|


How to get here:

Mompeo
According
to tradition Mompeo was founded in the place where a Roman general,
Gneo Pompeo, built a residential villa, giving his name to the
area. This isn't the only reminder of the Roman presence in the
area, in this part of the Farfa valley there are several Roman
funerary monuments, the remains of villas and a Roman bridge over
the River Farfa.
After Roman times, the first documentation about Mompeo comes
in 817 AD. in the "Regesto Farfense" (the register kept by Farfa
Abbey), where a Fundum Pompeianum is mentioned as belonging to
the Abbey. Shortly after, in 875, the Abbot Giovanni conferred
feudal rights to the territory to a certain Francone, who built
a fortress on the hill on what is now the centre of Mompeo.
From the middle of the tenth century, after the Saracen invasions
which had brought much upheaval to the Sabina and led to the abandonment
of the Abbey, the feudal rights passed to the brothers Gaderisio
and Ottaviano di Buza. In the twelfth century the feudal lord
of Mompeo was Simeotto Orsini, founder of a long lived and powerful
dynasty which gave prestige to the area around Mompeo for five
centuries, until the 1635 when the area passed to the Marchesi
Capponi of Florence.
In
1646 Mompeo passed to the Marchesi Naro of Rome, under whose protection
Mompeo flourished. It was during this period that several palaces
-most notably the Palazzo Baronale Orsini-Naro- and the parish
church of "Natività di Maria Santissima" were built, as well as
the gateway to the town. The friendship of Fabrizio and Bernardino
Naro with Pope Urban VIII, contributed to this, and their attachment
to Mompeo is demonstrated by the fact both asked for their hearts
to be buried in the parish church, though the actual tombs are
in the Basilica of S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.
The Naro family remained in control of Mompeo until the middle
of the eighteenth century, when it passed successively to the
Patrizi, the Luciani, the Ciufici, the Baranello and the Di Salvo
families. Since 1995 the Baronial palace has belonged to the Comune
di Mompeo.
|