Campodimele : The History

A really tiny minuscule group of rural houses, the smallest of the hillside villages, Campodimele is a lovely medieval hamlet high up on a hill, hidden behind its own medieval walls and defended by 12 cylindrical towers. Campodimele welcome travelers with a fresh and odorous breeze during summer that turns into a heavy and harsh during winter. It is immediately clear how important is the rural tradition: the shepherd’s monument explains the clear intention to remember cultural roots and identity across times.

The village was founded as a natural shelter for those shepherds and lumberjacks who used to find combs full of honey nearby. The towers are the witnesses of the village medieval past but the origins of Campodimele may date back to the post-Roman age with the location called Campus Mellis, a group of houses born over the ruins of Apiola, a very ancient Latin city, destroyed by Tarquinius Priscus, fifth king of Rome (579 BC); the ancient ruins of Apiola are visible 6 km away from the present-day historic center of the village.

     An ancient street

As others small villages Campodimele belonged to the local rulers which in southern Lazio are several due the many invasions. During the 6th century AD the Lombards seem to have established the first fortified settlement and once their power declined Campodimele was part of the possessions of the Monastery of Montecassino in the 7th century. The defensive walls can be visited with a panoramic walk on foot and date back to the 11th century. The name Campo de Melle is mentioned in a 1072 AD in an official donation by the Consul of Fondi.

In 1087, Pope Victor III has a list of the abbey's property sculpted onto the bronze door of the Montecassino Abbey. S. ONUFRIUS DE CAMPO DE MELLE can still be read in the third panel on the left of the second wing of the door. The walls can be visited on foot and are surrounded by Mediterranean woods on the quiet, natural slopes of Mounts Ruazzo and Faggeta, both over 1000 m high. The parish church of San Michele Arcangelo, was also built in the 11th century, and from a fresco from 1580 found in the Vatican still appears to be the same as in that age. The church has several paintings of artistic importance, including two religious subjects from the 15th century.

Along with the remains of an excellent marble tabernacle by the school of Tommaso Malvito, an artist working in Naples in the late 15th-early 16th centuries, there is also a painting by Gabriele da Feltre from 1578. During more than 500 years between the medieval age and the Italian Rinascimento up to the 18th century Campodimele was possession of powerful lords and families among them King Richard II (1212), and the Colonna family in 1497.

In 1534 the terrible Algerian pirate Keir-ed-Din, called Red Beard, tried to abduct Giulia Gonzaga, the young bride of Vespasiano Gonzaga and famous for her beauty, from the Fondi castle to offer her as a gift to the Sultan Soliman II. Giulia, warned in time, and escaped hiding here in Campodimele. Other noble families were Luigi Carafa, Prince of Stigliano inherited the village in 1591. Later on Campodimele was purchased by Lady Maddalena Miroballo and sold again to the Stigliano, the wealthiest feudal family in the Kingdom of Naples.

In 1721 the barony of Campodimele returned to the county of Fondi possession of the Di Sangro family. Campodimele was difficult to reach until the beginning of the 20th century; the only way to get there was by walking up a mountain path. It was so out-of-the-way and hidden in the mountains that Fra’ Diavolo, a rebel fighting against the French, chose it as hiding place.