Castello di Foglia

A history suggestive of three thousand years,
ancestral myths of the Sabines and the Latins
through the Middle Ages and the modern age.

Is part of the plateau area of leaf, the castle situated on a cliff on the left bank of the Tiber. The Arce was inhabited since archaic and played a privileged role in the settlement strategy of the Sabines along the Tiber Valley, documented by important archaeological finds. The sources make up the mythical foundation of leaf children of Troilus, son of King Priam of Troy and Briseis, who escaped the destruction of his city and, as Aeneas, who fled to Italy along the banks of the Tiber. At that time dates the cult of chthonic goddess Fauna, with its underground sanctuary where the second king of Rome, the Sabine Numa Pompilius, during a mystic sleep was clear laws to give the nascent Rome and then to all the world. The etymology Fauna becomes the place name and then Faula and now Foglia (leaf ).
Rich first settlements Sabine and Roman Foglia builds his power and his wealth on which exercises control, from its position on the Tiber river port, the last in importance upstream of the City, and the ford of the Via Flaminia. The invasion of the barbarians brought about a considerable decrease in trade and an impoverishment of the land. Even the Lombard and Carolingian age was not prosperous for the land of Foglia, which began to flourish around the year one thousand. The medieval period has given the village that still retains the features. The castle was mentioned for the first time in the chronicles of the second half of the tenth century. Its importance at that time is testified by the fact that fled there in 1155 the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander IV. It was destroyed in 1241 during clashes between Roman forces and Viterbo. Pope Nicholas III Orsini exchange him on par with the Castle Sant'Angelo in Rome, rebuilt the fortress and makes it the center of the domains Orsini in northern Lazio. From 1267 to the beginning of 1500 the Orsini were the lords of the castle. With the resumption of trade, Foglia revived the ancient port city on the Tiber. The decay of leaves began in the early 1600s, with the decision of Pope Sixtus V, to build a bridges among the plain, only to divert the waters of the Tiber and make them pass under the bridge itself. Freed from the river port, were less the revenue derived from tolls and many epidemics spread over the continued flooding of the Tiber.
As soon as the strategic control to access routes to Rome, the castle is transformed into a country house in the middle of a vast estate to be divided in two counties with jurisdictional landowners settled in the two wings of the castle. Of the two branches Orsini, Valignani reconstruct the tower and around it built the present building on the model of the great Roman Renaissance buildings, the De Rossi Orsini occupy the old building that will maintain to this day the thirteenth original plant. The feud was reconstituted in units after the passage of troops and the subsequent restoration of the French Jacobin. The guillotine in the square and the beheading of three foglians refractory and silver statue of Santa Serena, patroness of Foglia, and farmers impressions count so as to lead to a new unit. In the following decades was given a strong impetus to economic activities. Were carried out reclamation and planting new orchards and vineyards, and went on the market especially to Rome and Rieti, favored by the deployment of new ways of communication (railway line Rome-Orte, road to Rieti). Foglia, after centuries of self-government became a leaf of Magliano Sabina in 1853. At that time it was a small village that had only 89 souls, divided into 18 families in the parish church of SS. Assumption and St. Serena and had three rural churches: St. Peter S. Sebastian and S. Maria del Rovo. The dawn of the twentieth century leaf reached 100 inhabitants. Currently in the palace and live in the village about thirty and about seventy people will count the surrounding countryside.