LE STRADE DEI PARCHI - Naturainviaggio.It

Tratto VICOVARO - JENNE
Vicovaro Arsoli
From Vicovaro to Arsoli
Just off the Vicovaro tollgate, going along the Tiburtina road toward the Abruzzo
region, a quiet almost green coloured landscape does not allow to realize that,
spread in a circle of few kilometres, a number of villages stand, each one with its
own opportunity to be visited.
Turning on the right after Mandela’s station, the first to be reachable is Saracinesco,
a little village with not more than 160 inhabitants perched on top of a hill
at 900 metres altitude.
The name takes origin from its foundation by the Saracens that, according to the local
tradition, in the last decades of the X century wildly sacked churches and monasteries
of the Aniene valley.
On top of the windy and castled historical core, nearby the ruins of a fortress of the
XI century, charming panoramic views are enjoyable.
Back on the Tiburtina road, after a few hundred metres a junction on the left leads
to an uphill road that climbs up to the village of Mandela.
To say the truth these are two separated settlements: the village of Bardella, run at
its slope by the cold waters of the Licenza river and the fortified one of Cantalupo
on top of the hill. For centuries, until 1870, the official name of this settlement was
made by the combination Cantalupo-Bardella.
Mandela has two patron saints. S. Nicola, celebrated on the first Sunday of December
along with the Feast of the Oil and Olive Tree and the Fair of the “Polenta”.
S. Gregorio instead is celebrated in summertime and, in the evening, celebrations
end with a common supper based on vegetables and fresh-water fish.
Back again on the Tiburtina
road for about eight kilometres
till a junction with a road on
the left that goes up to Roviano.
In the Baronial Palazzo there’s a
well-kept Museum of Material
Culture representing a sort of
historical archive of the whole
surrounding territory. Right here
in fact a tour into the rural
world can be experienced,
among work, habits and folklore,
supported by effective reconstructions of several contexts and activities such as:
sheep-breeding, land tilling, religiousness, handicraft, domestic life, toys and school,
hemp and textiles, feasts and festivities.
Going back at the valley floor, one crosses the main road and takes the way to Anticoli
Corrado that after 200 metres passes over the Aniene river.
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