Rocca Sinibalda is the ideal destination for a day trip and it is about half an hour driving far from Orvinio.
The city is one of the most beautiful villages in the Reatino area, it is situated on a rocky outcrop in a position overlooking the Turano Valley and you can take a beautiful walk along via degli Archi and via Sole, on the route around the walls of the castle which dominates the center of the city.
Cesarini Castle is actually a palace that also functions as a defensive fortress: it was erected in 1060 as a Longobard Tower by the Count Sinibaldo, who is a direct descendant of Charlemagne.
The castle was completely redesigned by the Renaissance architect Baldassarre Peruzzi in 1532-36 when Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini fled from Rome and came to take refuge in Rocca Sinibalda. The castle had to be, in his intentions, a fortified fortress and a villa at the same time.
Baldassarre Peruzzi wanted the castle to have the shape of a scorpio, but this wasn't an acceptable image for the Cesarini family. So they asked an intellectual personlity of that time to proclamate that the shape was in fact an eagle. So from that time it is considered so.
In the castle it is necessary to visit in particular the most important Renaissance frescoes of the Sabina, which are located on the ground floor and on the main floor, and the eighteenth-century pictorial representations of the Castle and its territory present in the Great Hall.
The castle has a front spur, some hanging gardens, some bastions and, from via degli Archi, a side street starts which leads to the small square over which the rear of the building looms, designed by Peruzzi himself and which had the function of controlling with the his cannons the cliffs and the surrounding valley.
Cost of the guided tour – 14 euros
Duration of the visit 1.30 – 2.00 hours
