parable written at a desk, and instead it is the exact chronicle of what happened on this mountain. At Antuni it pays to start from this asymmetry, because it is the key to looking at the ruins without sentimentality: it was not time that consumed the village, it was modernity, in two close blows.

Something nobody tells you about Antuni - ghost town (RI)

Nobody will tell you that the main problem of Antuni, for 900 years, was water. It seems a paradox in front of a village surrounded by a lake, and it is instead the physical reason this settlement never became large. The mountain is limestone rock: rainwater enters and disappears in depth, without forming springs on the summit. A ridge castrum could count only on roof collection, channeled into dug and plastered cisterns, and on what could be brought up on muleback from the valley floor. This constraint determined everything: how many families could live up there, how many animals could be kept, how long a siege could be withstood, what could be grown on the terraces. The wells you walk past absentmindedly looking for a spot for your photograph are the most important infrastructure this village ever had.

The second thing almost nobody will tell you concerns access. The dirt track that climbs to the village today is comfortable and recent. The historic route is the mule track, steeper and narrower, calibrated on the pace of a loaded animal. Whoever walks the mule track understands in 10 minutes why life up here was unsustainable without a productive valley floor: every sack of grain, every bundle of firewood, every amphora of oil made that climb on someone's shoulders or on some animal's back, every day, for 900 years. And here I come to a firm opinion: the current rhetoric about abandoned villages to be repopulated systematically ignores these material constraints. Antuni was not abandoned out of fashion or disaffection, it was abandoned because after 1939 and after the bombs the numbers no longer added up. An honest recovery of this place is the cultural and landscape one that has been done, not the fairy tale of the inhabitants' return.

The advice I give you for visiting Antuni - ghost town (RI)

The advice is just one and concerns the hour. Go to Antuni in the late afternoon, and plan the climb so as to be on the summit in the last hour and a half of light. There are three concrete reasons, not aesthetic ones. The first is temperature: the dirt track faces south and in high summer between noon and four is an oven, with no fountains along the route. The second is the light on the lake: in the morning the sun comes into your eyes from the water side and flattens the landscape, while in the late afternoon it lights the slope from behind your shoulders and brings out the true colors, the dark green of the slopes, the opaque turquoise of the reservoir, the ocher of the stone. The third is solitude: the Sunday groups climb in the morning and by mid-afternoon the summit empties.

To this I add three operating rules. First: calculate the return with a margin and bring a headlamp, because coming down in the dark on gravel without light is the classic way to get hurt two steps from the car. Second: if you also want the hermitage of San Salvatore, don't do it in the late afternoon, but give it a dedicated morning, because the final stretch is not tackled with the light fading. Third: phone beforehand, the reserve or the association that handles the visits, to know if there are closed sectors. And a piece of advice that counts as personal opinion: avoid Ferragosto and the spring long weekends. Antuni is a place that speaks in a low voice, and with 50 people on top you hear nothing. If you have only one chance, choose a Thursday in October.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

Everybody knows Lake Turano is artificial. Almost nobody cites the fact that it is not a standalone lake, but a piece of an integrated hydroelectric system that links two basins through the mountain. The Turano communicates with Lake Salto by an underground tunnel about 9 kilometers long, dug in the rock of the mountains that separate the two valleys. The waters of the two reservoirs converge toward the Cotilia power plant, in the territory of Cittaducale, and from there are returned to the Velino river. It means that the level of the stretch of water you photograph from Antuni doesn't depend only on the rains of this valley, but on operating decisions concerning a larger system, today managed by Enel Green Power.

From this follows a fact that visitors discover on the spot with a certain astonishment: the lake changes level noticeably over the course of the year. In periods of full reservoir the water laps the vegetation and the Antuni mountain really looks like an island. In low periods a pale, stony band of shore emerges, and traces of the old valley floor resurface, low walls, terraces, the outline of a road. It's not a malfunction and not drought in the strict sense: it is the normal operation of a hydroelectric basin and flood control. Whoever arrives in April and whoever arrives in October sees two different landscapes, and the second purpose of the work, that is preventing the floods of the Turano from inundating the Rieti plain, explains a good part of those swings. One more observation: the most dramatic photos of Antuni are taken with the lake low, because the mountain gains verticality, while the most elegant are taken with the lake full, because the waterline cuts the base of the cone cleanly.

The right photo to take at Antuni - ghost town (RI)

The photograph everyone takes home is the one from the bridge on the provincial road, with the cone of the mountain in the center and the silhouette of the palace on top. It's correct, it works, and you take it in 30 seconds without climbing a meter. It is also the least interesting, because it flattens the relief against the backdrop of the mountains. The right photo is another, and requires getting to the top. Go to the ramparts toward the lake side, in the stretch where the wall and the small tower form a foreground, and build the frame on three levels: the pale stone of the walls at the bottom, the sheet of water that winds between the slopes in the middle, the profile of Castel di Tora with its tower on the opposite shore as the vanishing point. This way the image tells a relationship instead of portraying an object, and the relationship between the dead village and the living town is the real subject of Antuni.

A few technical notes. The right time is the second half of the afternoon, when the light comes high over the shoulder and not in your face. Summer noon here is unusable, because it burns the stone and kills the green. A medium focal length, around 35 millimeters equivalent, renders the relationship between wall and landscape better than a pushed wide angle, which moves the lake away and makes everything small. If you have a polarizer, use it: the surface of the basin gains saturation and you can see the bottom along the shore. With a phone, lock the exposure on the stone and not on the water, otherwise the walls turn into a black blotch. Two prohibitions, instead, are worth more than any advice: don't climb on the walls and don't lean out beyond the edge of the slope to widen the frame. The ramparts are ruins, the edge of the mountain drops to the lake with no safety net and no photograph is worth a broken ankle an hour's walk from the road. Whoever brings a drone should first check the rules in force and any limitations of the protected area: here you are inside a regional nature reserve, not in a parking lot.

Some important events that happened here in history

The first event is that of 1092, the donation of the Guidoneschi holdings to the Abbey of Farfa, which brings the name of Castrum Antoni into a written document for the first time. It is the official birth certificate of the village and the moment this mountain enters the power network that governed the medieval Sabina.

The second is June 19, 1832, when Pope Gregory XVI raises the fief to a principality. In a pre-unification Italy in which titles were worth as much as lands, the promotion of a ridge castle to a principality says the place mattered, and prepares the passage to the Del Drago, the Viterbo family that will give its name to the palace and to the very image of Antuni.

The third is 1939, the year the Turano reservoir comes into operation with the dam built in the Posticciola area. It's not a local fact: it is the entrance of the great 20th century hydroelectric infrastructure into an Apennine valley, with everything that comes with it. A cultivated valley floor disappears under the water, a gorge becomes a lake 10 kilometers long, a castle becomes a peninsula.

The fourth is the air raid of the Second World War, which hit by mistake the medieval core instead of the military target on the valley floor and caused very serious damage. From then on the story of Antuni is a story of departures: in the 1950s the village is completely empty and stays so for four decades.

The fifth event is the least dramatic and the most decisive for those of us who can climb up there today: the return of the village to public hands in the 1990s and the opening of the restoration sites, which consolidated the walls, recovered the palace and reopened the paths. Without those works Antuni would today be a heap of stones covered in brambles, and this guide would have nothing to tell.

The sixth I put last because it is of a different nature and always surprises: in 2015, on the summit of the mountain, the labyrinth conceived by Renata Garutti was inaugurated, a contemporary art intervention inside an abandoned medieval village. I find it is the only recent event in the history of Antuni in which someone has added something instead of subtracting.

Who has passed through Antuni - ghost town (RI)

The list of figures linked to this mountain is not made of emperors and visiting popes, and it would be dishonest to build one. It is made instead of families, registers, titles, and in the last 70 years of film cameras.

Let's start with the owners, because they are people Italian history knows well. The Guidoneschi, Lombard lords of the valley, are the first names that appear next to Antuni in 1092. After them the fief passes through the hands of the Brancaleoni and then, between the 1500s and the 1700s, those of the Cesarini, the Mattei, the Lante della Rovere and the Gentili: the same houses that in the same period fill Rome and Lazio with palaces, family chapels and villas. The anonymous monk who in the Abbey of Farfa recorded the 11th century donation deserves a mention more than many nobles: without that line of ink we wouldn't know when Antuni was born.

In 1832 a pope enters the scene, and this is the highest institutional presence in the village's history: Gregory XVI, who on June 19 of that year raises the fief to a principality. Soon after come the Del Drago, a family of Viterbo origin, whose name remains attached to the palace that still closes the summit of the mountain today.

Then there is the cinema, which noticed Antuni early. In 1954 the Swiss director Enrico Pratt shot the film Il cielo è vicino there, bringing a crew to a mountain that in those years was emptying for good: one of the few moving testimonies of the village before total abandonment. 60 years later, in 2015, Palazzo Del Drago went back to serving as a set for the film Darkside Witches. Between the two titles runs the whole arc of the place: in the first Antuni is still a real town, in the second it has become a scenario.

Finally, and it's not a joke, through Antuni have passed the workers of the hydroelectric companies of the 1930s, the evacuees and soldiers of the 1940s, the restorers and administrators of the 1990s, and the thousands of hikers who climb on Sunday mornings today. A ghost village is not a place where nobody passes: it is a place where nobody stays.

When to go to Antuni

The best season, without debate, is the one from mid-September to mid-November. The heat is gone, the Turkey oak and beech woods of the reserve turn yellow and red, the afternoon light is low and warm, and the lake in this period gives its best. Spring, from April to early June, is the second choice and has an advantage of its own: the dry grasslands of the slopes bloom with wild orchids and the green is still tender. Summer is the most crowded season and the least suited to walking: the dirt track has no shade, water can't be found along the route and at noon the heat on the stone is serious. If you go in July or August, climb before 9 in the morning or after 5 in the afternoon.

Winter is for those who know the mountains. The days are short, the surface can be muddy or icy in the shaded stretches, the provincial access road is sometimes dirty with debris. On the other hand, on a clear January day, with the lake still and nobody around, Antuni is one of the most beautiful places in Lazio. But you need equipment, you need to start early and you need to come back in daylight.

Antuni with children

It can be done, with some care. The climb to the village is short and regular and a child from age six up handles it without problems. The idea of the abandoned castle, then, works better than any museum. There are two points of attention. The first is the ruins: you have to explain beforehand, not during, that you don't go inside the houses, that you don't climb on the walls and that you don't climb over barriers. The second is the edge of the mountain, which toward the lake drops steeply with no continuous protection: on the summit children should be kept within reach. The labyrinth is the part that wins them over, because it's the only thing up there you can walk through instead of just looking at. Continuing toward the hermitage of San Salvatore, instead, I advise against with the youngest: the path becomes narrow and in a few spots the drop is close. Bring water and a snack, because on the mountain there is no refreshment point.

Accessibility of Antuni

It must be said bluntly: Antuni is not a wheelchair accessible site and it isn't with a stroller either. The link between the valley floor and the village is a sloping dirt track with a gravelly surface, and inside the core the paths run on irregular historic paving, steps and uneven stretches. Even those with mild mobility difficulties or balance problems should assess realistically, especially for the descent. Whoever doesn't feel up to climbing still has a decent alternative that is anything but a consolation prize: the viewpoint on the bridge and the lake shores on the Castel di Tora side give the overall view of the mountain, which is after all the image Antuni is famous for. For updated information on the state of the paths it's best to contact the nature reserve office directly.

How much it costs to visit Antuni

The village is an open-air site with free access: there is no entrance ticket. The real expenses are fuel or the motorway toll to get there and any participation fee for the accompanied hikes, which are organized by local associations and whose cost should be asked directly of whoever offers them. Whoever wants to visit the inside of the hermitage of San Salvatore and the reserve's educational space will do well to join a guided visit, because opening is not continuous. Then count lunch in one of the places in Castel di Tora, which is a recommended investment, and not much else. Antuni is one of the cheapest outings you can make in a day from Rome.

What to see around Antuni

The Turano valley lends itself to a full day and a full weekend. The first ring is the lake itself: the provincial road follows its whole length and lets you see the basin from different angles, with the villages overlooking the water on both shores. A little further north opens the parallel valley of Lake Salto, the second reservoir of the system, near which stands the fortress of Petrella Salto, a place tied to the story of Beatrice Cenci, one of the most famous trials of Rome in the late 1500s. Toward Rieti you meet the castle of Rocca Sinibalda and the former abbey of San Salvatore Maggiore in the territory of Concerviano.

Widening the radius, Rieti deserves half a day for the medieval district, the Roman underground and the hinge position of its basin. From there you enter the Holy Valley of Rieti and the Franciscan sanctuaries, starting with Poggio Bustone and the sanctuary of Greccio, where the nativity scene tradition was born. On the Sabine side, the Abbey of Farfa closes the historical circle opened by the document of 1092. Whoever has acquired a taste for emptied villages can build a themed itinerary with Rocchettine in the Sabina, Celleno in the Viterbo area, Monterano in the Tolfa mountains and the Roman Galeria Antica at the gates of the capital: four abandonments for four different reasons, which lined up teach more than a textbook.

The cuisine of the Turano valley

You eat well and you eat cheap, with a mountain cuisine that has no intention of being light. The two signature dishes of Castel di Tora are the polentone, which is corn polenta dressed in the local version and which gives its name to a historic festival of the town, and the strigliozzi, a handmade pasta of just water and flour, rolled and cut by hand, a close relative of the Abruzzo spaghetti alla chitarra. Around them are the things you expect from this Apennine belt: legumes, mushrooms and chestnuts in autumn, mutton, sheep cheeses, and lake fish in the trattorias overlooking the water. The places in the village are very few, which in high season means just one thing: you book. Climbing Antuni at 11 and showing up at the table at 13:30 without having called is the classic way to end up eating a sandwich in the car.

Frequently asked questions about Antuni, ghost town (RI)

Where is Antuni and how do you get there?

Antuni is in the middle Turano valley, on the Lazio side of the Carseolani mountains, straddling the Rieti area and the Abruzzo border. The Antuni mountain was an isolated rise that before 1939 overlooked a narrow, deep gorge, now submerged by Lake Turano, which has made it almost an island.

How much does it cost to visit Antuni?

Visiting Antuni costs nothing, because the village is an open-air site with free access, with no entrance ticket. The real expenses are fuel or the motorway toll to get there and any participation fee for the accompanied hikes organized by local associations.

How much time do you need to visit Antuni?

The village of Antuni alone, climb and descent included, takes about an hour and a half. Adding the visit to the hermitage of San Salvatore, a little higher up, brings it to about three hours of walking overall.

Why is Antuni a ghost town?

Antuni is a ghost town because it was abandoned after an air raid of the Second World War that hit the medieval urban core by mistake, causing very serious damage to the houses. Already before, in 1939, the coming into operation of Lake Turano had submerged the gorge below and turned the mountain into an island.

Is Antuni accessible by wheelchair or with a stroller?

Antuni is not a wheelchair accessible site and it isn't with a stroller either, because the link between the valley floor and the village is a sloping dirt track with a gravelly surface. Inside the core the paths run on irregular historic paving, with steps and uneven stretches.

Is Antuni suitable for a visit with children?

Antuni can be visited with children with some care: the climb to the village is short and regular and a child from age six up handles it without problems, while the idea of the abandoned castle works better than any museum. The rules about the ruins need to be explained beforehand: you don't go inside and you don't climb on the walls.

When is the best time to visit Antuni?

The best time to visit Antuni runs from mid-September to mid-November, when the heat is gone, the Turkey oak and beech woods of the reserve turn yellow and red and the afternoon light is low and warm. Spring, from April to early June, is the second choice, with the grasslands blooming with wild orchids.

What do you eat near Antuni?

Near Antuni, in the Turano valley, you eat well and cheap with a mountain cuisine: in Castel di Tora, the town across from the mountain, the signature dishes are the polentone, corn polenta dressed in the local version, and the strigliozzi, a handmade pasta of just water and flour, a close relative of spaghetti alla chitarra.

Antuni for those coming from outside Italy

The Turano valley is one of the day trips from Rome that foreign visitors almost never find in the standard circuits, and for exactly that reason it works: an hour's drive, an abandoned village on a lake, an inhabited medieval town, a real lunch. Whoever organizes the trip in English, or accompanies guests who don't speak Italian, finds the English-language guides on ItalyPlanner, in particular the section dedicated to Lazio and the one on day trips. For organized groups, cultural associations and companies that want a day in the Rieti area with a professional guide, the reference is TourLeaderPro, which handles tour guiding and group trip organization all over Italy. One clarification: for a large group Antuni has to be managed, because parking is limited, the path is single and the summit cannot hold 50 people at once without losing all meaning.

Quick questions about Antuni - ghost town (RI)

How much does it cost to enter Antuni?

Nothing. Antuni is an open-air site with free access, with no ticket office and no turnstiles. You pay only any fee for the accompanied hikes, which should be asked of whoever organizes them.

How long does the visit to Antuni take?

The village alone, climb and descent included, takes about an hour and a half. Adding the hermitage of San Salvatore brings it to about three hours of walking overall with stops.

How far do you walk to reach Antuni?

The elevation gain from the valley floor to the village is about 130 meters on a dirt road. For the hermitage another 140 are added on a mountain trail.

Can you drive all the way up to Antuni?

No. Cars are left below, at the Castel di Tora turnoff, and the last stretch is done on foot. This is precisely the reason the village has been preserved as a silent place.

Is Antuni dangerous?

The route is not, the buildings are. They are ruins: you don't enter the structures, you don't climb on walls, you don't climb over barriers and nets. On the summit the slope drops steeply toward the lake with no continuous protection.

Can you go inside the houses of Antuni?

No. The village is visited from outside the buildings, along the marked paths. The unsafe portions are off limits and the prohibitions must be respected to the letter.

What shoes do you need to climb to Antuni?

Hiking shoes or at least with a lugged sole. The surface is gravelly and slippery on the descent. For the stretch toward the hermitage technical footwear is indispensable.

Can you visit Antuni without a guide?

Yes, the site is freely accessible. With a guide, though, you get into the hermitage of San Salvatore and the reserve's educational space, which otherwise are often found closed.

Who organizes the guided visits to Antuni?

The hikes to the village and the hermitage are run by the association Camminando con, with departures on Sundays at 10:00 from June to September, meeting point at the Castel di Tora turnoff and registration at the number 389 6860142.

How far is Antuni from Rome?

A little over an hour by car, taking the A24 to Carsoli and then Provincial Road 34 Turanense along the lake.

Can you get to Antuni by public transport?

With difficulty. The scheduled runs in the Turano valley are few and set on the needs of residents, and anyway they don't reach the start of the trail. For Antuni you need a car or an organized hike.

Why was Antuni abandoned?

Because of two close blows: the creation of the artificial lake in 1939, which submerged the productive valley floor, and the air raid of the Second World War, which hit the medieval core by mistake. In the 1950s the village was completely empty.

How many inhabitants does Antuni have today?

None. Antuni is an uninhabited hamlet of the municipality of Castel di Tora, and that is why people speak of a ghost village or town.

What is the Del Drago Palace?

It is the baronial palace that occupies the summit of the mountain, tied to the Viterbo family of the Del Drago, who took over after the fief was raised to a principality in 1832. It has been restored and today hosts cultural initiatives.

What is the labyrinth of Monte Antuni?

A symbolic labyrinth built on the summit and inaugurated in 2015, designed by the artist Renata Garutti. You walk it on foot and you can't get lost: the path is single.

How do you reach the hermitage of San Salvatore from Antuni?

Continuing past the village for a little over a kilometer, with a further 140 meters of elevation gain on a mountain trail. The final stretch is narrow and in a few spots close to the drop.

Is the hermitage of San Salvatore always open?

No, opening is not continuous. The interior, with the 17th century frescoes and the reserve's educational space, can be visited on the days of accompanied hikes or when the volunteers are present.

Is Antuni suitable for children?

The village yes, from age six up, explaining beforehand the rules about the ruins and keeping them within reach near the edge. Continuing toward the hermitage is not recommended with the youngest.

Is Antuni wheelchair accessible?

No. The link is a sloping dirt track and the internal paths run on irregular paving and steps. Whoever cannot climb still finds the overall view from the bridge and the lake shores.

Can you bring dogs to Antuni?

You are inside a regional nature reserve: dogs must be kept on a leash and it's worth checking the updated rules with the managing body before leaving.

Is there drinking water along the trail to Antuni?

Along the climb there is none. In summer bring at least a liter and a half per person.

What is the best season to visit Antuni?

Autumn, between mid-September and mid-November, for the color of the woods and the low light. Spring is good too for the blooms. Summer is the hottest and most crowded season.

What is the difference between Antuni and Castel di Tora?

They are two villages born in the same period guarding the same gorge. Castel di Tora is the inhabited town on the lake shore, listed among the most beautiful villages in Italy. Antuni is its uninhabited hamlet on the summit of the mountain opposite.

Can you use drones at Antuni?

This needs to be checked beforehand. The area is a regional nature reserve and to the general rules on unmanned aircraft are added any rules of the managing body.

Where do you park to climb to Antuni?

In the pull-offs along the provincial road at the Castel di Tora turnoff, near the bridge. In summer they fill up by mid-morning, so it's best to arrive early or in the late afternoon.

Can Antuni be combined with other visits in a day?

Easily. The same day fits the tour of the lake, the village of Castel di Tora and lunch. With a bit more time you reach Lake Salto, Rocca Sinibalda or toward Rieti and the Holy Valley.

The verdict on Antuni

On this mountain the result is always the same: you climb chatting and come down in silence. Antuni is not a spectacular place in the sense in which a great abbey or an imperial villa is. It is a place that explains. In 20 minutes of walking and an hour of visiting you see with your own eyes what happens to a community when you take away the material base it lives on, and you also see that the most admired landscape of this valley was born from the same act that emptied the village. If I had to give one piece of advice to someone who has never been, it would be this: don't treat it as a photo stop between two pauses at the lake. Climb calmly, stay an hour longer than you had planned, look at the wells and the terraces before the panorama, and respect the prohibitions where you find them, because those walls have 80 years of abandonment in their bones. Then go down to Castel di Tora and eat the strigliozzi looking at the mountain from below. It is at that moment, not at the top, that Antuni is really understood.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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