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#fidenetrekking #abruzzotrekking1962 #montagna #montagne #mountain #mountains #mount #roma #romacapitale #santuariodellarcella #cava #colombario #eremosansalvatore #grottadeiquadratini #grottadeifinestroni #vallerano #viterbo #vignanello #eremosanlorenzo Following the studies and indications of Professor Joselita Raspi Serra, we can identify in Vallerano four cores of great historical-archaeological interest concerning monastic settlements that refer to a rupestrian religious typology. The broader understanding of the phenomenon, from a historical point of view, emphasizes the reuse of caves, perhaps prehistoric, already of a cult nature, as in Sant’Angelo, or as troglodyte dwellings see San Salvatore. Next to "the two sacral or domestic contents" we can add "the exploitation of cores already made sacred by the funerary function". "Chamber tombs are found in subsequent religious settlements". In Christian times, they are first transformed into cave-houses then into cemeteries, as in San Lorenzo near the "Fontana antica" site in Vallerano on the border with Vignanello territory. I briefly review the four settlements. In the "La Stufa" area we find the Grotte di San Leonardo. A monastic settlement in rupestrian form located on a hill between Rio di San Leonardo and Rio della Stufa, where a tufa prominence rises in which a very articulated dwelling is carved at various levels, with rooms accessed via stairs from above and below through openings, with semicircular cavities or square mouths, perhaps a well. In a wall a pit tomb is carved, oval in shape. There are remains of a "mono-nave church, with three walls carved from the tufa bench, with central apse whose curvature is broken in the center by some steps leading to the top of the rocky bench" as G. Scardozzi writes in "Ager Ciminus". The complex is interpreted as a 12th-13th century monastic settlement, it is hypothesized, says Bertini Calosso in "Gli affreschi della grotta del Salvatore presso Vallerano", that it belonged to the Benedictines. San Lorenzo is a settlement constituted to the west by small connected cores by paths and steps carved into the rock, going up from below, one encounters a small cavity where a tuff-carved staircase is noted, to access the upper level where several loculi are visible, numbering ten, constituting a small necropolis. Also to the east another core and going up, along a wall made of Roman mortar blocks on tuff, a staircase leading into various rooms. One with semicircular cavity (probable oven), another square-shaped with steps at the entrance, and yet another larger rectangular one, roughly hewn with a niche and holes in the back wall. And finally an even larger rectangular chamber. Still to the left two connected rooms, in one of them traces of plaster on the walls are noted where, hardly legible, a fresco of the Madonna with child and a figure of an angel similar to that of San Salvatore and that of Castel Sant’Elia is glimpsed. To the right five rooms open, two collapsed, two others rectangular and the last room overlooks the settlement a chamber tomb with superimposed arcosoli on the three walls. According to the scholar Bertini-Calosso, 1907 the complex represented "a small Benedictine community". In the "Pantaniccio" area one can observe, although very deteriorated, some remains of the Grotte di San Salvatore with frescoes painted on tuff from before the 13th century. In one cave are depicted the SS. Salvatore, the Apostles some saints including clearly recognizable San Benedetto initiator of monasticism. An altar carved in the tufa rock where carved in a wall, a mortuary pit, as a simple bed for some early Christian hermit, on a boulder it is written in Latin: "Andrea humilis abbas". The other cave is called Sant’Angelo because on a wall the image of San Michele Arcangelo is unmistakably glimpsed.
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Video length: 27:48
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