Caprarola Culture

Caprarola's culture is defined by a scale mismatch: about five thousand people live alongside one of the most ambitious buildings of the Italian Renaissance.

The Farnese inheritance is the dominant one. The family extended its dominion here in the sixteenth century, with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese becoming Paul III and the Duchy of Castro established, and the villa at Caprarola was the residence most representative of what they had become.

Underneath is something much humbler. The town's own name comes from goats — Latin Capreae — and from the dialect word Rola, the place with the stalls where shepherds sheltered their flocks. It is a shepherds' name attached to a palace town.

The late start matters too. Stable settlement here only dates to about the eleventh century, because the Cimini were considered impassable, so Caprarola has no Etruscan or Roman civic past of its own despite sitting in the middle of Etruria.

And there is a memory the comune has formalised: the shelter given to the Veneziano family through eight months of occupation, recognised by Yad Vashem in 2005.