Castel Savelli (resti)

Beside the Via Anagnina on Grottaferrata's eastern edge, the remains of Castel Savelli mark the eleventh mile of the ancient Via Latina. Raised over a Roman villa by the Counts of Tuscolo, held by the Savelli barons and destroyed in 1436, the castle survives in wall footings, tower bases and buried structures.

Why it matters

Every medieval road out of Rome had its castles, and Castel Savelli was the tollgate of the Via Latina. Built where the road crossed a low rise at the edge of the Valle Marciana, it controlled the passage of goods and people between Rome and the interior, which is why the Counts of Tuscolo held it until their power collapsed in the twelfth century and why the fortification then passed to baronial families. The medieval castle was built over concrete structures from an earlier Roman villa, combining remains from two periods.

What to notice

The medieval walls rise from Roman opus caementicium, the concrete work of a villa that occupied the rise in antiquity; reused stone from that building is visible in the fabric. The plan was roughly rectangular, straddling the old road line, with a perimeter of some four hundred metres defended by quadrangular towers — local historians count thirteen — and only two gates. Within the walls stood the parish church with its bell tower and the lord's lodging; the raised ground of the church area is still traceable. The low hill overlooked the Via Latina, while the Valle Marciana and the vineyard slopes of the Castelli provided the surrounding agricultural setting. The later name Borghetto survives in the residential quarter beside the ruins.

Context and history

Local historians reconstruct the sequence like this. In the tenth century the Counts of Tuscolo kept a fortified tower here, part of the ring of strongholds around their dynastic centre at Tuscolo; the castle proper rose over it and over the remains of a Roman villa attributed to the Iavoleni. The counts' control of the Via Latina — the municipality notes the toll imposed on travellers — lasted until the destruction of Tuscolo by the Romans in 1191. A document of 1269 names the place Burgus Annibaldi, and the Annibaldi in turn yielded to the Savelli, the Roman baronial family whose name the castle keeps. In the wars between the papacy and the Kingdom of Naples the stronghold was besieged repeatedly; after defeating Francesco Savelli near Albano, Cardinal Giovanni Maria Vitelleschi razed the castle in 1436. In 1447 the abbey of Grottaferrata acquired the ruined site as a defensive outpost — the municipality records this post-destruction role under Cardinal della Rovere — and a sixteenth-century note already calls it a deserted town. Maps of 1627 show it roofless; the remains include wall footings, tower bases and buried structures.