Italy, Cineto Romano

Cineto Romano was the ancient city of Equa Ferrata conquered by the Romans who, in 332 BC, awarded it to the Roman tribe of 'Scaptia'. It is located along the Via Tiburtina Valeria and was home to a post house for changing horses. In 306 BC, the Emperor Constantine the Great assigned the territory of the Cineto Valeria tribes to the administration of a tax Proconsul. With the fall of the empire and the Barbarian invasions, it passed to a Roman duchy under the Lombards and in 755 became part of the patrimony of St. Peter. Around the year one thousand people took refuge in three castles to defend against invasions of Saracens and Hungarians. In the eleventh century, with investiture, the nobility strengthened their power starting to protect their possessions by building defensive feudal castles. The original nucleus, known for centuries as Scarpa, developed around the fortress built by Giovanni de Marso, and owned by the Orsini from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century and then the Borghese until 1925. The current name of Cineto Romano, which replaced that of Scarpa, probably derives from a deep crater, a geological singularity of the place, from antiquity called by the name of Cinet.