Antica Monterano.

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In the summer of 2021 I returned to Antica Monterano with my wife and, since she takes better photographs than mine, I add here a few (the full article remains below):

Antica Monterano is a ghost town, in the province of Rome, in the territory of Canale Monterano, not far from Lake of Bracciano. To reach this place you have to go to Canale Monterano and from here go downhill following the signs. The road, a few kilometers long, is rather ugly and narrow, but anyway it can be traveled with a normal car. When you arrive at a farm, you must continue until you reach a large square where you can park the car.

From here you continue on foot for about fifteen minutes and finally you can see the first structures from afar, on top of a hill, and then you arrive at a clearing where you meet a fountain and the remains of a seventeenth-century aqueduct.

The town was first Etruscan and then Roman. It was a bishopric and then passed to the Orsini family and then to the Altieri. In 1799 it was attacked and sacked by the French army. The city was therefore abandoned. There are important buildings, churches and even a Bernini fountain. The most spectacular church is undoubtedly San Bonaventura, which also has a beautiful octagonal fountain on the square in front.

In this evocative place scenes of many films have been shot, for example Il Marchese del Grillo, Brancaleone alle Crociate and even Ben Hur.

Also some Italian westerns have been shot here. I’ve seen scenes set here many times. As an example I have reported below some sequence taken from Indio Black, sai che ti dico: sei un gra figlio di…, directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1970, with Yul Brynner and Ignazio Spalla (credited, as in all films , as Pedro Sanchez).

The church of San Bonaventura, with the octagonal fountain: