Italy, Varco Sabino

The name Varco refers to its status as a 'pass', pass between two mountain ranges' and Varco Sabino is a medieval town 700 meters high. Varco Sabino was a fiefdom of the Abbey of San Salvatore Maggiore, founded in the eighth century and which had the support of the Carolingian emperors which then lapsed and it was suppressed in the seventeenth century. But the village of the fiefdom had only been created in the second half of the fifteenth century by the inhabitants of the Mirandella Castrum, destroyed by an earthquake. For this reason it seems an unusual town without castle fortifications. The heritage of the lands and of Mirandella grazing rights was contested by neighbouring Ascrea and this began a long dispute that finally ended only in 1898, after the unification of Italy.