Contigliano (RI)

Contigliano is a municipality of about 3,600 inhabitants in the province of Rieti, seven kilometers west of the provincial capital, on the southwestern edge of the Rieti Plain, at the foot of the Sabine Mountains. The historic village occupies a hill and has its center in the square of the collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo, in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III, 02043 Contigliano. The modern part of town developed lower down, along the road and around the station. From Rome by car you take the SS4 Salaria to Rieti and then the Rieti-Terni expressway (SS79) with the Contigliano exit, about 90 kilometers in a good hour and a half outside rush hours. The alternative is the A1 motorway to Orte and the expressway for Terni and Rieti. By train the Contigliano station is on the Terni-Rieti-L'Aquila-Sulmona line, a kilometer and a half from the historic center: from Rome you change at Terni. By bus the Cotral runs connect the Rome Tiburtina bus station to Rieti, and from Rieti the suburban services reach Contigliano. There is also an interregional Contigliano-Rieti-Avezzano line that stops in Rieti at Piazza Cavour and Porta d'Arce, with fares at €4.50. The village can be visited for free and without reservation. The collegiate church opens during service hours and has no ticket. You park in the pull-offs along the access road to the upper village. The abbey of San Pastore, just outside the municipal territory, is private property and can be visited only by appointment with the managers. For the Marmore Falls, often paired, ticket and water release times must be checked on the park's official website before leaving.

Contigliano is part of the circuit of the villages of the Rieti basin told on these pages: the starting point is the guide to Rieti, and the complete list of destinations in inland Lazio is on the page of tourist attractions.

How to get to Contigliano (RI) from Rome and where to leave the car

The first thing to make clear is that Contigliano is a town on two levels. There is the upper village, perched on the hill, with the collegiate church, the walls, the gates, the stepped alleys and the view over the Rieti Plain. And there is the modern settlement, spread out below along the provincial roads and around the railway station, where many of the services are. Whoever arrives without knowing this risks stopping at the first intersection, seeing a supermarket and a couple of bars and concluding that there wasn't much there. It would be an avoidable mistake with 10 minutes of attention. The real town, the one worth the trip, is at the top: you get there by a road that climbs in short hairpins from the plain and ends in the square in front of the church of San Michele Arcangelo. If the navigator takes you to a parking lot in front of a bar with modern signs and the road doesn't climb, you haven't arrived yet: go back up.

By car: the Salaria to Rieti, then the expressway to Contigliano

From Rome the route is almost all on a single axis. You take the SS4 Salaria, the state road that climbs northeast following first the Tiber and then the Farfa, you cross the Tiber Sabina, pass under Poggio Mirteto and Osteria Nuova, cross the watershed between the Tiber valley and the Rieti basin and arrive at the gates of the provincial capital. It is about 90 kilometers, with four-lane stretches and two-lane stretches, and the real duration depends almost entirely on the traffic leaving Rome and on the stretch between Passo Corese and Osteria Nuova, which clogs at rush hour. At the gates of Rieti you take the Rieti-Terni expressway, the SS79 Ternana, which has a single lane in each direction and is served by an interchange right for Contigliano. It is the last piece of the trip and also the most beautiful, because you leave the city and enter the perfectly flat green table that is the floor of the ancient lake, with the straight canals, the poplars in rows and the mountains closing the horizon on every side.

There is a second route, more regular when the Salaria is heavy: the A1 motorway to Orte, then the expressway toward Terni and Rieti, Contigliano exit. It is longer in kilometers but often more constant in time, and it has the advantage of bringing you into the Rieti basin from the Terni side, that is, passing near the Marmore Falls, which fit into the same day without absurd detours. For those coming from the north, from Umbria or Tuscany, this is in any case the natural route. Those arriving from the east, from Abruzzo, come down from the Antrodoco pass or from Terminillo and find the plain in front of them, with Contigliano at the western end.

Contigliano is also a junction of the provincial road network, and this helps with orientation: here cross Via di Fontecerro (SP 45), which links the Rieti Plain to the Aia valley, Via Tancia (SP 46), which joins Rieti to Poggio Mirteto across the Sabine Mountains, and the branch toward SP 1 of Reopasto. Those who want to return to Rome by a different road can go down by the Tancia to Poggio Mirteto and pick up the Salaria from there: it is slower, but crosses a piece of mountain Sabina that you don't see from the expressway.

By train and by bus: Contigliano has a station, but from Rome you change

With public transport things get complicated, as always in inland Lazio, but less than people think. Contigliano has its own railway station, on the Terni-Rieti-L'Aquila-Sulmona line, opened on October 30, 1883 and still active, served by regional trains. It is about a kilometer and a half from the historic center, in the lower part of town. The problem is that from Rome there is no direct train: you get to Terni on a regional and change there for the line to Rieti, with total times that easily exceed two and a half hours. Until 2014 there was also the Terria stop, serving the hamlet, now closed.

The most common solution is the bus. From Rome the Cotral runs leave from the Tiburtina bus station and reach Rieti along the Salaria in about an hour and 40 minutes when the road is flowing. From Rieti the suburban services cover Contigliano and the other municipalities of the plain. There is also an interregional Contigliano-Rieti-Avezzano line, with weekday departures from Contigliano at 4:15, 6:50, 12:15, 16:15 and 20:15, ticket at €4.50 for the whole route. In Rieti it doesn't stop at the railway station but at Piazza Cavour and Porta d'Arce. The local runs are calibrated to school and work hours: early in the morning and in the early afternoon they exist, on Sundays and holidays they thin out. Those who want to come without a car on a Sunday should check the times on the Cotral website before leaving and allow for the possibility that the evening return may be missing. It is not a destination you improvise without a car.

For cyclists, about a kilometer from the town passes the Ciclovia della Conca Reatina, which links Contigliano to Rieti and to the hamlets of Terria, Chiesa Nuova, Piani Sant'Elia and Piani Poggio Fidoni: it is the best way to cross the reclaimed plain at the right speed, among canals and poplar groves, and on a spring morning it is worth the trip by itself.

Parking, shoes and elevation in the upper village of Contigliano

Parking is not a problem outside patron saint festival days. In the upper village there are pull-offs along the access road and a wide spot at the top where you leave the car without effort. The inner alleys are narrow, largely pedestrian in practice, and there is no sense in trying to squeeze in with a big car. The rule of the hill villages of Lazio applies here too: you park at the first useful spot and climb on foot. The elevation gain from the parking to the collegiate church is modest, about 100 meters on a gentle slope, but the paving is irregular and city shoes with smooth soles are a bad idea, especially after rain. In winter, with the night frost, some shaded stretches stay slippery until mid-morning.

The seasons in Contigliano (RI): when the basin is at its best

On the seasons a precise distinction applies. The Rieti Plain in summer is hot and muggy: it is a closed valley floor at about 400 meters of elevation, the air stagnates, and mosquitoes, a direct inheritance of the marsh, are a real presence on July and August evenings near the canals. The upper village is cooler, because it catches the wind, but the middle hours of the day stay heavy. Spring is the right season: the plain is green, the ditches are full, the mountains still have snow on the peaks and the light is clear. Autumn is just as good and has in addition the morning mists that rise from the valley floor and let only the villages on the hilltops emerge, a spectacle that by itself justifies an early start. Winter is harsh but gives days of absolute transparency, with snow-covered Terminillo that seems within reach.

What to bring to Contigliano and how much time you need

On what to bring: water, because the bars of the upper village are not always open out of season and the town is small. Closed shoes with a lugged sole. A sweatshirt even in summer, because in the evening it cools off at elevation. And binoculars, if you are interested in the landscape, because from the viewpoint you can clearly make out the profiles of the towns on the other side of the basin and the movements of the gliders on the runway of the Rieti airport. Those traveling with small children should keep in mind that the village is made of climbs and stairways and that a stroller is awkward: a child-carrier backpack solves it. Those with mobility problems can in any case reach, by car, a spot very close to the collegiate church and enjoy the square and the panorama without tackling the steepest alleys.

The minimum time for a sensible visit is a couple of hours: the walk around the walls and the two gates, the collegiate church, the viewpoint, a stop. But Contigliano makes the most sense as a base or as a stop inside a wider itinerary, because it sits exactly at the center of a system of things to see that hold together. Seven kilometers away is Rieti with its historic center, its medieval arcades and its Roman bridge. On the slopes of the basin are the Franciscan sanctuaries. To the northwest, beyond the ridge, is the Valnerina with the Marmore Falls. To the east rises Terminillo. A few kilometers away, to the north, is the Lungo and Ripasottile lakes reserve. One day, no more, is enough for Contigliano and just one other thing. Two days let you do things properly. If you'd rather hand the direction of the day to a professional, you can turn to TourLeaderPro for tourist accompaniment, which organizes private and corporate outings in inner Lazio too.

Services, restaurants and where to sleep around Contigliano

As for services in town, there's what a municipality of a little over 3,600 inhabitants needs: a pharmacy, a post office, grocery stores, a couple of bars, and a few restaurants and trattorias spread between the upper and lower parts. It's not an equipped tourist center, and that is both its limit and its merit. You won't find rows of souvenir shops or menus translated into five languages. You'll find, if you turn up at the right time, a trattoria where they serve stringozzi, trout from the plain, salt cod the way it's done around here, and beans, which in the Rieti area are a serious matter. For sleeping there are farm stays and small places scattered through the countryside around, often made out of renovated farmhouses, and within a radius of 10 kilometers the offer in Rieti widens the possibilities quite a bit. The restored abbey of San Pastore also has rooms. Booking ahead is sensible on spring weekends and in August, when the basin fills with people escaping the Roman heat.

One last practical note: phone coverage in the upper village is good, but in the side valley floors and along the dirt roads toward Reopasto and toward the woods of the Monti Sabini it becomes uncertain. If you plan to walk outside the built-up area, download the maps before you leave. And if you're looking for the abbey of San Pastore or the abandoned village of Reopasto, which are the two most fascinating and least conventional places in this area, read the chapters devoted to them further on. They aren't monuments you visit like a city church, and showing up without knowing what you're about to find is the best way to end up disappointed. For a general overview in English of Rieti and its basin, the ItalyPlanner guide to Rieti is a good starting point.

The lake that is no more: the Piana Reatina seen from Contigliano (RI)

To understand Contigliano you have to understand what lay beneath it. Today, anyone looking out from the upper village sees a green, wide, cultivated plain, crossed by canals as straight as lines drawn with a set square, with the Velino river running through it and the towns arranged all around on the first foothills. It's not a natural landscape. It's a built landscape, one of the oldest built landscapes in Europe, and its story begins long before there was a town on the hill. Where that plain is, there was water: the Lacus Velinus, a system of lake surfaces and marshes that occupied the floor of the Rieti basin and that the ancients knew well, because it was a serious and permanent problem.

The geology of the basin and the Marmore threshold

Geology explains everything. The Velino collects the waters of a very large mountain basin, which includes the slopes of Terminillo, of the Monti Reatini and of the surrounding ranges, and carries them west to the point where the basin closes against a rocky barrier, the Marmore threshold. There the water should have dropped into the Valnerina and reached the Nera, but the limestone deposited by the waters themselves, extremely rich in calcium carbonate, had built over the millennia a barrier of travertine that held back the outflow. The result: the water stagnated upstream, the basin turned into marsh, the low ground became unusable, and in rainy seasons floods reached the foot of the hills. The Rieti basin, before human intervention, was one of the great wetlands of central Italy, full of waterbirds, reed beds and malaria. And in the middle of that water there were islands. One of them, Montisola, today a hamlet of Contigliano, really was an island until the land reclamation of the 20th century, and the name says so.

The cut of Curio Dentato in 271 BC

In 271 BC the consul Manius Curius Dentatus, the same man who had defeated the Samnites and beaten Pyrrhus, had an artificial channel dug through the Marmore threshold, the Cavo Curiano, to let the waters of the Velino flow into the Nera below. This is the origin of the Marmore Falls, which are therefore not a natural waterfall but a Roman hydraulic work, the most spectacular and the longest-lived ever built: it still works, 23 centuries later. The total drop is 165 meters over three tiers, and it is considered the tallest artificial waterfall in Europe. The reclamation of the Lacus Velinus was the direct consequence: by lowering the water level upstream, thousands of hectares of extremely fertile land were freed, the Rosea rura Velini that Virgil mentions in the seventh book of the Aeneid, the rosy fields of the Velino, rich soil where wheat grew like nowhere else and where horses and mules of proverbial quality were raised.

Cicero, the popes and the engineers: a quarrel 2,000 years long

The cut of Curio Dentato did not close the matter, though. It opened it. The sudden outflow of so much water toward the Nera caused floods downstream, that is in Terni, and from this arose one of the longest territorial disputes in Italian history. The people of Rieti and of Terni accused each other for centuries, and in 54 BC the dispute came before the consul Appius Claudius Pulcher and 10 legates, with Cicero in person pleading the cause of the Rieti side against the people of Interamna. The dispute was not settled then and was not settled in the Middle Ages either. In 1422, under Gregory XII, the Cavo Reatino was dug, also called Gregoriano. In 1545 Paul III entrusted Antonio da Sangallo the Younger with the Cava Paolina, which worked for barely half a century. In 1598 Clement VIII inaugurated the Cava Clementina designed by Giovanni Fontana, with a regulating bridge to govern the discharge. In 1787 Andrea Vici, for Pius VI, modified the drop itself, giving it its present appearance and solving the major flood problems. There is no other landscape in Italy that has been worked on for so long and with so much ingenuity, and since 1896 the waters of the Cavo Curiano also feed the steelworks of Terni. That's the reason why today the falls are switched on by schedule.

From the Quintilian estate to the walled village: how Contigliano was born

Contigliano looks at all this from above, and has looked at it for more than 1,000 years. The name of the town, according to local tradition gathered by the historical guides, would derive from the villa of Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, the rhetorician of the first century AD, a teacher of eloquence in Rome under Vespasian and Domitian, whom local tradition ties to the Sabina (historians say he was born in Spain, at Calagurris). When he withdrew from teaching, his estate, the ager Quintilianus, is said to have filled with dwellings. What is documented is the place name: the territory appears for the first time in 850, in a document of the abbey of Farfa, as Fundus or Locus Quintilianus, and in 1157 the Castrum Quintilianum is attested, a fortified center defended by walls, dependent on Rieti for control of the western side of the basin. From Quintilianum to Contigliano the phonetic step is short. It's the typical formation of the prediale place names of central Italy, and it shows that the Roman settlement of the area was widespread, made up of rustic villas and farms that exploited the reclaimed land.

The village on the heights is the product of incastellamento, the phenomenon that between the 10th and the 12th century led the populations scattered in the countryside to gather in fortified settlements on high ground, to defend themselves from raids and to organize around a lord or an abbey. In the Middle Ages Contigliano enters the orbit of Rieti and its fortunes, which are the fortunes of a border city between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples, contested, strategic, crossed by armies. The defensive layout can still be read today: the town is surrounded for a good part by medieval walls, with two gates, Porta dei Santi to the southwest, which keeps its original wooden portal, and Porta Codarda to the northeast. Where the walls are missing, it's the houses themselves, packed one against the other, that form the curtain. Anyone walking in the upper village sees it very clearly: the streets aren't a grid but a spiral, the alleys wind upward with arches and little stairways, and the 16th- and 17th-century palaces give the whole an austere look. It's the urban planning of fear, the kind that produced the most beautiful villages in Italy for a reason that had nothing to do with beauty.

The collegiate church as a declaration of importance

At the top of that spiral stands the collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo, the main monument of the town, much more important than the size of the municipality would lead you to suppose. Michael the Archangel is not a chance dedication in this area: the cult of Michael spread along the Lombard routes of the Apennines, and in the Sabina and the Rieti area the churches dedicated to the Archangel often mark high positions, caves, points of passage. Michael is the saint of high places, the fighter who defeats the dragon, and his churches gladly rise where the land lifts. Contigliano is no exception. The present church, however, is a Baroque building built ex novo. The first stone was laid in 1683 with the blessing of the bishop of Rieti Ippolito Vicentini, at a time of growth for the town, in place of an older parish church with the same title. The consecration came in 1747 at the hands of bishop Antonino Serafino Camarda. That's 64 years of construction, financed by the local families, for a facade that dominates the square almost out of proportion to the scale of the village and for a richly decorated single-nave interior. The bell tower, visible from all over the plain, works as a territorial signal: from Rieti, from the towns on the other slope, from the road that comes down from Terni, you pick out Contigliano first of all by that tower.

The descent toward the plain and the double town

Around the historic core, the modern history of the town is the history of the plain. With the reclamation completed in the 20th century and the land made permanently farmable, the economy shifted downward: families came down, modern neighborhoods grew along the roads and around the station, agricultural and craft businesses settled in, and the upper village began the slow emptying that all the historic centers of the Apennines share. Today the relationship has partly rebalanced, because the village has been rediscovered as a place of quality of life and landscape value, but the double nature of the town remains and is its most evident feature. If you want to see how this dynamic shaped all the towns of the basin, look at Cantalice on the opposite slope, clinging to the rock like a nest, or Rivodutri at the foot of the Monti Reatini. The structure of the story is always the same.

The air of the basin: gliders above the lake bed

There is one last thing that makes the landscape of Contigliano different from that of many other villages in Lazio, and it's the air. On the plain, on the northern edge of Rieti, is the Giuseppe Ciuffelli airport, inaugurated on March 27, 1938, destroyed by the bombings of 1944 and reopened in 1952. It is one of the most important European centers for gliding, and it has hosted the world championships of 1985 and 2008, the juniors world championship of 2007 and the European championships of 1982, 1994 and 2015. The thermal and orographic conditions of the basin, with the flat valley floor that heats up, the slopes that generate rising currents and Terminillo acting as a wall, create an almost unique situation for gliders, and on good days the sky above the plain fills with white wings climbing in spirals without an engine. Watching them from the viewpoint of the upper village is one of the most beautiful and least advertised experiences in Lazio: you see the bed of the ancient lake, you see the canals, you see the outlines of the Franciscan sanctuaries on the mountains opposite and, in between, these silent objects that exploit the warm air rising from land reclaimed 23 centuries ago. The whole history of the basin can be read in a single frame.

The history of Contigliano (RI) from the island of Issa to the 20th century

The history of Contigliano is best told starting from below, from the water, and not from the hill. Because the municipal territory has a chronological depth that the medieval village, on its own, doesn't let you imagine, and because every later phase is explained by the relationship between the heights and the marsh.

Montisola and the lake village of the Aborigines

At the locality of Montisola, on a hill 434 meters high that emerged like an island from the Lacus Velinus, there stood a lake village of the protohistoric period, inhabited from the Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Scholars identify it with the ancient Issa, the village of the Aborigines recalled by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his account of the origins of Rome, when he describes the peoples who lived in the Sabina before the Sabines. Near Contigliano a hoard of the Late Bronze Age was also found, 12th to 11th century BC, which contained objects of Aegean manufacture: proof that this basin, apparently closed in among the mountains, was in contact with the eastern Mediterranean 3,000 years ago. Anyone passing through Montisola today sees a hill in the middle of fields. It was an island, with a pile-dwelling village, and the name of the hamlet recalls it with a precision that books don't have.

The Roman age: the estate of Quintilian and the reclaimed lands

With the reclamation of Curio Dentato the plain becomes land for wheat and horses, and the Rieti Sabina fills up with rustic villas. It is in this setting that the place name arises: an agricultural estate registered to a Quintilianus, whom tradition identifies with the great rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, author of the Institutio oratoria, the first teacher of rhetoric paid by the Roman state under Vespasian. That the estate really was his is a tradition, not a document. That the name of the town comes from a Quintilianus is instead the soundest explanation, confirmed by the early medieval records. Marcus Terentius Varro, born in Rieti in 116 BC, describes in the De re rustica the agricultural wealth of these fields with the competence of an agronomist who owned land there: the Rosea rura that Virgil also speaks of are not a poetic figure, they are the plain you see from the viewpoint.

850, Farfa and the Castrum Quintilianum

The first document dates to 850: a deed of the abbey of Farfa, the great monastic power of the Sabina, names the Fundus or Locus Quintilianus. In those centuries Farfa owned half the Sabina and a part of the Rieti basin, and its registers are the written memory of dozens of towns that would otherwise have no date of birth. In 1157 the Castrum Quintilianum appears: no longer an estate but a castle, a fortified center defended by walls, which depends on Rieti and controls its western access. From that moment Contigliano is a piece of the defensive belt of the commune of Rieti, and its history coincides with that of the border city. In the meantime, in 1069, the Counts of the Marsi had ceded to Farfa the castle of Reopasto, in the Monti Sabini, which today is the abandoned hamlet of the municipality: two poles, one on the plain and one in the woods, both within the Farfa network.

August 7, 1501: Vitellozzo Vitelli assaults the castle

The most dramatic episode in the history of Contigliano bears the date of August 7, 1501. Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Città di Castello and one of the most feared condottieri of the Italy of the Borgias, was marching toward L'Aquila with a band of soldiers in the service of Pope Alexander VI. Contigliano refused supplies to the army, and from the walls a stone was thrown that hit the commander. The answer was the assault: the castle fell in a short time, the mercenaries burst in and massacred citizens. A year later Vitellozzo would end up strangled at Senigallia on the orders of Cesare Borgia, on the night that Machiavelli would recount. But for Contigliano 1501 remained the reference wound, and the town took decades to get back on its feet.

1561 and the second ring of walls

The recovery is documented in 1561, when the town had by then recovered enough to enlarge the first circuit of walls, beyond which in the meantime many houses had sprung up. This is the phase that gives the village its present form: the 16th- and 17th-century palaces, the second curtain of houses, the spiral structure that climbs toward the summit. In that same year, 1561, the Cistercians left the abbey of San Pastore for good, not far away: while the town was growing, the monastery that for three centuries had governed the surrounding lands was leaving the stage. It's not a coincidence, it's a handover between two ways of organizing the territory.

The 18th century of the collegiate church and of Sant'Antonio

The 18th century is the century of stone. Between 1683 and 1747 the collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo is built, and in 1705 the lower church begins to serve as the parish church while work continues above. In 1734 the church of Sant'Antonio di Padova is built just outside Porta dei Santi. In 1748 Adriano and Ranuzio Fedeli build the organ of the collegiate church, and in 1750 Nicola Gennaro completes the decorations of the crypt. A village of a few thousand souls that in half a century equips itself with two Baroque churches and an organ of the Marche school is not a poor village. It is a community that controlled a piece of the most fertile plain in Lazio and wanted people to know it.

Umbria, Lazio, Rieti: the administrative waltz of the 20th century

Few remember it, but until 1923 Contigliano was in Umbria, in the province of Perugia, like the whole district of Rieti. That year it passed to the province of Rome and therefore to Lazio. In 1927, with the creation of the province of Rieti, it entered the new district. In 1928 it was even merged into the municipality of Rieti, and only in 1946 did it become an independent municipality again. In 23 years it changed region, province and municipal status three times. It's a detail that explains many things about the cooking, the accent and the saints: the Rieti basin is a piece of Umbria lent to Lazio, and Contigliano, which looks toward Terni, is more so than others.

October 3, 1936: the railway tragedy

The Contigliano station, opened in 1883, is tied to one of the saddest railway accidents in Italy between the two wars. On the morning of October 3, 1936, at 9:45, on the single track between Rieti and Contigliano, at kilometer 196 of the Terni-Sulmona line, the railcar AT 404, which had left Sulmona at 6:23 and was headed for Terni, collided head-on with the mail van ALDb 201 coming the other way. The two vehicles crumpled into each other. On board the railcar was the entire squad of A.S. L'Aquila, 13 players with officials, coach and masseur, headed for Verona for a Serie B match. At least 15 people died, among them the coach Attilio Buratti and two railwaymen, and there were 69 injured. The player Marino Bon was declared dead and then survived. Only the two suspended players who stayed at home and the goalkeeper Stornelli, who had not woken up in time, were saved. The error was human, attributed in all likelihood to the stationmaster of Rieti. L'Aquila was relegated to Serie C at the end of the season and never returned to Serie B. Since 2016 a plaque on the facade of the passenger building commemorates the tragedy, and every October 3 the L'Aquila fans come to Contigliano to lay flowers.

A curiosity about Contigliano (RI)

The curiosities of Contigliano are not postcard anecdotes. They are strange, verifiable facts that concern water, air, architecture and abandonment, and that, lined up, tell the story of a territory far more complicated than it looks from the road. Here are five, the ones that surprise most people who come up here.

An airport in the middle of reclaimed fields, and a sky full of gliders

The first thing that throws people arriving in the Piana Reatina is seeing, in the middle of the crops, a flight strip. Rieti airport is on the valley floor, on the northern edge of the provincial capital, at an elevation of 390 meters, and it's not a commercial airport. It has two grass runways of 809 meters, one of them reserved for gliders, and is dedicated to sport flying and in particular to gliding. The world championships of 1985 and 2008 were held here, the juniors world championship of 2007, the European championships of 1982, 1994 and 2015, and the Aero Club di Rieti runs the only school authorized in Italy to train gliding instructors. The pilots who frequent the place consider it one of the best sites on the continent. The reason lies entirely in the shape of the land, and it's exactly the same shape that created the ancient lake and the marsh.

It works like this. The floor of the basin is flat, wide, cultivated: in summer it heats up a lot and quickly, and generates bubbles of warm air that rise. These are thermals, the glider pilot's invisible elevator. Around it, the slopes of the Monti Reatini and the mass of Terminillo intercept the wind and produce dynamic slope currents, and in the right conditions also lee waves, the kind that let you gain altitude spectacularly. The combination of plain thermals, slope currents and orographic waves within a small radius is rare, and it turns the Rieti basin into a natural gym where a glider can stay in the air for hours and grind out hundreds of kilometers without a drop of fuel.

The paradox is delightful: the same geographic conditions that for 2,000 years made this basin a hydraulic problem, a closed tub with a choked outlet where the water stagnated, today make it a top-level aeronautical resource. Anyone looking out from the Contigliano viewpoint on a clear day in May or June sees the traffic of gliders climbing, the slow spirals, the gold of the wings when they catch the light from the side. In silence, because a glider makes no noise: it passes and you don't hear it. If you're lucky enough to be in town during a competition, the sky fills in an impressive way and the tow launches follow one another for a whole hour. It's a free show that almost no guide talks about, and for those traveling with kids it's the card to play: the story of the reclamation told on its own is boring, told while watching the gliders that exploit the warm air of the fields drained by Curio Dentato it becomes something else entirely.

The lake that reappears: when the plain becomes what it was again

The second curiosity is seasonal and you have to see it to believe it. The reclamation of the Piana Reatina did not erase the lake. It reduced it and governed it. The hydraulic system that regulates the outflow of the Velino toward the Nera works, but it has limits, and when rainfall is exceptional, or when the melting of the snow on Terminillo and the Monti Reatini is concentrated in a few days, the flow exceeds the capacity to drain it and the plain floods again. Not everywhere, not always to the same extent, but in the lowest areas, near the residual lakes, the main canals, the expansion areas, the water returns. And from Contigliano you see it very well: the green table becomes a mirror in patches, the poplars end up with their feet in the water, the canals widen until they lose their banks.

It's the Lacus Velinus resurfacing. For a few days or a few weeks the basin shows the face it had before 271 BC, and whoever looks from above has the physical sensation of seeing a geographic ghost. It's not a disaster, as a rule: the system is designed to absorb these events, and the controlled flood areas are part of the design. But it's a powerful reminder that that landscape is not given forever, that it's the fruit of continuous maintenance that has lasted 23 centuries, and that if it were interrupted the water would take back its place within a few years. Don't forget that the hamlet of Montisola was an island until the reclamations of the Fascist period: less than 100 years have passed.

The permanent remains of the ancient body of water are still there, and you can visit them: they are the Lungo and Ripasottile lakes, protected in a nature reserve that safeguards what remains of the original wetland and that also includes part of the municipal territory of Contigliano. They're a few kilometers from the town, to the north, and host remarkable birdlife: herons, little egrets, grebes, coots, kingfishers, and during the migrations a variety that delights birdwatchers. Going there after seeing the plain from above closes the circle of the story: first you understand the geography from above, then you touch it from inside. And you also understand why malaria scourged this basin until well into the 20th century, why in 1234 the monks of San Matteo had to move to San Pastore to escape the floods, and why the populations had taken refuge on the hills.

A detail few notice: the place names of the plain are full of references to water. Springs, ditches, fords, islands. Montisola, Piani, Chiuse. There are localities that carry in their name the memory of having been shores or islets, and that today are in the middle of wheat fields. Toponymy is the most honest of witnesses: it forgets less than people do.

An oversized Baroque collegiate church, with an organ from 1748

The third curiosity is architectural. The collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo is out of proportion with the town, and the disproportion is intended. A hill village of the Rieti Sabina, between the end of the 17th century and the middle of the 18th, was not a rich center in absolute terms. Yet here, from 1683 to 1747, a building is constructed with a monumental facade in exposed stone, a wide plan, elaborate interior decoration, which on the scale of the surrounding alleys has the effect of a ship moored in a port that is too small. The reason is found in the title of collegiate church: not just any parish, but a church run by a college of canons, with dignity, income, liturgical obligations and prestige. The collegiate title, in the ecclesiastical organization of central Italy, was a recognition that brought resources and ambition with it, and the ambition was translated into stone. The side chapels still bear the coats of arms of the families that financed them: the church is, literally, a list of patrons.

The interior deserves time, and deserves to be looked at with your head up. The single nave with barrel vault, the white stuccoes enlivened by gold toward the apse, the side chapels like little theater boxes, the high altar in polychrome marbles with the altarpiece of San Michele by Filippo Zucchetti, a painter from Rieti active in the early 18th century. The dominant iconographic theme is the Michaelic one, the Archangel with the sword crushing the dragon, an image of order imposed on chaos that in this basin, where for 20 centuries people tried to impose hydraulic order on a chaos of water, takes on a resonance that goes beyond devotion.

The thing that surprises visitors most, though, is the sound. The organ of the collegiate church was built in 1748 by Adriano and Ranuzio Fedeli, members of an organ-building dynasty from the Marche that worked for generations between the Marche, Umbria and Lazio, and it is housed in a finely carved wooden case. The wooden choir is the work of Venanzio di Nanzio from Pescocostanzo, the Abruzzo woodcarver from the town that gave central Italy whole schools of wood sculptors. When you happen to hear that organ play, during a solemn service or a concert, the effect in a reverberating Baroque space is physical before it is aesthetic: the air moves. If you plan the visit for the patron saint's feast of San Michele, on September 29, or for a music festival, the value of the day changes category. It's worth asking at the parish about the dates, because these are not events that end up on the big circuits.

Another observation: look at the relationship between the facade and the square. There is no room to step back, there is no wide churchyard that would let you take in the facade at a glance. You have to squash yourself against the wall opposite, lift your chin and accept the forced perspective. Is that a defect? No, it's exactly the effect the Baroque sought when it could: the facade looms, the building overwhelms the viewer, the sacred imposes itself. In a city cathedral that effect is lost in the big square. Here, in the alley, it still works.

A Cistercian abbey from 1255, saved by a private owner

The fourth curiosity is the one most often told wrong. A few kilometers from the village, on the provincial road to Greccio, at the locality of Spinacceto, stands the abbey of San Pastore, a Cistercian foundation whose construction began on the morning of May 5, 1255 under the direction of Master Anselmo and abbot Andrea, and whose church was completed in 1264. It's not a generic ruin: it's a monastic complex of considerable size, with a Latin-cross church with three aisles, the cloister, the chapter house with its mullioned windows, the parlor, the sacristy, the abbot's apartment and a bell tower that dominates the plain and also served as an observation post. On the main bell are engraved the year 1292 and the name of the founder, Dominicus Urbevetanus, Domenico of Orvieto. It keeps the typical layout of Cistercian architecture, the kind that comes from Cîteaux and Clairvaux and brings to Italy the idea of a bare, geometric, luminous building, built for silence and for work.

The Cistercians had arrived in the Rieti basin much earlier: in 1137 Bernard of Clairvaux in person sent to Rieti a colony of monks led by abbot Balduino, which settled at San Matteo de Monticulo, in an area that was already Benedictine, on the edge of the marsh. In 1234, because of the unhealthiness caused by the floods of the plain, Cardinal Goffredo Castiglione, future Pope Celestine IV, ratified the transfer to the springs of Santa Susanna, in the San Pastore area, where a farm estate had existed since the 8th century. It's exactly what the Cistercians did everywhere: they took marginal, marshy, wooded land and made it productive with an organization of labor that anticipates modern agriculture by centuries. In 1205 the commune of Rieti had donated to the monastery all the surrounding lands. The link between San Pastore and the reclamation of the plain is not a detail: it's the reason the abbey is where it is.

The later history is that of many Italian monasteries: decline from 1370 through bad administration, the commenda from 1426, the definitive abandonment by the Cistercians in 1561, the arrival of the Canons Regular Lateran in 1580 with the cloister rebuilt in 1638, the division of the property decided in 1582 by the commendatory Marcantonio Colonna, the emphyteusis to the Santacroce-Publicola in 1786, the Napoleonic suppressions of 1799, the sale in 1843 to the Rieti marquises Ludovico and Basilio Potenziani. From that moment the abbey was abandoned and fell into deep decay: the roof collapsed, grass invaded the aisles, frescoes, fireplaces, jambs, doors and even a stone spiral staircase were stolen. The photographs of the nave without a roof, with sky in place of the vault, which still circulate online, date from that phase.

Here is the real curiosity: that ruin is no longer a ruin. In the 1980s the complex was bought by the entrepreneur Antonio Antonacci, who with private resources started the restoration in 1988, today for the most part complete. The abbey has roofs, cloister and halls again, and has become a private historic residence that hosts weddings, meetings, exhibitions and concerts, with rooms overlooking the Valle Santa. The address is via San Bernardo da Chiaravalle, Greccio. It can be visited only after contacting the managers. Whoever arrives expecting the romantic ruin finds a saved monument, whoever arrives expecting a museum with a ticket office finds a gate. The first disappointment is far better than the second: a Cistercian abbey that got its roof back after 140 years of rain is rare news in Italy.

The Way of Francis passes through here, and it's not a detail

The fifth curiosity concerns your feet. The Rieti basin is the Valle Santa, the territory where Francis of Assisi stayed repeatedly between 1209 and 1225 and where four Franciscan sanctuaries of capital importance are concentrated: Greccio, Fonte Colombo, Poggio Bustone and La Foresta. These are the places of the first nativity scene, of the Rule, of forgiveness and of the Canticle, and they form a compact geographic system, all visible from the plain, all reachable on foot. From Contigliano you can see the slopes on which they are perched, and their arrangement like a crown around the basin is one of the things that strikes you most when looking from above.

The Way of Francis links these sanctuaries in a loop that is walked in several stages and that in recent years has become one of the most frequented pilgrimage routes in central Italy, together with Via di Francesco that descends from La Verna to Assisi and continues toward Rome. The abbey of San Pastore is one of the stops marked along Via di Francesco in Lazio, and the stage that joins Greccio to Poggio Bustone passes through the plain at the foot of Contigliano. Walking here means seeing the landscape at the right scale, that of the human pace, and understanding distances that disappear in a car. The sanctuary of Greccio, set into the rock, is the most famous, because there on Christmas night in 1223 Francis staged the representation that would give rise to the nativity scene tradition. Fonte Colombo is the place where in 1223 the Regula bullata was dictated, and it is called the Franciscan Sinai. Poggio Bustone, on the north slope, is the town of "good morning, good people" and of forgiveness, and it dominates the plain from an extraordinary natural balcony.

Contigliano is not one of the four sanctuaries, but it sits inside the system, and that is the key to understanding its position. The town looks at the Valle Santa from the western side, and it is the point from which you see the complete picture. Whoever organizes a Franciscan trip tends to skip it, concentrating on the sanctuaries. That's a mistake, because without an overall view those four places remain four disconnected points, while seen from the viewpoint of a high village they become a single spiritual landscape, the one Francis crossed on foot in a day. For those who read English, the ItalyPlanner guide to the Way of St. Francis places the Valle Santa within the whole system of Italian Franciscan routes.

I'll add a note that walkers need: the trails of the Valle Santa are marked but not always uniformly, the elevation changes are real and in some stretches sustained, and water along the route is not guaranteed everywhere. In summer the middle hours of the day are to be avoided on south-facing slopes. Spring and autumn are the right seasons, and in autumn the woods of these mountains, beeches, hornbeams, downy oaks, give colors that deserve the trip on their own.

Something nobody tells you about Contigliano (RI)

There are things that never make it into tourist pages, because they're inconvenient, because they require long explanations or because they spoil the promise. Better to say them, because a badly prepared trip is a wasted trip and because in a place like this the difference between satisfaction and disappointment depends almost entirely on what you expect. There are five, and they're the most useful things for anyone who starts getting to know the Rieti basin seriously.

The abbey of San Pastore is private: without an appointment you'll find a gate

The first and the most important. If you search for Contigliano online, sooner or later the image of a Gothic church without a roof will appear, with arches holding up the sky and grass inside the nave, and under it will say abbey of San Pastore. It's a magnetic photograph and it produces an immediate effect: I want to go there. What almost nobody tells you is that the photograph is old. Since 1988 the abbey has been the subject of a private restoration, today almost complete, which gave it back its roofs and turned it into a historic residence for events, weddings and conferences, with rooms and a pool. It's not an open archaeological site: it has no ticket office, no public opening hours, no free visiting route, and you enter only after contacting the managers. The address, moreover, isn't even Contigliano: the registered office is in Greccio, at the locality of Spinacceto, and the access road, via San Bernardo da Chiaravalle, is a dirt track that starts from the hamlet of Spinacceto.

This means three very concrete things. The first: before going you have to phone or write, with some advance notice, and ask if a visit is possible, on what day and on what terms. On spring and summer weekends the property is often taken up by ceremonies and the answer may be no. The second: if you find the gate closed on the spot, the gate stands, and it is not an invitation to climb over it. The third: where access is allowed, you behave as in a private house that is also a monument, that is with discretion. Anyone who still wants to see the bell tower and the bulk of the church can do so from the outside, from the road to Greccio, and on a morning of low fog that silhouette emerging from the poplars is worth the detour. But the open-sky nave of the photographs no longer exists, and in our judgment that's good news.

That said, the abbey deserves to be told even to those who can't get in, because understanding what it was explains the territory. Italian Cistercian architecture has strict, recognizable rules: a Latin-cross plan, a square choir, an almost total absence of figurative decoration, plain capitals, light as the only ornament. San Pastore, according to the scholars who have examined it, is an example of a still archaic cut, with a pointed barrel vault over the apse area, round arches in the chapter house and ribbed arches of rectangular section: a severe Gothic, French in origin, which in Italy produces buildings of a mathematical beauty. Fossanova and Casamari in southern Lazio are the two major examples. San Pastore is the younger brother of the same stock, and has in addition a story of rebirth that the two great ones never had to face.

The town is double, and the part you're looking for is not where the road takes you

The second thing nobody says concerns the settlement structure, and it produces more misunderstandings than any other. Contigliano is two towns. There is the historic village on the heights, medieval, with the collegiate church, the gates, the alleys and the viewpoint, and there is the modern built-up area stretched out below along the traffic routes and around the station, where many of the services, the commercial businesses and the houses of recent decades are found. They are two distinct entities, and the daily life of the municipality shifted largely downward over the 20th century, for the elementary reason that the valley floor is convenient, flat and connected, and the upper village is not.

The misunderstanding is this: navigation systems, search engines and generic road directions tend to take you to the most accessible point, which is the lower one. Whoever gets there sees a tidy agricultural outskirt with no particular qualities, looks around, doesn't find anything of what they had read, and concludes that the place was overrated. It's a scene that is often told. The solution is trivial: aim explicitly at the collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo or at Porta dei Santi, and make sure the road climbs. If you're not going up, you're not going where you want to go.

There is, though, a second level, less practical and more interesting. The relationship between high and low isn't only logistical: it's the visible synthesis of a historical transformation. The village on the heights is born when the plain is dangerous, swampy, malarial, exposed to raids, and living high up is the only rational strategy. The lower town is born when the plain becomes safe and productive, that is when the reclamation is complete and malaria is beaten, and then the logic reverses: wealth moves down to the valley, and whoever stays up high loses. Contigliano tells this inversion with textbook clarity, and whoever notices it understands in one stroke the whole history of Apennine settlement in Italy. It's the reason it's worth seeing both parts and not only the most scenic one.

A practical consequence: the upper village is very quiet out of season. On an afternoon in January you might find the alleys deserted, the bar closed, nobody to ask for information. It's not a ghost town, people live there and it has been the subject of restorations and returns, but it's not a tourist center and it doesn't work with the continuity of opening of a place designed for visitors. If you need to eat, a restroom, or to buy something, count on going down. And if you come on a Monday, when in many towns the few businesses close on rotation, the chance of finding everything shuttered goes up.

The Marmore Falls are not always on, and this ruins many days

The third thing is the one that wrecks more excursions than any other in this whole area, and it concerns the destination that almost everyone pairs with a trip in the Rieti area. The Marmore Falls are an artificial work, as we have said, and their waters are used for hydroelectric purposes. This means the drop is not always running: the water is released according to set schedules, which vary by season and by day of the week, and outside those windows the flow is reduced to a trickle. To give a concrete idea, the official park calendar for the second half of September provides for release on weekdays from 11:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 16:00, on weekends from 11:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 18:00. In October, on weekdays, the afternoon release is only one hour. Whoever arrives at 14:00 on a Tuesday in October finds a wall of wet rock instead of the tallest artificial waterfall in Europe.

Nobody ever says it loudly enough, and every year thousands of people make the trip for nothing. The rule is simple: before planning the day you consult the schedule calendar on the park's official website, which explicitly warns that the times may change and must be rechecked right before the visit, you buy the entrance ticket online from the seller indicated by the park authority, and you build the itinerary around the release window, not the other way round. The moment of opening, by the way, is a show in itself: you hear a roar, the water arrives and in a few seconds the drop goes from a rivulet to a cataract, with the cloud of spray rising and the rainbow forming on sunny days. It's worth being there five minutes early and watching it switch on.

I'll add two pieces of information that many people discover only on the spot. The first: the falls have two viewpoints, the upper and the lower, linked by a steep path with a significant elevation change and by a shuttle. It's not a walk for sandals, and in the heat the climb back up is felt. The second: at the lower viewpoint, near the drop, you get truly wet from the spray, and that is delightful in July and unpleasant in November. Bring a light waterproof jacket and protect the camera. From the point of view of Contigliano, the falls are a handful of kilometers away as the crow flies beyond the ridge but must be reached by road, so calculate the real times and not those of the map. For those who read English, the ItalyPlanner guide to the Marmore Falls explains the schedule mechanism well.

The climate of the basin is not that of Rome, and the plain has its pitfalls

The fourth thing concerns the body and weather expectations, and it's gotten wrong mostly by Romans, who tend to consider the Rieti area a sort of extension of the countryside of the capital. It isn't. The Rieti basin is a closed valley floor at an elevation of around 400 meters, surrounded by mountains that exceed 2,000, and it has a clearly more continental climate: cold winters with frequent frosts, persistent fogs in the cold half of the year, hot and muggy summers on the valley floor because of stagnant air, wide daily temperature swings. Contigliano is classified in climate zone E, the same as many mountain localities. On an evening in April or October it can be quite a few degrees colder than in Rome, and whoever left in a T-shirt finds out at the top of the viewpoint with the wind on them.

Then there are the mosquitoes. I say it without beating around the bush because it's one of those things no brochure admits: the Piana Reatina is reclaimed land, that is land that used to be marsh, and it is still crossed by a dense system of canals, ditches and residual bodies of water. On warm evenings from June to September, in the low areas near the water, the mosquitoes are there and there are a lot of them. In the upper village the situation is much better because there is altitude and there is wind, but if you plan an outdoor dinner at a valley-floor farm stay or an evening walk along the lakes, repellent is no exaggeration. It's the same reason malaria scourged this basin until recent times, why the monks of San Matteo fled in 1234, and it's the historical reason why the towns all stand on the hills.

Third pitfall: the fogs. From October to February the valley floor fills with fog with notable frequency, and the fog of the Rieti basin isn't haze, it's a wall. Whoever drives at night or at dawn on the provincial roads of the plain in those months has to go slowly and use fog lights. The roads are narrow, the ditches on the sides are deep and going off the road happens. For the photographer, as I'll say further on, that fog is a gift, but it should be looked at from above and not crossed in a rush. If you sleep down below and want the dawn up high, allow generous times.

Last climate note, a positive one: precisely because the basin is closed and high, summer at altitude is much more livable than in Rome, and this has made the area a vacation destination for generations of Romans. In the evening, from the viewpoint, you can breathe. And the night sky, with contained light pollution and the mountains screening the glow of the cities, is still good: on moonless August nights the Milky Way can be seen with the naked eye. Nobody puts it in the guides because it's not a monument, but it's one of the best things about the place.

Distances here are longer than they seem, and services run by season

The fifth thing is the most banal and the most underestimated. On paper the Rieti basin is small: from Contigliano to Greccio, to Fonte Colombo, to Rieti, to the lakes, everything falls within a circle of 20 kilometers. In reality the roads are hill and mountain provincial roads, with hairpins, narrow stretches, passages through towns, farm vehicles, and the real average speed is low. A transfer that the map estimates at 20 minutes can take 35, and with four transfers in a day the error becomes two hours. Whoever plans here has to multiply the theoretical times by at least one and a half, and has to add the dead time: parking, climbing on foot, finding it open, waiting.

Then there is the question of services, which in small municipalities follow rhythms that city people forget. Bars and restaurants close one day a week on rotation, often Monday. Many town kitchens serve in narrow time windows, and at 14:30 finding something to eat becomes complicated. Fuel stations in the inner areas aren't everywhere and aren't all automated: filling up before leaving Rieti is a good habit. Pharmacies have municipal duty rotas. And tourist information offices, where they exist, have reduced hours out of season. Nothing dramatic, but all to be factored in.

Finally, there is a point that concerns cultural expectations, and I say it with affection for this area: the Rieti Sabina is not organized for mass tourism and does not want to be. You won't find multilingual panels at every corner, audio guides, themed routes marked with the care of a theme park. You'll find a church that opens when there's Mass, an abbey behind a gate, a ghost village at the end of a dirt road, a viewpoint without a kiosk, a bar where someone will tell you a story if you ask for it. This is the substance of the experience. Whoever arrives with the expectations of the major circuit finds that everything is missing. Whoever arrives willing to look finds that everything is there.

The advice I give you for visiting Contigliano (RI)

The main piece of advice is only one and I'll say it right away, before all the others: don't arrive in Contigliano in the middle of the day. Get there early in the morning or in the late afternoon. It's not a photographer's whim: it's the difference between seeing a pretty village and understanding a territory. At noon the plain is crushed under a flat light, the mountains lose their relief, the summer haze mixes everything together and the viewpoint returns a generic panorama. In the two hours after dawn and the two before sunset, instead, the light comes in low, the reclamation canals light up like silver threads, the reliefs of the sanctuaries stand out from the background and the basin shows its structure. Contigliano is a town you look at from inside for 20 minutes and from outside for an hour: the best part of the visit is what you see while standing still.

The right sequence: viewpoint, walls, collegiate church, plain

The second piece of advice is logistical and concerns the sequence. Do things in this order: first the viewpoint, then the walk around the walls with the two gates, then the collegiate church, then the plain. It seems pedantic but there's a reason. If you go up to the viewpoint first, you have in front of you the physical map of everything you'll see afterward: from there you can pick out Rieti, the direction of the falls, the slopes of the sanctuaries, the profile of Terminillo, the airport strip, the lakes. You build the picture. Then you go down into the alleys and the village stops being a labyrinth and becomes a position: you understand why it's there and not elsewhere, why the houses are packed tight, why the gates are two and face opposite directions. Then you go into the church and the Baroque building stops being a whim and becomes the declaration of importance of a community that controlled a piece of that plain. Finally you go down to the valley floor, perhaps by bicycle along the cycle route, and walk over what you looked at from above. Understanding is built this way, from top to bottom. If you do the opposite, you're left with scattered notions.

Just one more thing, not four

Third tip: give it at least a real half day, and pair it with just one other thing, not four. The most frequent fault of people who come to the Rieti area from Rome is greed: they leave at 8, put Greccio, Fonte Colombo, Rieti, Contigliano and the Marmore Falls on the program, and at 7 in the evening they go home with a headache and no distinct memory. The distances look short on the map, but here the roads are mountain and hill provincial roads, and the real times are always longer than expected. If you have only one day, the best pairing is Contigliano plus the reserve lakes, or Contigliano plus a sanctuary, or Contigliano plus Rieti, or, for those who love abandoned places, Contigliano plus Reopasto. Three things are already too many.

Shoes, jacket and cobblestones

Fourth tip, on shoes and the body: the upper village is made of climbs, irregular steps, ancient paving and sloping alleys. It's not tiring in absolute terms, it's not an ascent, but it requires stable footing. Sneakers with a lugged sole are fine, sandals and flip-flops no, heels never. If it rains, or if it rained in the preceding hours, the cobblestones polished by centuries of foot traffic become treacherously slippery, especially on downhill stretches that stay in shade. Bring a windproof jacket: the viewpoint is exposed and the Rieti basin, at an average elevation of 400 meters with mountains of 2,000 meters around, has a much more continental climate than Romans expect. On an April evening it can be 10 degrees colder than in Rome.

The hours of the Contigliano collegiate church have to be asked for at the parish

Fifth tip, and for me it's the one that changes the day most: find out beforehand the opening hours of the church. In villages of this size the churches aren't open continuously: they open for services, early in the morning and in the late afternoon, and stay closed in the middle hours. There's no permanent custodian, no ticket office, no website with a calendar updated to the minute. The correct way to proceed is to ask the parish of San Michele Arcangelo, which is part of the Montepiano Reatino pastoral zone of the diocese of Rieti, or else to calibrate your arrival on the time of a weekday or Sunday Mass. Finding the collegiate church closed after driving 90 kilometers is a disappointment that a phone call can avoid. The same goes for any facility in the area: the Rieti Sabina runs on village rhythms, and whoever adapts to those rhythms gets much more than whoever demands city hours.

Eat here, not in Rome on the way back

Sixth tip, a gastronomic one. The cooking of the Rieti basin is the cooking of rich earth and nearby mountains, and it has a few specialties that really deserve it. Stringozzi, long pasta of water and flour pulled by hand, are dressed with simple, hearty sauces. The beans of the Rieti area, in particular those grown in the wet lands of the plain, are a product of excellence: cooked in tomato sauce, in soup, with pork rinds. Trout, raised in the spring waters and in the canals of the plain, is a local dish to all effects, and in this area it has a history that goes back to the fish wealth of the old lake. The oil of the Sabina is one of the oldest and most awarded oils in Italy, with an olive-growing tradition that in the Tiber part of the province reaches very high levels. And then there are the truffles of the surrounding woods, the meat of the local farms, the pecorino cheeses. A village trattoria here is worth more than many well-rated restaurants in the capital, and costs a fraction.

Talk to people

Seventh tip: talk to people. It applies to many villages, but here in particular, because Contigliano has no structured hospitality apparatus and so everything you learn beyond the plaques you'll know from someone at the bar. Information on where the sunset is best seen, if the abbey is receiving at this time, when the festival is, where you can eat well without booking, which road is closed for works, travels by word of mouth. Just order a coffee and ask a question. In the Sabina people answer willingly and precisely, and often add something you hadn't asked.

Sleep in the area, at least one night

Eighth tip, for those with more time: sleep in the area. Contigliano and the surrounding municipalities have farm stays and small places in country farmhouses, and the difference between a day trip and a stay here is enormous. The two most beautiful things about the Rieti basin, the dawn with low fog that lets only the villages emerge and the night sky still dark in a decent way, can't be seen on a day trip. If you stay overnight, plan an early rise in October or November with a thermos of coffee and the viewpoint: the sea of fog over the plain with the mountains floating is one of the most powerful images Lazio can produce, and it's totally free.

Feasts, festivals and Christmas in the Valle Santa

Ninth tip, on seasons and events. The patron saint's feast of San Michele Arcangelo, on September 29, that of Sant'Antonio di Padova on June 13, the Madonna del Rosario on October 7, the Good Friday procession and sacred representation, the summer festivals and the celebrations of the Franciscan calendar completely change the experience of the village. On a feast day the town fills up, the alleys light up, everything opens, the community comes out of the house. On an afternoon in February, instead, you might meet three people in an hour. Neither experience is wrong, but they are very different, and it helps to know which one you are choosing. Whoever is looking for silence and photography should go out of season. Whoever is looking for village life should aim for a summer weekend or an anniversary. Christmas, with the closeness of Greccio and the nativity scene tradition that involves the whole Valle Santa, is a very special period: the basin fills with living nativity scenes and reenactments, and the temperature drops quite a lot but the atmosphere makes up for it.

Come to understand a basin, not to tick off a monument

10th and last tip, the most important in terms of expectations: come here knowing that Contigliano is not a spectacular destination in the conventional sense. It has no famous castle, no museum that makes news, no recognizable postcard square. What it has is a position, and the position is everything: it's the point from which you read a territory with 23 centuries of hydraulic engineering behind it, a piece of Franciscan history, a geology that produces gliders and fogs, a risen Gothic abbey and a ghost village in the woods. If you arrive with the idea of ticking off a monument, you'll leave indifferent. If you arrive with the idea of understanding a basin, it stays with you for years. Anyone who wants professional support to build this kind of route, with a guide who really knows the territory and a made-to-measure organization for small groups, can look at the private experiences by TourLeaderPro, which also cover days in the Sabina: the difference between seeing and understanding, in places like this, is almost always made by the person who tells the story.

The visit to Contigliano (RI) place by place

The tour of the upper village is done on foot in an hour and a half if you stop to look, and in 20 minutes if you don't, which would be a shame. The recommended order is this: you enter by one gate, climb to the collegiate church, exit by the other, and then go down to the places of the plain and the mountains that complete the municipal territory.

Porta dei Santi and Porta Codarda: the two gates of the walls of Contigliano

The village is surrounded for a good part by medieval defensive walls, and two gates open in the circuit. Porta dei Santi faces southwest, toward the Monti Sabini and the road to Poggio Mirteto, and keeps its original wooden portal. Stop and look at the leaves, the worn wood, the nails, because it's an object that in most Lazio villages disappeared centuries ago. Porta Codarda opens to the northeast, toward the plain and Rieti. The two gates face opposite directions, one toward the mountain and one toward the plain, and this says what the double economy of the town was: woods and sheep farming on one side, reclaimed fields and the city on the other. Where the walls break off, it's the houses themselves, packed one against the other with no gaps, that close the perimeter: it's the curtain of dwellings that gives the village, seen from below, the look of a rampart. The second circuit, the one enlarged in 1561, took in the houses that had grown outside the first. If you look carefully, in some stretches you can read the difference between the older masonry and the 16th-century one.

The alleys, the little stairways and the 16th-century palaces

Once inside, the village presents itself as a system of lanes and stairways that climb with an alternation of arches and little steps toward the upper part. There's no main street in the modern sense: there's a spiral. The 16th- and 17th-century palaces, with their stone portals, framed windows and worn coats of arms, give the whole a statuesque and austere look, very different from the untidy scenic look of other Apennine villages. It's a town that had money between the 16th and the 18th century and put it into its facades. Look for the arches that span the alleys, the old doors with stone lintels, the walls where you can read the layers of different centuries, with reused blocks, infills, walled-up windows. Every walled-up window is a family that left or a tax on openings that someone wanted to save: the social history of the town is written in the walls.

The collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo: facade and bell tower

At the top the square opens, and the collegiate church looms over the square. The gabled facade, in unplastered stone, faces northwest and is divided by a string course into two registers: below the portal, above a rectangular window flanked by volutes and crowned by the triangular pediment. It's a late Baroque design of great sobriety, played entirely on mass and proportion, without statues or redundant decoration: the effect comes from the bare stone, and in this the church is closer to the Umbrian tradition than to the Roman one. The design is attributed to Giovanni Antonio De Rossi, the Roman architect of the mid-17th century author of palazzo Altieri and of the Lancellotti chapel in San Giovanni in Laterano: a big name for a hill village, and an attribution to be taken as such, because De Rossi died in 1695 and the construction lasted until 1747. The attached bell tower, on a square base, has a bell chamber with a single-light window on each side and is covered by a four-pitched roof: it's the tower you see from all over the plain.

The interior of the Contigliano collegiate church: nave, chapels and high altar

The interior is a single nave, with a barrel vault, pilasters that support the cornice and side chapels that open on both sides. At the far end is the presbytery closed by the semicircular apse. The white stuccoes with gilded highlights toward the apse give the luminosity typical of 18th-century churches in central Italy. The side chapels, three per side according to the most widespread description, bear the coats of arms of the donor families that financed the construction: reading those coats of arms means reading the ruling class of Contigliano between 1683 and 1747. The high altar, in polychrome marbles, houses the altarpiece with San Michele Arcangelo by Filippo Zucchetti, a painter from Rieti active in the first decades of the 18th century, who here represents the theme of order defeating chaos. Among the paintings that local sources attribute to the church are an Archangel Gabriel by Zucchetti himself dated 1710, a canvas with San Vincenzo Ferreri by Onofrio Avellino, a Neapolitan painter and pupil of Solimena, which according to tradition depicts the saint's intercession to free the town from wolves (sources vary between 1707 and 1724 for the date), and a Fall of Simon Magus by Francesco Ricci from 1764. The story of the wolves is not folklore: until the 19th century the wolves of the Monti Sabini came down in winter to the gates of the town, and a votive altarpiece that drives them off speaks of an era when the woods were a threat and not a panorama.

The Fedeli organ and the choir of Venanzio di Nanzio

The most precious object in the collegiate church is the organ, built in 1748 by Adriano and Ranuzio Fedeli, with an ebony and ivory keyboard, housed in a carved wooden case. The Fedeli were a family of organ builders from Camerino who worked for generations between the Marche, Umbria and Lazio, and their surviving instruments are considered among the best examples of Italian organ building of the 18th century. Beside it, the wooden choir carved by Venanzio di Nanzio from Pescocostanzo, the Abruzzo town that between the 17th and the 18th century exported carvers all over central Italy. Look at the stalls up close: the quality of the carving is of a higher level than you would expect, and the coherence between the organ case and the choir suggests a single direction of the furnishings. If you're lucky enough to hear the organ, stay: the acoustics of the barrel-vaulted nave are made for that instrument.

The lower church and the crypt decorated by Nicola Gennaro

Under the collegiate church, with access from the Porta dei Santi side, is the lower church, more sober, which served as the parish church from 1705 while work continued above. For 40 years the community prayed in the basement of a church under construction, and this speaks of the determination with which the building site was pushed forward. The crypt was decorated in 1750 by Nicola Gennaro, three years after the consecration of the upper church. It's a space that often stays closed, and it's worth asking at the parish if it's possible to see it: the contrast between the sobriety below and the Baroque machine above is the best way to understand how much the upper church was meant as a spectacle.

The Contigliano viewpoint over the Piana Reatina

From the upper part of the village the view over the plain is the real monument of the town. From here you read everything: the bed of the ancient lake with its straight canals, the Velino, the airport strip, Rieti with its bell tower, the slopes of the Franciscan sanctuaries on the opposite side, Cantalice clinging to the rock, the mass of Terminillo to the east and, to the north, the direction of the Lungo and Ripasottile lakes. With binoculars you can make out gliders taking off and the outlines of the towns. It's the place to stop for at least half an hour, and to come back to at sunset. There's no kiosk, no panoramic table: there's the landscape and that's all, and to me that seems the right formula.

The church of Sant'Antonio di Padova outside Porta dei Santi

Just outside Porta dei Santi is the church of Sant'Antonio di Padova, built in 1734, when the collegiate church was still a building site. The exterior is neoclassical in taste, the interior Baroque, and on the high altar is the canvas with Saint Anthony in prayer before the Christ Child by Girolamo Troppa, the painter from Rocchette in Sabina active between Rome and the province in the second half of the 17th century and in the early years of the 18th, one of the most interesting names in Sabine painting of that period. The saint's feast, on June 13, is one of the three main anniversaries of the parish. It's a church that rarely opens. If you find it open, go in, because Troppa's canvas alone justifies the stop.

The ruins of San Giovanni and San Lorenzo

In the northern area of the historic center are the remains of the former church of San Giovanni, roofless, of which the facade and some very damaged fresco remnants survive. It's the church the town left behind when it built the collegiate church, and its condition honestly tells what happens to a sacred building when the community chooses another. Outside the town, in open countryside, stand the ruins of the church of San Lorenzo, considered the oldest place in the municipal territory: this is where to look for the Contigliano that precedes incastellamento, that of the scattered estates and rural churches that come before the walled village. They are two places for those who love layers, not for those looking for a finished monument, and they should be seen with respect because the masonry has not been made safe.

The Contigliano station and the lower part of the town

Descending from the village you reach the modern built-up area and the railway station, about a kilometer and a half from the historic center. The passenger building of 1883 bears on its facade the plaque that commemorates the tragedy of October 3, 1936 and the L'Aquila team. It's a five-minute stop, but it's one of the few Italian stations that are also a place of sporting memory, and every year, on October 3, the L'Aquila fans come here to lay flowers. Around it, the lower part of Contigliano is a plain town with services, shops, through traffic: it has no monumental attractions, but it's the place where you eat, fill up with gas and buy bread.

Terria and the castle transformed by Valadier

In the hamlet of Terria, at 387 meters, stands the so-called castle of Terria, today villa Varano. The building was perhaps originally a 15th-century rural residence, transformed into a villa in the 17th century by the Vincentini family, the same family as the bishop Ippolito Vicentini who in 1683 blessed the first stone of the collegiate church. In the 19th century the architect Giuseppe Valadier, the author of piazza del Popolo in Rome, renovated it for count Giacinto Vincenti Mareri and had the artificial hill on which it stands built, to protect it from the floods of the Velino. It's a detail that says more than a thousand pages about how dangerous the plain still was in the early 19th century. In the 20th century the property passed to the Varano family. It's a private residence and is viewed from the outside. But knowing that Valadier worked in a hamlet of Contigliano to defend a villa from the water is one of those pieces of information that change how you look at the plain.

Collebaccaro, Mattia Battistini and the Conservatory

In Collebaccaro, another hamlet, the baritone Mattia Battistini, one of the most celebrated voices of Italian opera between the 19th and 20th centuries, had a property, and today that building houses a branch campus of the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia of Rome. A conservatory in a hamlet of 3,600 inhabitants is a beautiful anomaly, and at certain times of the year the teaching activity produces concerts and recitals open to the public: it's worth asking.

Montisola, the island that is no more

Montisola is the hamlet that carries its history in its name: a hill of 434 meters that, until the reclamations of the Fascist period, was surrounded by water, and that 3,000 years earlier hosted the lake village identified with the Issa of the Aborigines. Today it's a rise in the middle of fields. There's no equipped archaeological site, and whoever goes there finds a hill and a view. But it's the right place to understand, with your feet, what the Lacus Velinus was, and to imagine the pile dwellings where poplars grow today.

Reopasto, the ghost village of Contigliano in the Monti Sabini

The most singular place in the municipal territory is Reopasto, also called Repasto, an abandoned hamlet among the scrub of the Monti Sabini, not far from provincial road 1, which carries its name. The village has early medieval origins, from the 10th century, and developed around a castle founded by the Counts of the Marsi, the great comital family that dominated inner Abruzzo and the Sabina, and ceded by them in 1069 to the monastery of Farfa. For centuries it was a town like the others, with its church and its families. In the 1960s it was still inhabited by about 20 families, who over the course of the decade left it one after another for the nearby centers and for the city: the same emigration that emptied the Apennines, here it went all the way.

Today Reopasto is a ghost town in miniature. You can still see the 18th-century church of Sant'Andrea, stripped of furnishings, a looted manor building with traces of damaged paintings, houses with caved-in roofs and vegetation coming in through the windows. You reach it from SP 1, between Limiti di Greccio and Piè di Moggio: after passing the Chiuse di Reopasto, after about a kilometer a dirt road on the right leads in 200 or 300 meters to the village. Access is free, but the buildings are unstable and you shouldn't get too close to the structures, or enter the houses. It's a half-hour visit, silent, which I recommend to those who want to understand what depopulation really means and to those who photograph. I advise against it with small children and after rain. It's the exact opposite of San Pastore: there a monument that was saved, here a town that nobody saved. Seeing them on the same day is a lesson on the fate of places.

The abbey of San Pastore, room by room

The abbey develops around the cloister, in the form restored in 1638 by the Lateran Canons, and includes the church, the chapter room, the parlor, the sacristy and the abbot's apartment. Toward the east a small Baroque apartment was built in 1686 by Cardinal Fulvio Astalli. The church has no real facade: the main entrances are on the north and south sides, according to a solution that in Cistercian complexes favors the connection with the cloister over a presence on the road. The plan is a Latin cross, divided into three aisles by quadrangular piers, each originally covered by five round-arched bays, of which those of the right aisle survive. The transept is large, following the Cistercian tradition of separating the monks' space from that of the faithful, and the choir is square, flanked by the only chapels of the church. The church contained a 16th-century painting of the Crucifixion with the Magdalene, the Virgin, Saint Thomas, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Matthew, which the Rieti historian Sacchetti Sassetti attributed to the Veronese brothers Lorenzo and Bartolomeo Torresani and which Palmegiani linked to the Umbrian-Roman school. It was transferred by the Potenziani to a chapel of their own. At the beginning of the 20th century Giuseppe Colarieti Tosti restored the surviving frescoes.

The chapter room is the most beautiful space: it is entered through a pointed-arch door, has two mullioned windows and a ceiling of large cross vaults resting on corbels instead of counter-pilasters, with traces of votive frescoes of the 14th century. The abbot's apartment, originally the monks' dormitory, was transformed in 1534 by Cardinal Agostino Spinola, commendatory abbot from 1518 to 1537, into a personal residence, decorated with festoons and joyful scenes. Doors with stone lintels and remains of ornamental frescoes survive, while a precious fireplace was stolen during the abandonment. The bell tower, at the back of the church, dominates the plain and also had an observation and defense function: the main bell, from 1292, bears the name of the founder Dominicus Urbevetanus. In the 16th century the relics of Saint Balduino, the first abbot, were taken to the cathedral of Rieti. All this can be seen only by appointment, and on special openings such as the historic residences days. Anyone who has the chance to go in should remember that they have in front of them the only Cistercian abbey of the Rieti basin, and one of the few in Italy that have got their roof back.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

The fact is this: Contigliano was Umbrian for the whole history of unified Italy until 1923, and for 18 years, from 1928 to 1946, it was not even a municipality. Everyone in town knows it and anyone who has studied the administrative geography of Lazio knows it, but it never appears in tourist pages, and yet it explains Contigliano better than any description of the collegiate church. Until 1923 the district of Rieti belonged to the province of Perugia: the Rieti basin, the Valle Santa, Terminillo were Umbria, and the Sabina properly speaking ended much earlier. In 1923 the government detached the district and assigned it to the province of Rome, therefore to Lazio. In 1927 the province of Rieti was born and Contigliano entered it. In 1928, in the Fascist campaign of merging small municipalities, it was merged into the municipality of Rieti, and only in 1946, with the Republic, did it become autonomous again.

Why does it matter? Because the cooking, the accent, the devotions, the structure of the towns and even the railway of this basin look to Terni and Spoleto far more than to Rome. The railway line serving Contigliano is the Terni-Rieti-L'Aquila-Sulmona, not a Roman line. Until the early 2000s you could reach Perugia from Contigliano on a direct train from L'Aquila to Perugia Sant'Anna, now discontinued. Stringozzi are Umbrian, the beans are Umbrian, the oil of the Sabina is something different from the oil of the Rieti area. When Romans come up here and find a different climate, different hours and a different way of speaking, the explanation is simple: they are in a land that was Umbria until a century ago and that Lazio received as a dowry along with the youngest province in the region.

There is a second well-known and rarely cited fact, which concerns the air. The world gliding championships have been held twice at Rieti airport, in 1985 and 2008, plus the European championships of 1982, 1994 and 2015 and the juniors world championship of 2007: the basin you look at from the Contigliano viewpoint is, for the international community of glider pilots, one of the best-known names in the world, on a par with Alpine and Australian sites. Ask a German or Polish glider pilot if they know Rieti: the answer is yes, and with some enthusiasm. Ask a Roman: the answer is no. It's one of those asymmetric notorieties that say a lot about how a territory is perceived from outside and ignored up close.

And there is a third fact, a cinematic one, for those who like light curiosities: some scenes of the film Il vegetale, from 2018, with Fabio Rovazzi, were shot in the municipal territory of Contigliano. It's not a title that will change the history of cinema, but it's proof that the plain, with its lights and its farmhouses, also works as a set. Before him the Rieti basin had already attracted painters, draftsmen and 19th-century travelers headed to the Marmore Falls: the movie camera is only the latest instrument with which someone has tried to fix this landscape.

The right photo to take in Contigliano (RI)

The right photo in Contigliano is not the church. I say it right away because instinct takes everyone in the same direction: you arrive, you see the stone facade looming over the square, you pull out your phone and shoot. The result is almost always disappointing, for a precise technical reason: the space in front of the collegiate church is narrow, it doesn't let you step back far enough, and the phone lens distorts the verticals, making the building fall backward. You get a crooked facade, with a burnt-out sky at the top and the paving in the foreground. The church should be photographed, of course, but it isn't the image you take home.

The two shots that tell Contigliano

The right photo is the upper village seen from below, with the plain in front, or, in the symmetrical and equally valid version, the plain seen from the upper village, with a piece of the town in the foreground. These are the two shots that tell the only thing that matters about this place: the relationship between the hill and the valley floor, between stone and reclaimed water, between the defensive position and the land won from the water. If one photo alone has to say what Contigliano is, it has to contain both things.

Let's start with the first. Going down toward the valley floor along the road that links the upper village to the lower part, and continuing on the country lanes of the plain or along the cycle route, you move away just enough to see the town in profile, resting on its hill, with the bell tower sticking up over the houses and the curtain of dwellings forming a kind of rampart. The right moment is late afternoon, when the sun comes from the west and lights the front of the town with warm light. At that moment the houses, which are of stone and pale plaster, take on a golden color that separates them from the green of the fields and the blue of the mountains behind. If in the foreground you manage to put an element of the reclamation, a canal, a row of poplars, a ditch, a row of vines, the photo gains depth and tells the whole story. With a moderate telephoto lens, or with the phone's zoom used without overdoing it, the perspective is compressed and Terminillo looks closer than it is. It's an effect that works very well here, because it gives back the real sensation of a basin closed in by mountains.

The second shot is taken from the viewpoint of the upper village and is the one that best sums up Contigliano. The rule for not getting it wrong is only one: don't photograph only the panorama. A green plain with mountains in the background, with nothing in the foreground, is a flat, anonymous image that could be anywhere in Italy. You need an anchor: a corner of wall, a parapet, an arch, a tiled roof, an iron lamp post, a branch. Put the architectural element on one side or in the low corner of the frame, let it take up a quarter of the shot, and the landscape behind will stop floating. It's the difference between a generic postcard and a photograph that has a place.

Dawn light, fog and sunset on the Piana Reatina

On light: the plain is oriented in such a way that early mornings are extraordinary for sharpness and late afternoons for color. At dawn, especially in autumn and winter, fog gathers on the valley floor and lets the reliefs emerge: you get that kind of image, much sought after, in which the villages and mountains look like islands on a white sea. It's a frequent phenomenon from October to January on high-pressure days after a cold, damp night, and in Contigliano it can be seen particularly well because the town is high enough to stay above the fog. If you have the chance to sleep in the area, that is reason number one to do it. The useful window is short, between first light and 9 in the morning: after that, the sun melts everything.

At sunset the scene changes. The sun sets behind the western reliefs, toward the Valnerina and the Marmore, and the light comes in low over the plain from behind the shoulders of whoever looks from the viewpoint. At that moment the canals reflect the sky and become luminous lines in the middle of the green, the slopes of the Franciscan sanctuaries on the opposite side of the basin light up and Terminillo takes on a rosy tone that lasts a few minutes. It's the hour when the photograph makes itself, but you have to be on the spot already: the useful window is 12 or 15 minutes, and whoever climbs up at that moment arrives when it's over.

The rare photo: a glider above the Contigliano bell tower

Then there is the special photo, the one very few people have: the glider. On flying days, and there are many from April to September, gliders climb in spirals above the plain and pass at different altitudes. Managing to frame one of these white profiles above the landscape of the basin, perhaps with the bell tower of the collegiate church in the foreground, is a photograph nobody else has, because it takes patience and the luck of the moment. You need a telephoto lens or at least a decent zoom, you need a short exposure time and you need to know how to wait. If you succeed, you have in a single image the hydraulic, architectural and aeronautical history of this territory. The other two unconventional photographs of the territory are the bell tower of San Pastore emerging from the poplars on a foggy morning, seen from the road to Greccio, and the facade of the church of Sant'Andrea at Reopasto with the woods swallowing it: two images of abandonment and rebirth that go well in sequence.

Technical tips for the phone and for the alleys

A technical tip on the phone, because most of you will be shooting with that. In high-contrast landscapes, shaded plain and bright sky, or sunset backlight, the phone tends to blow out the highlights or muddy the shadows. The solution is to tap the screen on an intermediate point, not on the sky and not on the deep shadow, and then slightly reduce the exposure with the slider that appears next to the focus square. A slightly underexposed frame can be recovered. One with a burnt-out sky cannot. And turn off the extreme wide angle if you're photographing architecture: it's handy in narrow alleys but it distorts walls noticeably.

Inside the village, the best photographs are not the monuments but the details and the perspectives. The uphill alleys that twist, with the staircase that turns and disappears. The arches that span the street. The wooden portal of Porta dei Santi. The old doors with stone lintels. The walls where you can read the layers. Look for backlit shots in covered passages: a dark alley that opens onto a rectangle of light with the plain in the background is an image that always works. And look for vertical framing, because the village is built upward and the horizontal format doesn't render it.

Last recommendation, one of manners before technique: in small villages the houses are houses, not stage sets. The windows overlook alleys two meters wide and people live there. Avoid pointing the lens into open doorways, ask before photographing people, and don't turn a Sunday in the village into a film set. It applies everywhere, but in towns where tourists are few it applies double. If you then want the other face of the same basin, the town climbing up the rock to be photographed backlit, make a quick trip to Cantalice, on the other side of the plain: its silhouette at sunset is among the most photogenic in Lazio, and put in sequence with Contigliano it tells the basin from both sides.

Some important events that happened here in history

Here, in a row, are the dates that matter, because in a territory like this the chronology is more eloquent than any adjective. These are documented events, distinct from those that belong to tradition, and whoever keeps them in mind while walking around the village sees a different town.

271 BC: the cut at Marmore drains the lake below Contigliano

The consul Manius Curius Dentatus has the Cavo Curiano dug into the travertine threshold of Marmore and the Lacus Velinus begins to recede. It's not an event that happened in Contigliano, it's an event that happened below Contigliano: without that cut there would be no plain, there would be no lands of Quintilianus, there would be no town on the hill to look at them. In 54 BC the dispute with Terni comes before the consul Appius Claudius Pulcher with Cicero as advocate for the people of Rieti: two millennia of hydraulic litigation begin here.

850: the Fundus Quintilianus enters the registers of Farfa

The first document with the name of the place is a deed of the abbey of Farfa from 850. From this moment Contigliano has a written date of birth. In 1069 the Counts of the Marsi cede the castle of Reopasto to Farfa, and in 1157 the Castrum Quintilianum appears, the walled town that depends on Rieti.

1137 and 1234: the Cistercians arrive and then flee the marsh

In 1137 Bernard of Clairvaux sends to Rieti a colony of monks led by abbot Balduino, who settle at San Matteo de Monticulo. In 1205 the commune of Rieti gives them all the surrounding lands. In 1234 the floods of the plain, caused by the obstruction of the Cava Curiana, make the place unlivable and Cardinal Goffredo Castiglione, future Celestine IV, authorizes the transfer to San Pastore, near the springs of Santa Susanna. It is the documentary proof that, 13 centuries after Curio Dentato, the lake had regained ground.

May 5, 1255: the first stone of San Pastore

On the morning of May 5, 1255, under abbot Andrea and with the direction of Master Anselmo, construction of the abbey of San Pastore begins. The church is completed in 1264, the main bell is cast in 1292 by Domenico of Orvieto. In the same decades Rieti is several times the seat of the papal Curia: Honorius III, Gregory IX, Nicholas IV and Boniface VIII stay there, and in 1234 Gregory IX canonizes Dominic de Guzmán there. The Rieti basin, for not brief periods, is the political center of Western Christendom, and the abbey under construction at the foot of Contigliano is one of its building sites.

August 7, 1501: the sack by Vitellozzo Vitelli

The castle of Contigliano denies provisions to the army of Vitellozzo Vitelli marching toward L'Aquila for Alexander VI. A stone hits the commander. The castle is taken by assault and the mercenaries massacre citizens. It is the darkest event in the history of the town, and the fact that in 1561 the community was able to enlarge the walls says how long it took to recover.

1683 and 1747: the collegiate church from first stone to consecration

Bishop Ippolito Vicentini blesses the first stone in 1683. In 1705 the lower church begins to function as the parish church. In 1734 Sant'Antonio is built outside Porta dei Santi. In 1747 bishop Antonino Serafino Camarda consecrates the collegiate church. In 1748 the Fedeli install the organ. In 1750 Nicola Gennaro finishes the crypt. 67 years of building sites for a hill village.

1843: the Potenziani buy San Pastore and the abbey dies

The Rieti marquises Ludovico and Basilio Potenziani acquire the entire complex, the commendatory part from the Apostolic Camera and the one in emphyteusis from the Santacroce-Publicola. From that moment the abbey is abandoned: roofs collapse, frescoes, fireplaces, jambs, doors and a stone spiral staircase disappear. The century and a half of the ruin begins.

October 30, 1883: the railway arrives

With the opening of the Rocca di Corno-Terni section the Terni-Rieti-L'Aquila-Sulmona line is completed and Contigliano has a station. For a town that until then was reached on horseback or on foot from the plain, it's the door to the world: from here, until the early 2000s, you went directly to Perugia.

October 3, 1936: the railway collision and the L'Aquila team

At 9:45, at kilometer 196, the railcar AT 404 and the mail van ALDb 201 collide head-on on the single track. At least 15 dead, 69 injured, the coach Attilio Buratti among the victims, A.S. L'Aquila decimated and relegated. The 2016 plaque on the station commemorates it.

March 27, 1938 and 1952: Rieti airport, destroyed and reborn

The Giuseppe Ciuffelli airport is inaugurated on March 27, 1938 next to the ORLA aeronautical plant. In 1944 Allied bombings destroy everything. In 1952 the reconstruction promoted by General Mario Stanzani reopens it. Since then the basin has been the Italian capital of gliding: world championships in 1985 and 2008, European championships in 1982, 1994 and 2015.

1960s: Reopasto empties

The last 20 families leave the village of Reopasto over the course of the decade. It is the quietest event on this list and perhaps the most representative: the Apennines emptying out make no noise.

1988: the recovery of San Pastore begins

The entrepreneur Antonio Antonacci, who bought the abbey in the 1980s, starts the restoration work with private resources. A century and a half after the abandonment, the abbey will have its roofs again. Whoever knows the fate of Italy's rural ecclesiastical heritage knows how rare that is.

Who has passed through Contigliano (RI)

Contigliano is not a place you find in the manuals with a name on it. There is no emperor who built his villa here, no famous painter who painted his masterpiece here, no poet who set his novel here. But it would be a mistake to conclude that nobody has passed through: this basin was crossed by some of the most important figures of Roman, medieval and modern history, and Contigliano sits exactly in the middle of that passage. Let's see who, and with what title.

Manius Curius Dentatus and Cicero

The first name, and in a certain sense the most decisive, is Manius Curius Dentatus. Consul three times, victor over the Samnites and the Sabines, protagonist of the victory over Pyrrhus at Beneventum in 275 BC, he is the man who in 271 BC ordered the cut of the Marmore threshold. It's no exaggeration to say that without him the landscape you see from the Contigliano viewpoint would not exist: there would be water. Curio Dentato belongs to that generation of Romans of the middle Republic whom tradition turned into a model of sobriety, with the legend that has him cooking turnips on his hearth while he refuses the gold of the Samnite ambassadors, and it is significant that his most lasting monument is not a battle but a public work. The second name is Marcus Tullius Cicero, who in 54 BC pleaded the cause of the people of Rieti against the inhabitants of Interamna before the consul Appius Claudius Pulcher and 10 legates: the people of Rieti wanted to keep the outflow that kept their basin dry, the people of Interamna complained of the floods downstream. It's one of the very few cases in which we can say with certainty that a great protagonist of Roman history looked at this plain with the eye of a professional called to solve a problem.

Varro, Virgil and Quintilian

Marcus Terentius Varro, the most learned of the Romans according to Quintilian, was born in Rieti in 116 BC and in the De re rustica describes with an agronomist's competence the sheep farming and agriculture of these fields, where his family had lands. Publius Vergilius Maro, in the seventh book of the Aeneid, mentions the Rosea rura Velini, the rosy fields of the Velino, and for centuries the literati who passed through here arrived with Virgil in their heads. And then there is Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, the rhetorician, whose name the town carries transformed: that he really had a villa here is tradition, not document, but it's a tradition that has lasted many centuries and that the Farfa records of 850, with their Fundus Quintilianus, make at least plausible in the name if not in the person.

Francis of Assisi and the papal Curia

Then there is the name that in the Rieti basin weighs more than all the others put together: Francis of Assisi. Between 1209 and 1225 Francis stayed repeatedly in this valley, and there are reasons to think he came back willingly: the basin was near the Curia when it resided in Rieti, it was crossed by routes of communication, and it had that character of mountain solitude suited to retreat. At Poggio Bustone he had the experience of forgiveness. At Fonte Colombo, in 1223, he dictated the Regula bullata, the one approved by Honorius III, and years later he underwent the cauterization of his eyes there. At Greccio, on Christmas night 1223, he staged the representation of the Nativity that is the origin of all the nativity scenes in the world. At La Foresta, according to tradition, the miracle of the grapes took place. These are four places visible from the same plain that Contigliano dominates, and Francis crossed them on foot: those distances, which today are covered in 20 minutes by car, were days of walking. With Francis came the Curia too: in the 13th century Rieti was a papal seat on several occasions, Honorius III, Gregory IX, Nicholas IV and Boniface VIII stayed in the city, and in 1234 Gregory IX canonized Dominic de Guzmán there. In the 13th century the Rieti basin, and therefore the territory of Contigliano that is part of it, was for not brief periods at the political center of Christendom.

Bernard of Clairvaux, Balduino and the cardinals of San Pastore

The Cistercians aren't a single name but a collective subject, and at San Pastore they left the most visible mark. It was Bernard of Clairvaux in person, in 1137, who sent to Rieti the colony led by abbot Balduino, whose relics rest today in the cathedral of Rieti. Then came the cardinals and the commendatories: Goffredo Castiglione, who authorized the transfer of 1234 and became Pope Celestine IV for 17 days in 1241. Agostino Spinola, abbot from 1518 to 1537, who in 1534 had the frescoed apartment made for himself. Marcantonio Colonna, commendatory abbot, who in 1582 divided the property. Fulvio Astalli, who in 1686 added the Baroque apartment. The order of Cîteaux was one of the great engines of transformation of the European landscape: where the white monks arrived, the marshes were drained and the granges organized production. The abbey of San Pastore is a chapter of that continental history written in this plain.

Vitellozzo Vitelli, the Vicentini and Valadier

Vitellozzo Vitelli passed through Contigliano on August 7, 1501 in the worst way, and the town remembers him for the massacre. The Vicentini, or Vincentini, are instead the family that left the most positive traces: bishop Ippolito blessed the first stone of the collegiate church in 1683 and the family turned the residence of Terria into a villa in the 17th century. Giuseppe Valadier, the architect of piazza del Popolo and the Pincio, worked in the 19th century at Terria itself for count Giacinto Vincenti Mareri, raising the villa on an artificial hill to defend it from the floods of the Velino: it's the most illustrious passage of Roman architecture through these hamlets, and almost nobody knows it.

The water engineers: Sangallo, Fontana, Vici

In the modern age the basin attracts engineers and architects. The hydraulic problem of the Velino becomes a technical question of note, and leading names work on it: Antonio da Sangallo the Younger for Paul III in 1545, with the Cava Paolina. Giovanni Fontana for Clement VIII, with the Cava Clementina inaugurated in 1598. Andrea Vici for Pius VI, with the arrangement of 1787 that gave the falls their present appearance. It's worth remembering this while looking at the plain: that regular surface is the result of a technical debate that lasted two millennia, with contributions from some of the greatest engineers in Italian history.

Byron, the Grand Tour travelers and Mattia Battistini

In the 19th century the Grand Tour travelers arrive, and with them painters and draftsmen. The Marmore Falls become a fixed stop on the Romantic itinerary, visited by Lord Byron and by crowds of English, Germans and French in search of the sublime. The Rieti basin, which is the hydrological premise of the falls, enters by reflection into travel literature, often as a landscape of transit. In the 20th century the voice arrives: Mattia Battistini, the baritone whom his contemporaries called the king of baritones, sang all over Europe and in Russia, and chose Collebaccaro, a hamlet of Contigliano, for a property of his, where today a branch of the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia is based. That one of the greatest voices of Italian opera left a music school as a legacy to a hamlet of this municipality is one of the most beautiful things that can be said about Contigliano.

The L'Aquila footballers, the glider pilots and the walkers

On October 3, 1936 they passed through Contigliano, and stopped there forever, the coach Attilio Buratti and the traveling companions of the L'Aquila team. In the postwar period the basin has passed under the eyes of generations of glider pilots from all over the world, who came here for the world championships of 1985 and 2008 and for the European ones: the gliding community has a mental geography of its own, and Rieti in that geography is a big name. And then there are the walkers. The Way of Francis in recent years has brought tens of thousands of people on foot into this valley, and this is perhaps the form of passage most faithful to the history of the place. A basin that for 20 centuries has been crossed by those who tried to govern its waters, by those who preached barefoot here and by those who flew over it in silence, is crossed today mostly by those who walk it with a backpack. There is no better way to enter a geography.

Contigliano (RI) with children and for those who have difficulty walking

With children Contigliano works as long as you change the story. The collegiate church bores them in three minutes. Gliders don't. The Roman reclamation told at the viewpoint, with the plain below and a glider circling, becomes a story of engineers, vanishing lakes and planes without engines, and it holds up. Reopasto, for kids from 10 years old up, is a strong experience: a real town, abandoned by real people 60 years ago, with the empty church and the open houses. But it has to be done holding them by the hand and without entering the buildings. With the youngest, the lakes reserve is better, with the herons and the flat paths, or the cycle route of the basin. A stroller doesn't work in the upper village: stairs, paving, slopes. A baby carrier backpack solves everything.

For those with mobility difficulties, the essential point is that you can get by car very close to the collegiate church square and the viewpoint, and that the square is flat: the view over the basin and the facade of the church are accessible with minimal effort. The inner alleys, with the stairways, and access to the lower church are not. The collegiate church has a few steps at the entrance. Reopasto is ruled out, San Pastore must be asked about with the managers. The lakes reserve has level paths and is the most inclusive choice in the territory.

What to eat in Contigliano (RI) and in the Rieti basin

The cooking of this basin is Umbrian by history and Lazio by administration, and you can tell. Stringozzi, or strengozzi, are the home pasta: water and flour, pulled by hand, thick, to be dressed with tomato and sausage sauces, with truffle from the nearby woods when in season, or with a meat ragù. Beans are the crop of the reclaimed plain, and in the Rieti area they are a serious matter: they are eaten stewed, in soup with pork rinds, with pasta. Trout from the spring waters and the canals is the local fish, heir to the fish wealth of the old lake, and is found grilled or in guazzetto. Salt cod, as throughout the inner Apennines where sea fish did not reach, is a feast dish. The cheeses are mountain pecorinos. The oil is that of the Sabina, among the oldest in Italy, better in the Tiber part of the province than here. For desserts, the tradition is that of ring cakes and dry biscuits for dunking. Where to eat: in the town's trattorias, upper and lower, and in the farm stays of the plain. I don't cite names, because in so small a municipality the management changes and the best thing is to ask at the bar in the square. The rule: eat here, at midday, and don't wait to get back to Rome.

What to see around Contigliano (RI) within 20 kilometers

Contigliano is the key to reading a wider area, and it should be used that way. Seven kilometers away is Rieti, with its walled center, the papal palace, the cathedral, the Roman bridge over the Velino and the navel of Italy in the square. To the north, the Lungo and Ripasottile lakes reserve preserves what remains of the Lacus Velinus, with herons, grebes and kingfishers. On the opposite side of the basin, Cantalice is the vertical town clinging to the rock, and Rivodutri, with the springs of the Santa Susanna, tells the landscape of water. The Franciscan sanctuaries close the circle: Greccio of the first nativity scene, Fonte Colombo of the Rule, Poggio Bustone of forgiveness, La Foresta of the Canticle. To the east Terminillo, the mountain of Rome, with its slopes and its trails. Beyond the ridge to the northwest, the Marmore Falls, which are the hydraulic terminus of the whole story told here. To the south, along via Tancia, the Sabina of the villages: Poggio Mirteto, Casperia, Roccantica, Torri in Sabina and the abbey of Farfa, the monastery that in 850 wrote the name of Contigliano for the first time. To the east, beyond Antrodoco, the road climbs toward Leonessa and Amatrice. For those who have a week, the artificial lakes of Turano and Salto complete the picture of the governed waters of the Rieti area. None of these destinations is more than an hour away, and almost all are half an hour.

When to go to Contigliano (RI) and when to avoid it

Spring, from April to June: the best season, with the plain green, the ditches full, residual snow on Terminillo and gliders in the air on thermal days. Autumn, October and November: the second best season, for the dawn fogs, the colors of the woods on the Monti Sabini and the feast of San Michele on September 29 as a doorway in. Winter: cold, frosts, fog on the valley floor. But days of absolute clarity, Terminillo white and, at Christmas, the nativity scenes of the Valle Santa. Summer: muggy on the valley floor, with mosquitoes near the canals. Livable at altitude in the evening, with the starry sky. To avoid: the middle hours of summer days, Mondays out of season because of business closures, and days of pelting rain, which make the cobblestones of the village and the dirt road to Reopasto inadvisable. The Marmore Falls schedule, if you pair it, rules over the rest of the day.

Quick questions about Contigliano (RI)

Where is Contigliano and how many kilometers is it from Rome?

Contigliano is in the province of Rieti, seven kilometers west of the provincial capital, on the southwestern edge of the Piana Reatina. From Rome it is about 90 kilometers via the Salaria and the Rieti-Terni expressway, a good hour and a half outside rush hour.

How much does it cost to visit Contigliano (RI)?

Nothing. The village, the walls, the gates, the viewpoint and the collegiate church can be visited for free. You pay only for the Marmore Falls, if you pair them, and for any visit arranged at the abbey of San Pastore, on the managers' terms.

How long does a visit to Contigliano take?

Two hours for the upper village at an easy pace. Half a day if you add Reopasto or the lakes. A whole day with Rieti or a sanctuary. It makes no sense to come for 20 minutes.

How do you get to Contigliano without a car?

By Cotral bus from Roma Tiburtina to Rieti and then by suburban services to Contigliano. By train from Rome to Terni and then on the Terni-Rieti line to the Contigliano station, a kilometer and a half from the center. On Sundays the runs are greatly reduced: check the schedules before leaving.

Is there a train station in Contigliano?

Yes, on the Terni-Rieti-L'Aquila-Sulmona line, opened in 1883, served by regional trains. From Rome there is no direct train: you change at Terni.

Where do you park in Contigliano (RI)?

In the pull-offs along the road that climbs to the upper village and in the wide spot at the top. The inner alleys can't be driven. On patron saint feast days it's best to leave the car below and walk up.

Is the collegiate church of San Michele Arcangelo always open?

No. It opens at the times of services, in the morning and in the late afternoon, and stays closed in the middle hours. Ask at the parish or time your arrival around a Mass. There is no ticket.

What is there to see inside the Contigliano collegiate church?

The Baroque single nave with stuccoes, the chapels with the family coats of arms, the high altar in polychrome marbles with the San Michele by Filippo Zucchetti, the 1748 organ by Adriano and Ranuzio Fedeli in its carved case and the wooden choir by Venanzio di Nanzio from Pescocostanzo. Below, the lower church with the crypt decorated in 1750.

Can you visit the abbey of San Pastore?

Only by appointment with the managers: it is a restored private historic residence, used for weddings and events, with rooms. The address is via San Bernardo da Chiaravalle, in the locality of Spinacceto di Greccio. Without an appointment you see it only from the outside.

Is the abbey of San Pastore still a ruin?

No. It was abandoned from 1843 and the roofs collapsed, but since 1988 a private restoration has recovered it almost entirely. The photographs of the open-sky nave that circulate online predate the restoration.

How do you get to Reopasto, the ghost village of Contigliano?

From provincial road 1, between Limiti di Greccio and Piè di Moggio: after passing the Chiuse di Reopasto, after about a kilometer a dirt road on the right leads to the village in 200 or 300 meters. Access is free, but the buildings are unstable: do not enter the houses.

Is Contigliano (RI) suitable for children?

Yes, if you focus on the viewpoint, the gliders and the lakes reserve. The upper village is made of stairs: stroller not recommended, baby carrier backpack recommended. Reopasto only with older kids held by the hand.

Is Contigliano wheelchair accessible?

Partly. You can drive close to the collegiate church square and the viewpoint, which are flat. The stepped alleys and the lower church are not. The lakes reserve has level paths.

When is the patron saint feast of Contigliano?

San Michele Arcangelo, on September 29. Other parish anniversaries are Sant'Antonio di Padova on June 13, the Madonna del Rosario on October 7 and the Good Friday procession with sacred representation.

What is the difference between Contigliano and Cantalice?

They are the two towns that look at each other from opposite sides of the Piana Reatina. Contigliano is a walled village on a gentle hill, with a Baroque collegiate church and the view over the plain. Cantalice is a vertical town clinging to the rock of the Monti Reatini. Seen in sequence they tell the basin from both banks.

Can you see gliders from Contigliano?

Yes, on flying days from April to September, from the viewpoint of the upper village: Rieti airport is on the valley floor and the gliders climb in spirals above the plain. Binoculars help.

Can the Marmore Falls be paired with Contigliano in one day?

Yes, but check the water release times first on the park's official website, because outside those windows the falls are reduced to a trickle. Build the day around the falls schedule and leave Contigliano for early morning or late afternoon.

Why is Contigliano called that?

From the Fundus Quintilianus cited in the Farfa documents of 850: a Roman estate registered to a Quintilianus, whom tradition identifies with the rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilianus. In 1157 it appears as Castrum Quintilianum.

Is Contigliano in Lazio or in Umbria?

Today in Lazio, province of Rieti. Until 1923 it was in the province of Perugia, and from 1928 to 1946 it was merged into the municipality of Rieti. The cooking and the speech keep the Umbrian stamp.

What is there to eat in Contigliano (RI)?

Stringozzi, beans of the plain stewed or with pork rinds, trout, salt cod, pecorino cheeses, truffle in season, oil of the Sabina. In the town's trattorias and the farm stays of the plain.

Is it worth sleeping in Contigliano?

Yes, at least one night, for two things you don't see in a day: the dawn with the sea of fog over the plain from October to January and the starry sky in summer. Farm stays and farmhouses in the surrounding countryside, or the rooms of the abbey of San Pastore.

There remains the one thing that can't be written in any guide and that is however the real reason to come back here. There is a moment, climbing to the viewpoint on an autumn afternoon, when you turn around and see everything together: the green plain with the canals glittering, the poplars in a row, the bell tower behind you, the sanctuaries on the mountains opposite, the new snow on Terminillo, the tower of San Pastore sticking out of the poplars and perhaps a glider circling in silence at 1,000 meters. In that moment you have the physical perception of looking at a piece of the world on which people have worked without interruption for 23 centuries, moving water, building walls, praying, farming and flying, and of being the last in a very long line of people who stopped exactly there to look. It's not a monument emotion. It's a landscape emotion, and it's much rarer. For those who want to live it in a group, with a guide who knows how to tell it, or make it a company outing off the usual circuits, TourLeaderPro organizes corporate experiences outside Rome too.

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

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