Greccio historical timeline

Greccio's name has two explanations, and they point in opposite directions.

By tradition, the town was founded by a Greek colony or family, fled or exiled from home after wars and destruction, who fell in love with the pleasantness of the place and the convenience of the natural defence it offered, and settled here. Hence Grecia, Grece, Grecce and finally Greccio.

According to other scholars, the medieval form curtis de greze, recorded in the Regesto Farfense, combines curtis — a self-sufficient medieval economic organisation managed by a lord — with greze or grezze, meaning quarry crushed stone. The curtis was an esplanade, the present square, between two limestone outcrops below which the pietrisco was cut, the crushed stone needed to build roads across the Rieti plain, which was marshy after the reclamation begun by Curius Dentatus. On this reading the name has nothing to do with Greek colonists at all.

The first certain notices date to the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the fragmentary possessions of the Abbey of Farfa were reunited and the curtis were fortified. The Benedictine monk Gregorio da Catino (1062–1133) refers to the locality of Greccio — curte de Greccia — in his Regesto Farfense.

From the remains of the old buildings it is clear that Greccio became a fortified medieval castle, surrounded by walls and protected by six fortified towers. It had to withstand fierce struggles with neighbouring towns, and it was destroyed by the soldiery of Frederick II in 1242.

And between those dates falls the event the town is known for. Between 1223 and 1226 Greccio hosted Francis of Assisi more than once, and here, in December 1223, he re-enacted for the first time the representation of the Nativity, together with Giovanni Velita, lord of Greccio.