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Rotecastello, a Frazione of S. Venanzo

A town of central Umbria, a frazione of S. Venanzo: 42°52.8N, 12°17.6E. Altitude: 358 m.

[image ALT: A clump of stone houses and a church, clinging to a wooded hill. It is a view of the village of Rotecastello in the comune of S. Venanzo, Umbria (central Italy).]

We're looking roughly SE. On top of the hill, a glimpse of Collelungo; and behind it, the ridge drops down to Fratta Todina, the Tiber River, and the SS 3bis highway from Terni and Todi to Perugia.

Rotecastello is a very small village, a frazione of the comune of S. Venanzo (3.5 km SW), best known locally for a good medieval festival, usually held in early August. This is as close as I've got to it so far, but there's rather little information online about Rotecastello — although see the external sites below — and that explains this little page: someone may find it useful. I took the photo on this page from the road between Marsciano and S. Venanzo: some context and a couple photos of the area are provided by my diary entry of May 16, 2004.

The tower is what's left of a 13c castle, giving the village the castello part of its name; the façade of the parish church of S. Michele — you can see both tower and church much better in the close‑up — is decorated with a late‑16c plaque in Deruta­ware depicting the archangel, and a second church nearby, the Madonna della Neve, has a fresco of the Madonna and Child of the same period. Finally, for a while the town's site had mentioned an Etruscan inscription found in town and now mounted on a house, although no photo was given: a correspondent who lives in the neighborhood sent me one, though, and alas, it's just a brick dating a house to 1760; boosterism and the lure of the Etruscans seems to have done the rest.


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Page updated: 31 Oct 17