Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

Soon after the la Storta post office, the Claudia branches off to the left from the Via Cassia, and on this road you drive for another three hours to Lake Bracciano. The landscape is desolate but picturesque. Volcanic tuff hills run through it, and here and there there are flowering meadows and pastures with farms and numerous herds of cattle.
Ferdinand Gregorovius - Das Schloss der Orsini in Bracciano (The Orsini Castle of Bracciano) - 1870

Views of Lake Bracciano from a tower of the Orsini Castle: (above) northern shore: Monte di Rocca Romana at the centre and to its right Trevignano; (below) eastern shore: far left Trevignano and far right Anguillara

The fiercest enemy of this landscape and at the same time the strongest obstacle to farming due to a lack of labour is malaria. A soft, treacherous air blows over the uncultivated plains and the asphodel-covered volcanic hills devoid of tree vegetation. Should the strangling angels of fever rise from the lake itself? Who will believe it when this purple-blue water surface finally becomes visible on the Bracciano ridge? In truth, this is the delightful picture of sunny, smiling happiness and enchanting solitude - a country lake idyll of a very special kind, large and sublime enough, and yet not so extensive that it ceases to be a perfectly and beautifully defined painting. (..) Bracciano, Trevignano, Anguillara; who has ever heard their names except those who are acquainted with the special history of Rome? If the castle of the Orsini, the petrified chronicle of terrible feudal times, did not rise its black towers over the blue lake, these three places on its banks would be mistaken for fishing villages. And yet the lake is so quiet that not a single boat is visible on it. Only herds of cattle appear on the bank or packs of like wild horses, up to their bodies in water, and mounted shepherds with lances, as in the Pontine swamp. Gregorovius
Lake Bracciano is of volcanic origin and the low mountains which surround it are the remnants of a crater ridge. Three small towns (Bracciano, Trevignano and Anguillara) are located at approximately the same distance one from the other along its shores.

Museum of Bracciano - Roman section: exhibits which were found in the environs of Bracciano: (left) fragments of columns; (right) funerary altar dedicated to Heliodromus (The Sun); (right) statue of Apollo

The character of the Tuscan campagna of Rome is very different from that of Latium. (..) Ancient cities, mostly dioceses, rise in large numbers on green heights surrounded by chestnut and olive trees or vines and give the Latin landscape a predominantly historical character. It is filled with monuments from antiquity and the Middle Ages (e.g. at Palestrina and Segni). In Tuscia, on the other hand, there is a volcanic highland with vast wastelands of a serious and melancholic nature that appears mysterious. Historical life has mostly lost its trace here. (..) The country's history appears to have been broken off, and although it has continued, it lacks any powerful and vital meaning. Gregorovius
A Roman settlement (Forum Clodii) stood a couple of miles north of Bracciano and further north evidence of Roman villas and baths have been found at Vicarello (Vicus Aurelii). A statue of Apollo decorated a nymphaeum of the thermal bathing complex of Aquae Apollinares Novae.

Courtyard of Castello Orsini Odescalchi: IInd century AD celebratory inscriptions related to "Forum Clodii": (left) to P. Aelius Agathoclianus; (right) to L. Cascellius Probus

FORUM CLODII. This community, which lay on Lake Bracciano close to the modern town of Bracciano, must have been founded, like many similar fora of Italy, as a market town, at the time of the construction of the road on which it lay in this case the Via Clodia from which it took its name. The title Praefectura Claudia Foro Clodi, attested by Pliny and supported by the evidence of two inscriptions, shows that the community was in a somewhat more favored class than the ordinary forum. It is the only town of Etruria known to have been a prefecture, a type of community that was originally administered by a prefect appointed at Rome.
Lily Ross Taylor - Local Cults in Etruria - 1923
P. Aelius Agathoclianus was most likely a freedman of Emperor Hadrian and he embellished the baths of Forum Clodii with marbles and columns. L. Cascellius Probus erected a silver statue to the Genius of Forum Clodii in 173 AD.

(above) View of the Orsini Odescalchi Castle from modern Bracciano; (below) old Bracciano with its small houses grouped around the castle and Collegiata di S. Stefano, the main church

To the left rises the ridge of Bracciano, and on it, about a mile from the level of the lake, the dominating figure of the entire landscape is the huge castle of the Orsini, a magnificent pentagon with five round, crowned towers. Its black-grey colour corresponds to the volcanic nature around it, of which this castle seems to be the historical product. (..) The old part of the city from the real baronial period is a black lump of houses made of tuff stone, tightly packed together around the castle. Gregorovius
The huge Castle of the Odescalchi, built of black lava, and fringed by deeply-machicolated towers, rises before us, crowning the yellow lichen-gilded roofs of the town. We rattle into the ill-paved street, and, between the dull whitewashed houses, we see the huge towers frowning down upon us.
Augustus J. C. Hare - Days Near Rome - 1875.

The front of the castle towards Bracciano

This castle rises so giganticly that it seems to cover the whole of Bracciano with its shadow and that nothing can be seen next to it. (..) How royal must have been the power of a house that built this magnificent castle in a world-lost landscape, an impregnable fortress and a luxury palace at the same time! Since the castle of the Orsini in Campagnano fell into ruins, this one has become one of the most remarkable monuments of the Roman Renaissance, a baronial castle of the first rank. There is no one like him in all of Lazio. The castle of Spoleto, built by Cardinal Albornoz and expanded by Nicholas V, is even more majestic, but it is not a baronial building, any more than the beautiful castles of Ostia, Narni, Civita Castellana and Subiaco are. Gregorovius
At last the carriage can go no further and stops in a little piazza. The steep ascent to the fortress can only be surmounted on mule-back or on foot, and is cut out of the solid rock. On and in this rock the castle was built by the Orsini in the fifteenth century, just after their normal enemies, the Colonnas, had destroyed a former fortress of theirs. So they were determined to make it strong enough. Hare

Towers of the castle

The sight of this proud castle reminds the hiker first of all of the history of the Orsini family, which, alongside that of their hereditary enemies Colonna, filled the annals of Rome for almost half a millennium with the deeds and names of its countless members, among whom there were popes, cardinals and there were generals of great fame. For both houses, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines of Rome, lasted longer than dynasties of emperors and kings, and they still continue today in their remnants, like the castles they formerly owned. (..) The five round towers give the whole building an impressive finish. They seem to support or hold him together like mighty pillars. A walkway crowned with battlements connects them all high up. (..) Our brave guide, an elderly woman, led us to the battlements of the castle and to the platform of each tower. (..) There she showed us the desolate place where the count or duke once sat in judgment over his vassals and prisoners of war, as well as torture chambers and barred dungeons and other similar infernal, baronial equipment of the good old days of torture and the embarrassing system of criminal justice, where there were still no parliamentary debates about the abolition of the death penalty. We preferred to look down on the delightful lake surface from that lofty vantage point. Gregorovius
The interior of the castle and its history are covered in a separate page.

(left) Well in the former cloister of S. Maria Novella, an Augustinan convent; (right) combined Orsini-Medici coat of arms (the image used as background for this page shows a coat of arms of the Orsini inside the castle)

In 1436 Cardinal Giordano Orsini iuniore, a highly influential advisor to Popes Martin V and Eugenius IV, donated an area at the foot of the castle to the Augustinians for the construction of a convent. Its well was redesigned in order to celebrate the marriage between Paolo Giordano Orsini and Isabella de' Medici, daughter of Duke Cosimo I which took place in 1558; it was decorated with the combined coats of arms of the Orsini (a rose above diagonal stripes) and of the Medici (six pills or balls).
In 1873 the convent was closed by Italian authorities and its facilities were utilized for other purposes, including a small museum.

(left) S. Maria Novella along the main street of the modern town; (right) interior

The church was modified many times. Its current aspect was designed in 1765-1797, but the interior retains a late XVIIth century stucco altar and two marble statues of the same period.

Collegiata di S. Stefano and its bell tower

The church is locally known as the Duomo, a word which usually indicates a Cathedral, but Bracciano was never a bishopric see (it was part of the diocese of Civita Castellana). It was redesigned in the early XVIIth century at the initiative of Virginio Orsini IInd Duke of Bracciano, son of Paolo Giordano and Isabella de' Medici. In 1607 he inherited the fiefdom of Vicovaro from another branch of the Orsini. He maintained good relations with the Medici and some of his children were educated in Florence (you may wish to see their portrait by Tiberio Titi, a Florentine painter, at Museo di Palazzo Venezia); his son Alessandro became a cardinal and is remembered for having been a patron of Galileo Galilei.

Museum of Bracciano: Venus and Adonis by Cristoforo Stati

By and large the work executed in the Chapel of Paul V in S. Maria Maggiore during the second decade of the seventeenth century was so tied to the Late Mannerist standards set in Sixtus V's Chapel, and none of the sculptors of the Carracci generation - Cristoforo Stati, Silla da Viggiù, Ambrogio Bonvicino, Paolo Sanquirico, Nicolas Cordier, Ippolito Buzio - showed a way out of the impasse in which sculpture found itself landed. Among this group there was hardly an indication that the tired and fiddle formalistic routine would so soon be broken by the rise of a young genius, Bernini, who was then already beginning to produce his juvenilia. It cannot be denied that the older masters also created solid work. In particular, some of their statues and busts have undeniably high qualities, but that does not impair the assessment of the general position.
Rudolf Wittkower - Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750
Cristoforo Stati (1556-1619) was born in Bracciano and it is thought that he donated this sculpture to his hometown, although records of the act have not been found. It was however described and praised by Giovanni Baglione who in 1642 wrote a book on the "Lives of the painters, sculptors, architects, from the papacies of Gregory XIII in 1572 to Urban VIII in 1642".

(left) S. Maria della Visitazione; (right) fresco in the interior with the portrait of a member of the Orsini family

The Rothschild of Rome, Torlonia, bought the duchy from the Odescalchi at the beginning of this century, but on condition of repurchase, and this happened a few years ago, so that today the Prince Odescalchi is Duke of Bracciano again. Gregorovius
Flavio Orsini was the last of the Orsini of Bracciano; in 1696 he sold the castle and the fiefdom to Livio Odescalchi, nephew of Pope Innocent XI. He promoted the construction of a nunnery of the Poor Clares which was closed in 1800. The building was abandoned until 1834 when it was restored with the financial help of the Torlonia, who between 1803 and 1848 replaced the Odescalchi as Dukes of Bracciano.

Museum of Bracciano: (left) Late XVIth century spout of a fountain which imitates the ancient Roman ones; (right) coat of arms of Bracciano (It. "braccio"=arm)

Bracciano was rarely described in XVIIIth century travel accounts about Rome, but in 1832 it attracted the attention of a famous writer: Sir Walter Scott.
The eldest son of the Torlonia family is the possessor of the castle of Bracciano, of which he is duke. Sir Walter was anxious to see it, and cited some story, I think of the Orsini, who once were lords of the place. We had permission to visit the castle, and the steward had orders to furnish us with whatever was requisite. (..) We arrived at Bracciano, twenty-five miles from Rome, rather fatigued with the roughness of an old Roman road, the pavement of which had generally been half destroyed, and the stones left in disorder on the spot. Sir Walter was pleased with the general appearance of that stately pile, which is finely seated upon a rock, commanding on one side the view of the beautiful lake with its wooded shores, and on the other overlooking the town of Bracciano. A carriage could not easily ascend to the court, so that Sir Walter fatigued himself still more, as he was not content to be assisted, by walking up the steep and somewhat long ascent to the gateway. He was struck with the sombre appearance of the Gothic towers, built with the black lava which had once formed the pavement of the Roman road, and which adds much to its frowning magnificence.
Sir William Gell - Sir Walter Scott in Rome in 1832 (read more about this visit).

Town Hall and the Odescalchi fountain

I found Bracciano friendlier than I expected from a vassal city; a place with about 2000 inhabitants, with wide streets and good houses, modernly built, such as Marino, where the Colonna castle stands, which also formerly belonged to the Orsini. Of course, only the new part of the city is so liveable. Gregorovius
The Town Hall was built in the XVIIth century to house the administration of the fiefdom and other facilities. It was enlarged by the Odescalchi, who made its piazza the centre of the modern town by building there a fountain in 1743. In addition to the castle of Bracciano the Odescalchi still own other castles along Via Aurelia, not far from Bracciano and a historical palace in Rome.

Doors in old Bracciano

Move to the page showing the interior of the castle or to Trevignano and Anguillara.

Introductory page on Ferdinand Gregorovius

Other walks by Ferdinand Gregorovius:
The Roman Campagna: Colonna and Zagarolo; Palestrina; Cave; Genazzano; Olevano; Paliano; Anagni
The Ernici Mountains: Ferentino, Frosinone, Alatri, Ceccano, Ceprano, Fiuggi (Anticoli di Campagna), Piglio and Acuto
The Volsci Mountains: Valmontone; Segni and Gavignano; Norma; Cori
On the Latin shores: Anzio; Nettuno and Torre Astura plus An Excursion to Ardea and An Excursion to Lavinium (Pratica di Mare)
Circe's Cape: Terracina and San Felice
Subiaco, the oldest Benedictine monastery
Small towns near Subiaco: Cervara, Rocca Canterano, Trevi and Filettino.