About twenty kilometers from Viterbo, where the Cimini Mountains, rises vignanello. A village that, known above all for its castle, now even appeals to the Disney. Right here, the historic production house has chosen to shoot a top secret movies. Thus turning on the spotlight on this enchanting corner of Lazio.
A top secret production
Towards the end of the summer, Vignanello was "stormed". Vans and cars, cameramen, make-up artists and everything that is part of a film crew arrived in the Lazio village. The reason? A top secret production, signed by Walt Disney. Between the village square and Palazzo Ruspoli, the curious have tried to capture information from the heavily armored set. And there are those who suggest that the film will bring the story of Romeo e Giulietta. Not even the mayor Federico Grattarola knows the details of the project. "The news about what they are shooting are really unavailable and unknown to me. I only know, as far as I am concerned as mayor, that we have issued permits for the occupation of public land" he has declared.
Vignanello, history and what to see
There is really ancient information about Vignanello. Remains from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic were found here, thanks to the excavations commissioned by the prince Alexander Ruspoli in the early twentieth century. However, there are few details of the village in antiquity and in the Roman era. Legend has it that, at the end of the nineteenth century, tal Joseph Manini told of a very distant time. In 410 AD, when the Visigoths of Alaric I began their descent into Italy, men and women fleeing the sack of Rome they went inside to hide in the woods of the Cimini Hills. Here, thanks to the presence of game and water sources, the group stopped forming a vice (village) between the Zangola and Cupa ditches. Its major exponent was Giuliano, known as Giulianello. A name that underwent a whole series of evolutions until it became today's Vignanello. However, the first mention of Vignanello dates back to 604 AD: Pope Gregory the Great donated it to the Vatican Basilica, before the farm passed to the Holy Roman Empire and was transformed into a Benedictine possession until 1081-1082. The village thus became a castrum.
Today, in Vignanello, people come for the splendid Ruspoli Palace (which everyone calls "the castle"). But there are different architectures, civil and religious, which you can find while walking around the village. For example, the church of San Giovanni Decollato dates back to the seventeenth century and houses a painting of the Virgin of the Bolognese school while, on the top of the village, the eighteenth-century church of the Santissimi Angeli Custodi once housed the brotherhood of the Sacconi. And then the churches of San Sebastiano and San Francesco, the Porta del Molesino, the Baroque fountain, the Citatory Column in Piazza Gramsci and the Casini Ruspoli designed by Giovan Battista Contini.
Palazzo Ruspoli, a jewel to be discovered
It seems straight out of a fairy tale, Palazzo Ruspoli. Built in 1574, the castle followed the concession in fief of Vignanello a Beatrice Farnese by Pope Clement VII. THE Renaissance gardens instead they were wanted by Ottavia Orsini, who married a family member. Even today they are among the best examples in Italy of Renaissance-style gardens: getting lost in their labyrinth is an unmissable activity here, for both adults and children. And it is the reason why we arrive in this corner of Lazio, which will now be revived in a Disney production.
Featured photo taken from Wikipedia (credit Virgilio Merisi - Public Domain)
