Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

Castelnuovo di Farfa can be reached in a little over an hour from Rome: the town hall and municipal offices occupy Palazzo Perelli, on Viale Regina Margherita, in the municipality in the province of Rieti with postal code 02031 and telephone area code 0765. The town stands at 358 meters above sea level on a hill between the Farfa River and the Riana stream, has a little over a thousand inhabitants and covers 8.84 square kilometers. The main reason to climb up here is the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina, opened in 2001 inside Palazzo Perelli itself: the full ticket costs €6, the reduced one €3, school groups €2.50, and regular opening covers weekends and holidays from 10 to 18, while on weekdays you enter by appointment for groups (phone 0765 36370, mobile 347 1788288, email museoliosabina@gmail.com). The hours change with the season and with events: a phone call before getting in the car avoids a closed door. By car you leave the A1 at Fiano Romano and continue on the Salaria to the turnoff for the Mirtense, provincial road 42, which links Poggio Mirteto to Montopoli and from which you climb to the village. By train you reach Poggio Mirteto Scalo on the regional line that goes up the Tiber valley, and from there you continue with the Cotral bus service or by taxi.

The village is part of the system of towns of the Rieti Sabina that revolve around Farfa Abbey, barely two kilometers away as the crow flies.

Where Castelnuovo di Farfa is and how you really get there

Geography explains the town better than any description. Castelnuovo di Farfa occupies an isolated hill that drops steeply toward the valley floor on the north and slopes gently down to the southwest: it's on that softer side, along present-day Via Roma, that the settlement stretched outside the walls in modern centuries. From above, the eye runs toward Mompeo and Casaprota, with the Sabine Mountains as a backdrop closing the horizon to the north. To the east you see Frasso Sabino and Poggio Nativo, to the south the profile of Fara in Sabina. Whoever arrives toward evening finds the hill backlit and understands in an instant why the monks of Farfa wanted to control this height.

By car to Castelnuovo di Farfa

The most convenient route from Rome takes the A1 motorway toward Florence, exit Fiano Romano, then the Salaria toward Rieti and a turn onto provincial road 42 called the Mirtense, the axis that links Poggio Mirteto to Montopoli di Sabina and serves the whole crown of villages. Those who prefer to avoid the toll can take the Salaria from the Grande Raccordo Anulare and head up at an easy pace: you lose a few minutes and gain the landscape of terraced olive groves. Parking is along Via Roma and in the areas at the edges of the old town: inside the medieval castle the streets are narrow, paved and designed for mules, not for compact cars. Leaving the car outside is not a renunciation, it's the only civilized way to enter.

By train and bus to Castelnuovo di Farfa

The useful station is Poggio Mirteto Scalo, on the regional rail line that goes up from Rome through the Tiber valley toward Orte. From there the link to the village is handled by the regional extra-urban bus service, with runs concentrated at school and work hours: on Sundays and holidays the service thins out considerably, and it's worth checking the runs on the operator's website before planning the day. The verdict is clear: Castelnuovo di Farfa is a town to visit by car or within an organized itinerary, because the real value of the area isn't the single village but the string of villages, and that string is traveled only on wheels.

On foot: the path of the Sabine villages passes through Castelnuovo di Farfa

There's also the slow way. The town is included in the hiking itineraries that link Poggio Mirteto to Farfa Abbey and continue toward the river's valley floor: you walk among olive groves, dry-stone walls and stretches of woods, with elevation changes that are never prohibitive but constant. The stages are covered in half a day each and let you reach the village from below, that is, the way farmers and pilgrims used to arrive. If you have only one day and want to walk, choose the stretch that goes down from the old town toward the church of San Donato and continues toward the river: it's the nature route that the museum itself considers part of its own itinerary.

The village of Castelnuovo di Farfa: the shape of the castle can still be read

The old town is what the textbooks call a foundation castrum: a layout planned on a drawing board, not grown by accumulation. The streets are narrow and paved, the buildings packed against one another, and the perimeter of the ancient walls today is no longer a freestanding wall but the compact alignment of the house fronts, which on the valley side present blind facades reinforced by buttresses. Where the slope increases, the building wall becomes almost vertical: it's the image you catch best from the valley-floor road, looking up at the town.

Porta Castello and Porta Cisterna, the entrances of Castelnuovo di Farfa

There were two entrances to the castle and they are still there. Porta Castello, toward present-day Via Roma, is marked by the tower that protects it and keeps the role of main entrance to the village: it's a gap right up against the road, and its position says that the front to defend was the uphill one. Porta Cisterna instead faces downhill, on the side where the hill drops quickly. The name betrays the function of the place: collecting and keeping water, the daily problem of every hilltop settlement without internal springs. Going in through one and out through the other, in 10 minutes, is the quickest way to understand how tiny and how orderly the medieval castle was.

The nine towers and the civic guards of the castle

The medieval circuit wall had nine towers. In the Renaissance they were manned by civic guards under the orders of a captain, and a resolution of the town council of 1592 records that the town had at least 50 arquebuses and four archibugioni, that is, small pieces of artillery. It's a detail worth more than a page of rhetoric: a village of a few hundred souls kept a small arsenal in its armory, because the Sabina of the late 16th century was a land of borders, bandits and jurisdictional disputes. Today the towers don't read as towers: they have been absorbed into the houses, and anyone strolling has to look for their trace in the most massive corners and in the best-squared blocks.

The 17th-century fountain and Via Roma

Along Via Roma you come across the wall fountain, a 17th-century work built with a central arch and an architectural layout as simple as it is effective: public water, collecting basin, drinking trough. Wall fountains of this type, in the Sabina, marked the point where the community met the road, and were almost always placed outside the walled fronts, where they could serve people and animals without letting anyone into the castle. Around the fountain the modern settlement spread out with 19th- and 20th-century houses: it's the least photogenic part of the town, but describing it helps explain how a castle becomes a municipality.

The Museo dell'Olio della Sabina, the reason to climb up to Castelnuovo di Farfa

Here you find one of the smartest museums in Lazio, and I say that having visited quite a few. The Museo dell'Olio della Sabina opened in 2001 inside Palazzo Perelli, a restored 16th-century building that also houses the municipal offices, and chose a path opposite to that of traditional ethnographic museums: instead of lining up presses and millstones inside display cases, it called on contemporary artists to interpret the civilization of oil and spread the route outside the rooms, inside the village and into the landscape. The concept of the exhibit design is due to Mao Benedetti and Sveva Di Martino. The result is a diffuse museum, which you visit walking, and which ends inside an early medieval archaeological site.

The Sabina didn't choose oil by chance: Galen, the Greek physician active in Rome in the 2nd century, praised Sabine oil as the best of the ancient world, and the museum starts from that reputation to tell 2000 years of farm work.

Palazzo Perelli, home of the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina

Palazzo Perelli is a 16th-century building facing Viale Regina Margherita, recovered through a restoration that freed up the vaulted rooms of the ground floor and basement. The coexistence of town hall and museum isn't a stopgap: it's the choice to keep the museum inside the administrative life of the town instead of isolating it. Whoever enters immediately finds the change of register: ancient stone, controlled light, large-format works. This is where the route begins.

The mythology of oil: Maria Lai, Alik Cavaliere, Hidetoshi Nagasawa

The first rooms are given over to contemporary sculpture. By Maria Lai, the Sardinian artist from Ulassai who died in 2013 and is today among the most studied figures of Italian art of the second half of the 20th century, the museum holds installations made on olive wood, including the one known as the Poet's tree. Maria Lai's work is made of threads, looms, poor materials and illegible writing: applied to the olive, it becomes a discourse on the long time of plants and on the oral memory of farming communities. It's worth stopping in front of these works more than instinct suggests.

Alik Cavaliere, from Milan, one of the great Italian sculptors of the postwar period, is present with the foundry fragments of an unfinished work: a bronze olive tree never completed, displayed in its incompleteness. It's not a display stopgap, it's a statement: the tree as a permanent building site. Hidetoshi Nagasawa, a Japanese artist naturalized Italian, signs a traveling olive tree placed in a cave setting: his research on emptiness, suspension and precarious balance finds in the uprooted olive an exact metaphor for the migration of cultivated plants from the eastern Mediterranean to the west.

The oleophona of Gianandrea Gazzola

The piece that strikes visitors most, though, is another. Gianandrea Gazzola built the oleophona, devices that combine ancient oil containers, olive wood and digital technology to return the sound of oil: the dripping, the decanting, the breathing of the liquid inside the clay pot. Anyone bringing children should discover it right away, because it's the installation that wins them over in 10 seconds. The route also includes works by Ille Strazza. The whole carefully avoids the nostalgic tone that ruins so many museums of farming civilization.

The botany of the Sabine olive and the tool rooms

Past the sculpture section, the museum changes pace and becomes didactic in the high sense of the term. One section is devoted to the botany of the olive and to the cultivars of the Sabina, with the traits that distinguish the local varieties. Another collects the tools of cultivation and milling, with pieces covering a chronological span from the 16th to the 20th century: wooden and metal presses, millstones, jars, measures, pruning tools. They are objects that anyone who has seen a modern oil mill struggles to recognize, and for that very reason the section is useful: it shows how much toil a liter of oil cost before electric power.

The memory room of the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina

The memory room collects the oral testimonies of the farmers of the area, popular images and local songs. It's the part of the museum that ages best, because those voices belong to people who have largely passed away and nobody could record them anymore. Anyone visiting the museum with a group of adults notices that this is where the visit warms up: someone recognizes a tool, someone recognizes a cadence. It's not folklore, it's archive.

The animal-powered oil mill in the village oven

The route then leaves the palace and reaches the old communal oven, where an 18th-century animal-powered oil mill is preserved: the stone millstone was moved by a donkey or a mule that walked in circles for hours. It's a compact setup, designed for a small town, and the fact that it sits inside the former oven tells how the village's collective economy worked, with essential services concentrated in a few rooms of common ownership. Seeing the millstone in its original housing, after seeing the sculptures, closes the circle better than any panel.

San Donato and the garden of the olive trees of the world

The last stop is the most beautiful and the least predictable. A path descends from the old town toward the countryside and arrives at the early medieval church of San Donato, an archaeological site and at the same time an exhibition space, where a garden has been planted that collects olive varieties from the whole Mediterranean basin. The walk is short, the elevation change is modest, and the view over the cultivated valleys is worth the ticket by itself. Practical advice: do it at the end of the visit and not before, in closed shoes, and bring water in summer because there's no continuous shade along the path.

Hours, tickets and guided tours of the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina

Full admission costs €6, reduced €3, school groups €2.50. Regular opening covers weekends and holidays from 10 to 18, with closures on major religious holidays. On weekdays you enter by reservation, in particular for groups of 10 or more people. Guided tours leave at fixed times staggered through the day and may vary on the occasion of events. The museum states that it offers guided tour services, educational activities, audio guide, bookshop and a welcome for visitors with disabilities, and is part of the territorial museum system of the middle Tiber valley. To book: 0765 36370, 347 1788288, museoliosabina@gmail.com. The hours given by official sources don't always match each other: the check call is a must.

The churches of Castelnuovo di Farfa, one by one

Four sacred buildings tell four different moments in the history of the town: the monastic early Middle Ages, the Counter-Reformation, the devotional 17th century and the 18th century of the great reconstructions. They're worth seeing in this order, which is the chronological one and not the geographic one.

The church of San Donato, the original nucleus

San Donato is the oldest church in the territory and the very reason Castelnuovo di Farfa exists. It stands in the countryside, along the nature route that descends toward the river, and keeps frescoed niches. The layout dates to the early Middle Ages, with the ninth century as the most-cited reference. Over time the building was absorbed into a farmhouse and today it has been made visitable, with glass solutions where the walls are missing: you see the stratigraphy instead of imagining it. Inside, the visitor listens to a contemporary chant in Latin built on the chrismal hymn for Holy Thursday attributed to Saint Ephrem the Syrian, the great Syriac poet and theologian of the fourth century. The acoustic effect inside that small, irregular volume is the thing you remember most.

The site has a serious archaeological history. Near the church there was a rustic villa of the Republican era, of which a cryptoporticus remains visible, under modern structures. The investigations conducted by the University of Sheffield brought back to light, inside the nave, the modern-era cemetery. In the adjacent small cloister you can recognize parts of a pagan funerary monument reused in the construction, a completely normal practice in early medieval building. Outside, the excavations identified a stratigraphic sequence running from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages and the remains of two kilns, perhaps datable between the end of the eighth and the ninth century, intended for firing bricks, roof tiles and pantiles and probably also vases and other ceramic objects. A production center, then, not just a place of worship.

The church of San Nicola di Bari, parish church of Castelnuovo di Farfa

The parish church is dedicated to San Nicola di Bari, patron saint of the town, and occupies the highest point of the castle. The first church was erected shortly after the middle of the 16th century, when the new settlement needed a place of worship inside the walls. Having grown old and shabby, it was entirely rebuilt in the decade 1769-1779 on a design by the master builder Antonio Lepri, who could count on the manual help of the castle's inhabitants: free labor from the community, a money contribution from the Simonetti marquises, who financed most of the construction. It's the classic mechanism of village church building in the papal 18th century, and explains why a parish church in a village of a few hundred souls has an architectural dignity higher than expected, with travertine portals and period frescoes.

Inside the church, in 1781, the body of San Vittore, a child martyr, lacking hands and feet, was interred, a mutilation that local tradition connects to the martyrdom. The translations of holy bodies from the Roman catacombs to provincial parishes were a mass phenomenon between the 17th and 18th centuries: a town that obtained a holy body gained prestige, pilgrims and one more feast on the calendar. The chronology of the reconstruction should be kept in mind when you look at the interior: what you see is 18th-century, not medieval, and whoever is looking for the Middle Ages has to go down to San Donato.

The little temple of the Madonna degli Angeli

The story of this building is the most dramatic in the town. It was erected in the jubilee year 1600, when the people of Castelnuovo, having remained immune from an epidemic that had caused carnage in the surrounding area, fulfilled a vow to the Virgin. The construction was entrusted to two master masons, Mastro Plauto and Mastro Giovanni, who built a small round temple with four chapels and an apse, put up in local spongy stone, that is, porous travertine from a nearby quarry. In 1698 the bell tower was added.

Then the disaster. In 1933 the building, by then dilapidated, collapsed: of the old little temple only the wall with the niche holding the image of the Madonna remained unharmed. The complete reconstruction took place in 1939 at the expense of Cavaliere Angelo Salustri Galli, of the family that had inherited the Simonetti palace. What you see today, therefore, is a 20th-century building that keeps the 17th-century devotional core. Put plainly: whoever goes looking for a 17th-century monument will be disappointed, whoever goes to understand how a community keeps a vow alive across three centuries and a collapse will come away satisfied. The feast in honor of the Madonna degli Angeli falls on the first Sunday of August.

The church of Santa Maria outside the walls

Less known and more modest, the church of Santa Maria was erected outside the castle walls in 1577 by a certain Mastro Giovanni, who was paid a fee of 20 scudi. The accounting detail is valuable because it fixes together the date, the builder and the cost of a minor building: documents of this kind, for 16th-century rural construction, are rare. A sum of 20 scudi was modest, consistent with a small construction with no decorative pretensions, of the kind that served the farmers who worked the olive groves outside the gate and didn't climb to the castle for weekday Mass.

The palaces of Castelnuovo di Farfa and the Simonetti family

Palazzo Simonetti, now Salustri Galli

The palace of the Simonetti marquises is the most important civil building in the village, with its Italian gardens, and today is owned by the Salustri Galli family. It comes from a typically Renaissance operation: the fortunes accumulated by the family made it possible to buy and renovate several adjoining buildings, merging them into a single noble palace. It's the way in which, across central Italy, a rising family built its residence inside an already saturated medieval fabric, without having the space for a brand-new building.

Among the Simonetti, Cardinal Giuseppe Simonetti stands out, a fellow townsman: his elevation to the purple in 1766 was celebrated in town with three days of shows, music, gunfire and fireworks. Three days of festivities for a village of a thousand souls are an eloquent measure of what it meant, for a rural community of the Papal State, to have a cardinal from home: it meant protection, recommendations, money for the churches. It's no accident that barely three years later, in 1769, the reconstruction of the parish church began, financed by the Simonetti themselves.

Palazzo Perelli between town hall and museum

Palazzo Perelli is the other civic pole of the village. A restored 16th-century building, it houses the municipal offices and the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina: the same staircase leads to the registry office and to the sculptures of Maria Lai. Whoever arrives midweek for an administrative matter crosses paths with the museum's visitors, and vice versa. It's a coexistence rarely seen in Italy and it works: the museum isn't a foreign body dropped on the town, it's a function of the town hall.

The history of Castelnuovo di Farfa from prehistory to the 20th century

Grotta Scura and the prehistory of the territory of Castelnuovo di Farfa

The territory has been frequented since at least the Neolithic. The most important protohistoric site is the Grotta Scura, at the end of Via Cornazzano, a short distance from the Farfa River. The first finds date to 1987-88, when the Orofino Speleological Group found protohistoric ceramic fragments datable to the Middle Bronze Age, so the 15th and 14th centuries BC. The cavity opens with a narrow entrance and continues into a large chamber carved in the limestone rock, where the material was recovered.

The scholars' description speaks of a long corridor leading from the chamber to a series of small rooms with remains of hearths, animal bones and intact vases: the only materials in certainly primary deposition, that is, found where they were deposited. Some fragments with Apennine decoration made it possible to date the use to the whole duration of the Middle Bronze Age. The cave has an active branch and two fossil branches placed at different levels, reachable through tunnels, and an arm over 200 meters long periodically occupied by water, in which protohistoric and Roman-era ceramic objects, terracotta lamps and coins were found together.

The presence of intact vases in hard-to-reach spaces shows that part of the cavity was reserved for the deposition of offerings, and the traces of hearths attributable to ritual ceremonies point to a use both residential and cultic. The presence of spring water strengthens the cultic reading: in the ancient world, water that comes out of rock is almost always sacred. On this basis the identification of the Grotta Scura with the sanctuary of Mars that Dionysius of Halicarnassus places near Suna, an ancient city of the Aborigines, identified with present-day Toffia, has been put forward. It must be said clearly: it's a modern hypothesis, however fascinating, not an established fact. It remains, however, one of the oldest cave places of worship in all of the Sabina.

The monastic Farfa: San Lorenzo Siro and the donation of Taneldis

In the sixth century the sources place in the area the arrival of San Lorenzo Siro, to whose figure the founding of Farfa Abbey is tied, with evangelizing work in the neighboring territories too. The hub of settlement in the area was the church dedicated to San Donato. With the Lombard settlement the area ended up in the possession of a family of Germanic origin: in 768 the survivor, Taneldis, donated it to the abbey. In this place the monks founded a church dedicated to San Donato, mentioned for the first time in a document of 817, by which the bishop of Arezzo, Giovanni, ceded it to the monastery of Farfa in exchange for other properties. The list of appurtenances cited in the deed, lands, houses, churches, woods, mills, shows the level of organization that had formed around the church: a farming estate, even before a parish.

That church became the catalyzing center of the territory, an element of social aggregation, forerunner of the castrum. It's the model historians call incastellamento: first the church gathers the scattered houses, then the wall closes them in.

Agello, Cavallaria and the Castellum Sancti Donati

In the first decades of the 10th century, a short distance from the church and against the will of the monastery, the castle of Agello was founded, today completely vanished. The response from Farfa was immediate: around the church of San Donato too a fortified, walled settlement arose, the Castellum Sancti Donati, mentioned in a document of 1046 that attests its cession to the nearby monastery. It had a short life and was abandoned after a few decades, in 1104, while the church kept for a long time the role of mother church for the whole area, until the close of the 16th century.

Also in the territory of Castelnuovo, in the 10th century, another fortified settlement arose: Cavallaria, on a height that overlooked the Riana, the place where the weekly market was held and where the palace had been built in which the justice of the abbots of Farfa was administered. Market and court at the same spot: whoever controlled that hill controlled the money and the verdicts of the valley.

The founding of the Castrum Novum of Castelnuovo di Farfa

The founding of the Castrum Novum, that is, of the present town, is late: it happened after 1287 and before 1312. It wasn't the birth of a new community, but a regrouping: the territories of the two castles in the process of being abandoned, Cavallaria and Agello, and the scattered population that gravitated around the early medieval church of Saints Philip and James in Quinza merged into a single fortified settlement on the hill. Hence the name: new castle, as opposed to the old ones.

The new settlement was organized around the church of San Nicola. And here it's worth pausing on a point that hasty guides confuse: the church of San Nicola you see today is not the medieval one, but the 18th-century reconstruction ordered by the commendatory abbot of Farfa Antonio Lante and carried out between 1769 and 1779. In 1456 Castelnuovo already appears cited among the most important castles of the Sabina.

Seven centuries of dispute with Farfa Abbey

The most singular episode in local history begins in 1288 and ends in 1937. The matter in dispute: ownership of the hill on which the castrum stood. According to the castle's inhabitants it belonged to the community, according to the monks to Farfa Abbey. The dispute was resolved neither in the 14th century nor in the following centuries. It dragged on through Farfa's rule, the commendas, the Papal State, the unification of Italy, and was closed only by a royal decree of 1937 in favor of the old village. 650 years of lawsuit: whoever thinks the slowness of Italian justice is a contemporary invention should take the time to reread this story.

Castelnuovo remained in any case always within the territorial lordship of Farfa. In the 15th century, at a moment of political and military instability, it was occupied by some followers of the Orsini. In 1477 the boundary stones, removed by the inhabitants, were put back in place by the commendatory abbot. They are minor episodes only in appearance: moving a boundary stone, in the Middle Ages, was equivalent to falsifying a land registry.

The legend of the three families and the Armenians in the Sabina

The birth of the town is colored by a legend: three families of eastern origin, converted by a Farfa monk named Raniero, are said to have been brought to Italy to populate the new settlement. As a founding story it is unlikely, and it should be classified for what it is, that is, local tradition. But a kernel of historical plausibility exists: the presence of Armenians in the Sabina is attested in the early 14th century, right in the years of the reorganization of settlement carried out by Farfa, and it cannot be excluded that some of them helped bring the castle to life. Distinguishing between documented fact and legend, here, is exactly the historian's job.

Frequently asked questions about Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

Where is Castelnuovo di Farfa and how far is it from Rome?

Castelnuovo di Farfa is in the province of Rieti, in the Sabina, at 358 meters above sea level on a hill between the Farfa River and the Riana stream. The postal code is 02031 and from Rome you get there in a little over an hour by car.

How many inhabitants does Castelnuovo di Farfa have?

Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI) has a little over a thousand inhabitants, with fluctuations between a thousand and a thousand and 50 people in the counts of recent years, over a municipal territory of about 8.8 square kilometers organized around the isolated hill on which the village stands.

Do you need to book to visit the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina?

The Museo dell'Olio della Sabina, inside Palazzo Perelli in Castelnuovo di Farfa, is fully open on weekends and holidays, while on weekdays it operates by reservation with guided tours at fixed times. It's best to call ahead, because arriving on a weekday without having called means risking seeing the town only from outside.

How far is Farfa Abbey from Castelnuovo di Farfa?

Farfa Abbey, one of the great monasteries of Europe, founded between 560 and 570, is barely two kilometers as the crow flies from Castelnuovo di Farfa, amid the greenery of the valley below the town, and the two stops can be comfortably visited on the same day.

Is the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina suitable for children?

The Museo dell'Olio della Sabina in Castelnuovo di Farfa works well with children from age six up: the sound oleophona, the animal-powered oil mill and the garden of the olive trees of the world, where you can touch different leaves, make the visit concrete. The museum states educational activities and reduced rates for school groups, set at €2.50.

How long does it take to visit Castelnuovo di Farfa?

The village of Castelnuovo di Farfa can be visited in half a day, oil museum included, best paired with a call ahead and a willingness to walk down to the church of San Donato, just outside the center. A hurried visit of 40 minutes, on the other hand, returns the image of an ordinary village.

What do you eat in Castelnuovo di Farfa?

In Castelnuovo di Farfa the cooking is Sabine: hand-rolled egg pasta, fregnacce with persa, pecorino, sausages, legumes, lamb and of course the extra virgin oil of the Sabina PDO, produced throughout the area. It's best to eat outside the center, in the agriturismi that surround the town.

Sabina PDO oil, the product that gave Castelnuovo di Farfa a museum

The Sabina protected designation of origin is one of the oldest in the Italian oil sector: the EU recognition dates to July 1, 1996, and the designation is commonly described as the first obtained by an extra virgin oil in Italy. The production zone includes more than 50 municipalities between the province of Rieti and the Metropolitan City of Rome, from the terraces of the Tiber valley to the sub-Apennine hinterland, and Castelnuovo di Farfa is fully part of it. The municipality belongs to the national association Città dell'Olio.

The permitted cultivars and the production specification

The specification requires that the oil come at least 75 percent from olives of the varieties Carboncella, Leccino, Raja, Pendolino, Moraiolo, Frantoio, Olivastrone, Salviana, Olivago and Rosciola. The remaining 25 percent may come from other local varieties, including the Fiecciara. The harvest runs from October 1 to January 31, the oil yield cannot exceed 25 percent by weight, the olives are washed at room temperature and no other treatments are allowed. Total acidity expressed as oleic acid must not exceed 0.6 grams per 100 grams, the peroxide number stays within 14 milliequivalents of oxygen per kilogram and oleic acid does not fall below 68 percent.

How to recognize a truly good Sabina PDO oil

The color is yellow-green with golden reflections, the aroma fruity, the taste velvety and uniform, aromatic, with sweet notes accompanied by bitter and pungent in freshly crushed oils. Bitter and pungent are virtues, not defects: whoever mistakes them for processing errors has never tasted a new oil. The advice is to buy oil directly from the mills and farms of the area between November and January, when the milling is fresh, and to be wary of too low a price: a PDO extra virgin that costs as much as a supermarket oil is not what it claims to be. Those interested in the subject can also read the English guides on Italian food and wine published on ItalyPlanner.

Farfa Abbey, two kilometers from Castelnuovo di Farfa

Barely two kilometers away as the crow flies, amid the greenery, you can pick out the bulk of Farfa Abbey, one of the great monasteries of Europe. It was founded between 560 and 570 and tradition attributes the revival after a period of abandonment to Thomas of Morienne, who was its first abbot and died in 720. In the Carolingian age it reached a power hard to imagine today: it controlled 600 churches and monasteries and 132 castles and strongholds, and Charlemagne passed through shortly before the imperial coronation of Christmas 800.

Saracen raids forced the monks to flee to Rome. The recovery came with Abbot Ratfredo, who completed the church in 913. In the 11th century the monk Gregorio da Catino gathered in his cartulary more than 1300 documents, a fundamental source for the social and economic history of medieval Italy, and precisely those documents make it possible today to reconstruct with unusual precision the history of tiny towns like Castelnuovo. The abbey became a commenda in 1399, entered the Cassinese Congregation in 1547 and was declared a national monument in 1928. The practical advice is banal and has to be said all the same: whoever climbs up to Castelnuovo di Farfa and doesn't go down to Farfa wastes half a day.

Nature around Castelnuovo di Farfa: the river, the gorges, the Sabine Mountains

The Gole del Farfa Natural Monument

The Farfa River, a left tributary of the Tiber, carves a stretch of gorge below the town between slopes covered in woods. The protected area, established by decree of the president of the Lazio Region on June 21, 2007, extends over 64.48 hectares and falls administratively in the municipality of Mompeo, which is also its managing body. It is traversed by trails marked by the Club Alpino Italiano, including numbers 351E, 352 and 352B. It's a damp environment, cool even in July, with clear waters and small waterfalls, frequented by hikers and, in suitable stretches and with qualified guides, by canyoning. Two warnings from a professional: the flow of the Farfa changes quickly after rain, and wet rocks are slippery. Boots, not sandals.

Where the Farfa meets the Tiber

Farther downstream the river flows into the Tiber inside the Tevere-Farfa Nature Reserve, a wetland of international importance and a birdwatching paradise. If you want to build a coherent day, you can link the village, the museum, the gorges and the reserve: they are all pieces of the same river basin, and told together they explain the landscape of the lower Sabina better than any single monument.

The olive groves and the farming landscape

Around Castelnuovo di Farfa the landscape is made of terraced olive groves, arable fields and coppice woods. The olive trees of the Sabina have a characteristic that strikes those coming from the north: many are monumental, with hollow, twisted trunks that testify to centuries of pruning. The care of the terraces is the invisible work that keeps this scenery standing, and the population decline of the hill towns is the real threat to the landscape, much more than tourism.

Festivals, traditions and food fairs of Castelnuovo di Farfa

The town's calendar is busy and still follows the farming rhythm. Here are the main events, with the warning that dates may slide to the nearest weekend and should be confirmed with the town hall.

The calendar of festivals

The Festa di Sant'Antonio Abate falls on January 17, with the blessing of animals and farm vehicles, and is generally celebrated on Sunday. May 1 is dedicated to Saints Philip and James, with the outing based on fava beans, pecorino and sausages, the same dedication as the ancient church of Quinza from which part of the founding population came. Fiorile occupies the first two weekends of June, with the old town covered in flowers and the balcony contest. On the first Sunday of August the Madonna degli Angeli is honored. On August 14 comes the sagra of fregnacce con la persa, the hand-rolled egg pasta seasoned with marjoram, which here is called precisely persa. On the first weekend of September Sant'Anna and the Madonna del Ponte at Granica are celebrated, on the third Sunday of September the Festa del Pane, on the third Sunday of October the Madonna del Santissimo Rosario. On October 31 the town hosts the Halloween Gothic Fest. On the first Sunday of December San Nicola di Bari, the patron saint, is celebrated, whose liturgical feast falls on December 6.

The fregnacce sagra, the most authentic

If I had to name a single date for someone who doesn't know the Sabina, I'd choose August 14. Fregnacce are a poor man's pasta, water and flour with little egg, rolled thin and cut into irregular strips. The persa, that is marjoram, goes into the sauce and completely changes the aromatic profile compared with the basil Romans are used to. Eating them in the town that invented them, on a midsummer evening, is worth the trip more than any fancy restaurant on the coast.

What to see around Castelnuovo di Farfa within a 20-minute radius

The village can be visited in half a day, museum included. The right way to use it is inside an itinerary for the area. In the immediate surroundings are Toffia, Fara in Sabina with its upper village and civic museum, Bocchignano, Poggio Mirteto, historic capital of the lower Sabina, and of course Farfa Abbey. Heading north you meet Casperia, one of the best-preserved villages in Lazio, Roccantica, Poggio Catino, Torri in Sabina with the ruins of Rocchettine, the ghost village, and Contigliano.

Toward the Tiber you reach Civitella San Paolo, Castelnuovo di Porto, Civita Castellana and Orte. Whoever has more days and wants to push into the Rieti area should make time for Rieti, Cittaducale, Cantalice, Antrodoco, Borgo Velino, Leonessa and the ski resort of Terminillo, which is a little over half an hour by car from here in normal traffic conditions.

A curiosity about Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

The curiosity few people know concerns acoustics, not architecture. Inside the early medieval church of San Donato, the site that the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina has made visitable at the end of the path that descends from the village, the visitor listens to a contemporary chant in Latin built on the chrismal hymn for Holy Thursday attributed to Saint Ephrem the Syrian. Ephrem, born in Nisibis and died in Edessa in 373, is one of the Fathers of the Syriac Church and one of the greatest Christian poets of any age: he wrote hymns in Syriac meant for women's choirs, and his output has reached us largely through translations. Finding his voice, mediated by a composition of today, inside a rural building of the Sabina, is a cultural short circuit that no paper guidebook prepares you for.

There is a second level of curiosity, and it's archaeological. The church wasn't restored in the usual way, that is, by rebuilding the missing walls: where the wall was no longer there, transparent diaphragms were inserted, so that the visitor sees together the ancient structure, the modern farmhouse that had absorbed it and the outside landscape. It's a courageous museographic choice, still a minority one in Italy, and says a lot about the quality of the project that gave Castelnuovo di Farfa its museum. An observation: under modern structures, nearby, the cryptoporticus of a rustic villa of the Republican era remains visible. This means that spot in the countryside was chosen, abandoned and chosen again for at least 2000 years in a row. It wasn't the church that attracted the houses: it was the place that attracted everything else, the water, the road, the Roman villa, the church, the cemetery and finally the museum.

One thing nobody tells you about Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

In the plain below the town, halfway between the village and Farfa Abbey, a civilian internment camp operated for a few months in 1943. The structure, designed to hold up to 2700 internees, never reached that capacity because of the course of the war: in the summer of 1943 about 135 people were held there, among them a first group of 21 Jews. The camp stayed active from June to September. After the armistice of September 8 the guards abandoned their post and the internees dispersed by the end of the month. Almost all the Jews who had been confined there escaped capture and deportation: only one was arrested in November 1943 and deported to Auschwitz in April 1944.

In the postwar period the area changed function and became a refugee collection center: in 1948 almost 900 people lived there, mostly coming from Yugoslavia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Albania. It's a page that the tourist brochures of the Sabina almost never tell, and that instead belongs fully to the history of this territory as much as the towers and the oil mills. Whoever visits Castelnuovo di Farfa should know it before looking at the plain from the lookout: that landscape of olive groves and fields, so peaceful, has hosted in a few years imprisonment and welcome, a deportation that never happened and a new life for hundreds of people. In our judgment this memory deserves a permanent sign along the road, and until there is one it will fall to the guides to tell it aloud.

The advice I give you for visiting Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

First piece of advice, the one that matters most: call ahead. The Museo dell'Olio della Sabina is fully open on weekends and holidays, and on weekdays it operates by reservation, with guided tours at fixed times. Arriving on a Wednesday morning without having called means seeing the town from outside and leaving. One number and 30 seconds solve the problem.

Second piece of advice: give the village the right amount of time, which isn't an hour. The diffuse museum needs at least two hours between the rooms of Palazzo Perelli, the oil mill in the former oven and the descent to San Donato with the olive garden. Add an hour for the old town, Porta Castello, Porta Cisterna, the parish church and the fountain. That makes three full hours. If you then want to go down to the Gole del Farfa, that's another half day and you need a change of shoes.

Third piece of advice, on the season. The best time for Castelnuovo di Farfa is November, during the milling: the mills are working, the air smells of crushed olives and the new oil is tasted on toasted bread the way it should be. The second best time is the first two weekends of June, when the old town is covered in flowers for Fiorile. The worst time is the afternoon of a Saturday in August at three: it's hot, the stone gives off heat and the streets are empty for a precise reason, which anyone who lives here knows well. Last practical tip: park along Via Roma and enter on foot, and bring cash, because in towns of a thousand inhabitants not all businesses accept cards without problems.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

Everyone knows that the Sabina produces quality olive oil. Almost nobody knows that the Sabina designation is commonly described as the first olive oil PDO recognized in Italy, by EU measure of July 1, 1996, and above all almost nobody knows what that specification concretely entails. It entails that at least three quarters of the olives belong to a closed list of 10 varieties, with Carboncella at the head. It entails that the harvest ends by January 31. It entails that the yield does not exceed 25 percent by weight, that the olives are washed with water at room temperature and that no other treatment is allowed. It entails a maximum acidity of 0.6 percent and a minimum oleic acid content of 68 percent.

The rarely cited fact, though, is another, and it's historical. The fame of Sabine oil wasn't born in 1996 and not even in the monastic Middle Ages: it was born in antiquity. Galen, the physician from Pergamon who practiced in Rome in the second century AD, indicated the oil of the Sabina as the best of the ancient world, and on that judgment the area has built 2000 years of commercial reputation. Farfa Abbey, in the Middle Ages, managed and organized the oil production of its castles, Castelnuovo included, and the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina exists precisely because this town sits at the center of that supply chain. Put bluntly: the museum wasn't dropped from above on a random theme, it grew out of the real trade of the inhabitants.

The right photo to take in Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

The photo that pays off the most isn't the one of the village seen from afar, however photogenic the isolated hill is. It's the shot you get from the valley floor, looking at the north front of the town in the light of late afternoon: from there the blind facades of the houses, reinforced by the buttresses, read as a single continuous wall, and it's the only point from which you grasp visually that those homes were the walls of the castle. You need a moderate telephoto lens to compress the planes and bring out the bell tower of the parish church above the roofline.

The second photo is inside San Donato. The play between the transparent diaphragms, the ancient masonry and the countryside you see through the glass produces images that no other archaeological site in the Sabina offers: it's best to expose for the outside and let the stone stay in half-light, instead of brightening everything and losing the contrast. The flash, besides often being prohibited, would ruin the effect.

The third, if you happen to be there in season, is the detail: the olives on the branch, the millstone of the 18th-century oil mill, the thread of new oil falling on bread. The professional advice is to give up the wide angle. In Castelnuovo di Farfa the wide angle eats the town and returns a row of anonymous houses. The 50 millimeter, or a small tele, forces you to choose and that's why it works. As for light, the first hour after dawn on a November day, with mist in the Farfa valley and the town emerging from the gray, is the best photographic moment of the year.

Some important events that happened here in history

The first event is a donation. In 768 a woman of Germanic stock, Taneldis, last survivor of the Lombard family that owned these lands, ceded them to Farfa Abbey. Everything else descends from that gesture: the monastery organized the settlement, founded the church of San Donato, started agricultural production and ultimately built the town. The second event is documentary: in 817 the bishop of Arezzo Giovanni ceded the church of San Donato to the monastery of Farfa in exchange for other properties, and the deed lists lands, houses, churches, woods and mills. It's the first written snapshot of this territory.

The third is an act of force. In the first decades of the 10th century, against the will of the monastery, the castle of Agello was founded. The response from Farfa was the fortification of the Castellum Sancti Donati, attested in 1046 and abandoned already in 1104. The fourth event is the actual founding: between 1287 and 1312 the Castrum Novum is born, by regrouping the populations of Agello, of Cavallaria and of the houses scattered around the church of Saints Philip and James in Quinza.

The fifth is the longest dispute in the Sabina. In 1288 the contest begins between the inhabitants and Farfa Abbey over the ownership of the castle hill: it will close only with the royal decree of 1937, in favor of the village. In between come 1456 with the citation of Castelnuovo among the major castles of the Sabina, the 15th-century occupation by followers of the Orsini and 1477, when the commendatory abbot had the boundary stones that the inhabitants had removed put back.

The sixth event is sanitary and devotional at once: in 1600, a jubilee year, an epidemic devastated the surroundings and spared the town. The people of Castelnuovo fulfilled the vow by building the little temple of the Madonna degli Angeli, the work of Mastro Plauto and Mastro Giovanni, to which the bell tower was added in 1698. The seventh is military and administrative: the council resolution of 1592 records at least 50 arquebuses and four archibugioni at the castle's disposal.

The eighth is from the 18th century and changed the face of the village: the election as cardinal of the fellow townsman Giuseppe Simonetti in 1766, celebrated with three days of music, gunfire and fireworks, and right after it the reconstruction of the parish church of San Nicola between 1769 and 1779 on a design by the master builder Antonio Lepri, financed by the Simonetti and carried out with the labor of the castle's inhabitants. In 1781 the body of San Vittore, a child martyr, was interred there. The ninth event is a collapse: in 1933 the Madonna degli Angeli came down, except for the wall of the niche with the Marian image, and in 1939 it was rebuilt at the expense of Cavaliere Angelo Salustri Galli.

The tenth belongs to the history of 20th-century Europe. Between June and September 1943 the plain below the town hosted a civilian internment camp with about 135 people, among them 21 Jews. After September 8 the internees dispersed and almost all escaped deportation. In 1948 the same site took in almost 900 refugees from central and eastern Europe. The eleventh is recent and peaceful: in 2001 the opening of the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina inside Palazzo Perelli, which gave the town a new cultural function. And the twelfth, environmental, is from June 21, 2007, when the Lazio Region established the Gole del Farfa Natural Monument, 64.48 hectares of river gorge a short distance from the village.

Who has passed through Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

Let's start with the oldest and most uncertain figure, stating the degree of certainty. Tradition places in the sixth century, in this area, San Lorenzo Siro, to whose preaching the founding of Farfa Abbey and the evangelization of the neighboring territories are tied: it's tradition, not document. Documented instead is Taneldis, the Lombard woman who in 768 donated to Farfa the lands on which the town would be born: a single name, in a deed, and the fate of a village.

Of the bishop of Arezzo Giovanni there remains the deed of 817 by which he ceded San Donato to the monastery of Farfa. In 1477 it was the commendatory abbot of Farfa who intervened in person to reestablish the boundary stones removed by the inhabitants. In the 15th century, followers of the Orsini passed through here, in arms, the baronial family that contended with the Colonna for control of Lazio. In the 16th century Mastro Giovanni worked here, the mason paid 20 scudi for the church of Santa Maria outside the walls, and in 1600 the same Mastro Giovanni and Mastro Plauto built the little temple of the Madonna degli Angeli: names of craftsmen, not of princes, and it's rare for them to be preserved.

The most illustrious figure born here is Cardinal Giuseppe Simonetti, raised to the purple in 1766. His family, the Simonetti marquises, reshaped the civil face of the village by building the palace with the Italian gardens that later passed to the Salustri Galli, and financed the reconstruction of the parish church. The commendatory abbot Antonio Lante wanted that reconstruction, carried out by the master builder Antonio Lepri between 1769 and 1779. In the 20th century the name that recurs is that of Cavaliere Angelo Salustri Galli, who in 1939 paid out of his own pocket for the reconstruction of the Madonna degli Angeli.

Then there are the involuntary passages, and they are the ones that strike most: the 135 people interned in the camp on the plain in the summer of 1943, among them 21 Jews, and the almost 900 refugees, women and men, from central and eastern Europe who found shelter there in 1948. Finally the contemporaries, and they are leading artists: Maria Lai, Alik Cavaliere, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Gianandrea Gazzola and Ille Strazza have left works inside the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina and along the town. That a village of a thousand inhabitants can claim an installation by Maria Lai and an olive tree by Nagasawa is the least predictable thing in this whole story, and the reason it's worth climbing up here.

Visiting Castelnuovo di Farfa with children, in a group and with reduced mobility

Castelnuovo di Farfa with children

The museum works very well with children from age six up, and not out of politeness: the oleophona make sounds, the animal-powered oil mill is understood at a glance, the garden of the olive trees of the world lets you touch leaves different from one another. The museum states educational activities and reduced rates for school groups, set at €2.50. The stretch of path toward San Donato is short and within reach of little legs, but has to be done in closed shoes.

Group visits and professional guiding

For groups the museum requires a reservation and, from 10 participants up, also opens on weekdays. Anyone organizing group trips in the Sabina and looking for certified staff can turn to the network of TourLeaderPro tour leaders, which works regularly on itineraries in inland Lazio. For private experiences and small groups there is a line dedicated to tailor-made experiences.

Accessibility

The museum states that it offers welcome services for visitors with disabilities. The old town, however, is a sloping medieval castle, with irregular flagstone paving and steps: those who move in a wheelchair or with mobility difficulties should honestly assess the route and ask the museum for precise information before leaving. The path toward San Donato is unpaved and not suitable for everyone.

Where to eat and sleep in Castelnuovo di Farfa

The accommodation on offer is that of a town of a thousand inhabitants: agriturismi and country houses in the surroundings, a few trattorias and a few farms that sell directly. The cooking is Sabine, that is, humble and fatty in the good sense: hand-rolled egg pasta, fregnacce with persa, pecorino, sausages, legumes, lamb, and of course extra virgin oil on everything. The advice is to eat outside the center, in the agriturismi among the olive groves, and to buy oil directly at the farm instead of in souvenir shops. Whoever is preparing a trip to Italy and reads in English finds a general overview of the region in ItalyPlanner's guide to Lazio and excursion ideas on the page devoted to day trips.

Quick questions about Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

Where is Castelnuovo di Farfa?

In the province of Rieti, in the Sabina, at 358 meters above sea level on a hill between the Farfa River and the Riana stream. The postal code is 02031, the telephone area code 0765. From Rome you get there in a little over an hour.

How many inhabitants does Castelnuovo di Farfa have?

A little over a thousand, with fluctuations between a thousand and a thousand and 50 people in the counts of recent years. The municipal territory covers 8.84 square kilometers.

How do you get to Castelnuovo di Farfa from Rome by car?

A1 toward Florence, exit Fiano Romano, then the Salaria and provincial road 42 Mirtense, the one that links Poggio Mirteto to Montopoli di Sabina. Alternatively the Salaria from the Grande Raccordo Anulare, with no toll.

Can you get to Castelnuovo di Farfa by public transport?

Yes, but with patience: regional train to Poggio Mirteto Scalo and then regional extra-urban bus. The runs are calibrated to schools and work and thin out a lot on holidays: check the times on the operator's website before leaving.

How much is the ticket to the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina?

€6 full price, €3 reduced, €2.50 for school groups.

What are the hours of the Museo dell'Olio della Sabina?

Regular opening covers weekends and holidays from 10 to 18, with closure on major religious holidays. On weekdays you enter by reservation, in particular for groups of 10 or more participants. The indications of official sources don't always match: it's best to confirm at 0765 36370.

Do you need to book to visit the museum of Castelnuovo di Farfa?

On weekdays yes, always. On weekends it isn't mandatory, but for groups it remains advisable because guided tours leave at fixed times.

How long does a visit to Castelnuovo di Farfa last?

Two hours for the diffuse museum, including the descent to San Donato, and another hour for the old town. A full three hours to do things properly, half a day more if you go down to the Gole del Farfa.

What is there to see in Castelnuovo di Farfa in half a day?

The Museo dell'Olio della Sabina in Palazzo Perelli, the 18th-century oil mill in the former oven, the early medieval church of San Donato with the garden of the olive trees of the world, the parish church of San Nicola di Bari, the little temple of the Madonna degli Angeli, Porta Castello, Porta Cisterna, the 17th-century fountain and the exterior of Palazzo Simonetti.

Can you take photographs inside the museum?

The rules on shots and on the use of flash vary and should be asked at the ticket office: in rooms with contemporary works on loan restrictions are frequent. In the village and along the path toward San Donato you can photograph freely.

Is Castelnuovo di Farfa suitable for children?

Very. The sound oleophona, the animal-powered oil mill and the olive garden work well from age six up, and the museum offers educational activities with a reduced rate for schools.

Is Castelnuovo di Farfa wheelchair accessible?

The museum states that it offers welcome services for visitors with disabilities, but the village is a sloping medieval castle with irregular flagstones and steps, and the path toward San Donato is unpaved. Asking the museum for precise information before leaving is the sensible thing to do.

How far is Castelnuovo di Farfa from Farfa Abbey?

Two kilometers as the crow flies, a few minutes by car. The two visits pair up on the same day without effort.

What is the difference between Castelnuovo di Farfa and Fara in Sabina?

Fara in Sabina is a larger municipality, with a scenic upper village, a civic archaeological museum and Farfa Abbey in its territory. Castelnuovo di Farfa is smaller and has a precise vocation, oil, with a museum that in its category has no rival in Lazio. Whoever has only one day sees both.

What do you eat in Castelnuovo di Farfa?

Fregnacce con la persa, that is hand-rolled egg pasta with marjoram, pecorino, sausages, fava beans, legumes, lamb, bread dressed with new oil. The sagra of the fregnacce falls on August 14.

When is the patron saint's feast in Castelnuovo di Farfa?

San Nicola di Bari is the patron saint and the liturgical feast is December 6. The feast in town is celebrated on the first Sunday of December.

What is Fiorile?

The event of the first two weekends of June, with the old town covered in flowers and the contest of flowered balconies. It's the period in which the village looks its best from a photographic point of view.

Can you buy Sabina PDO oil in Castelnuovo di Farfa?

Yes, at mills and farms of the area. The best time to buy is between November and January, right after the milling. Beware of prices that are too low: an extra virgin PDO has a production cost that doesn't allow dramatic discounts.

Are the Gole del Farfa in the municipality of Castelnuovo di Farfa?

No. The Gole del Farfa Natural Monument, established in 2007 and covering 64.48 hectares, falls in the municipality of Mompeo, which is also its managing body, and is reached in a few minutes from Castelnuovo di Farfa.

Can you go trekking starting from Castelnuovo di Farfa?

Yes. From the old town starts the nature route that descends toward San Donato and continues toward the river, and the town is included in the hiking itineraries that link Poggio Mirteto to Farfa Abbey. In the gorges the trails marked by the Club Alpino Italiano are numbers 351E, 352 and 352B.

What is the best time to visit Castelnuovo di Farfa?

November, during the milling, and the first two weekends of June for Fiorile. Avoid early afternoon on sweltering August days.

Why is Castelnuovo di Farfa called that?

Because the present castle was founded between 1287 and 1312 as a new settlement, replacing the castles of Agello and Cavallaria that were being abandoned, and because the territory belonged to the lordship of Farfa Abbey.

The final advice on Castelnuovo di Farfa

Small towns defend themselves poorly against hurried visitors. Castelnuovo di Farfa punished by a 40-minute visit becomes an ordinary village, with narrow streets and a closed church. Treated well, that is, with a call ahead, three hours of time and a willingness to walk down to San Donato, it returns one of the most original museum experiences in Lazio and a history lesson running from the Middle Bronze Age to 1943 in three square kilometers. Take away a liter of new oil bought at the farm and you'll have made the day.

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

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