Although the defensive position and isolation of Capranica Prenestina protected its inhabitants from the ruinous turbulence of the Roman Campagna, for their nourishment they were forced to descend to the fertile valley in certain well-defined periods of the year to farm the great estates, between Praeneste and Tusculum, belonging to the Colonna Family, who were their feudal lords. When harvesting was over, they returned to the Praenestine hills, safe from danger.
During the seventeenth century, other great land-owning noble Roman families succeeded the Colonnas and, in the mid-nineteenth century the seasonal migrations of the people of Capranica ceased, since they were ably to settle permanently forming four village colonies: the Marcelli on the San Cesareo estate of Prince Rospigliosi Pallavicini in the territory of Zagarolo; Mezza Selva on the estate of the same name belonging to Prince Barberini in the territory of Palestrina; Colle di Fuori in the territory of Rocca Priora, and – lastly – Vivaro, in the crater of the Tusculan-Artemisian enclosure of the Latian vulcano, belonging to the Sforza Cesarini family, in the territory of Rocca di Papa.
The village huts were made of straw, since the colonists had no permission to build with bricks and mortar. At the same time, however, this situation was typical of the Roman plain and countryside up to the early twentieth century, with a hut-dwelling population of over 50,000 according to the survey of the Parliamentary Commission for the reclamation of the Agro Romano.
The farming activities of the “Capranicotti” colonists (as they called themselves in their own dialect) mainly included the cultivation of cereals and legumes, as well as vegetable produce. Private farm animals included pigs, birds and rabbits, while the large estates raised sheep, cattle and horses and had an exclusive right as regards vine growing and wine producing.
This way of life and diet were, as a matter of fact, similar to the way of life and diet in the same area at the time of the Latian Iron Age, from the tenth to the seventh centuries BCE, and later on, in the archaic period and up to the middle Roman Republic, from the sixth to the third centuries BCE. This was the rustic diet of the Roman colonists, handed down to us by Marcus Portius Cato the Censor, to which were added various new cereals and vegetables coming from the Americas: maize, known to the Capranicotti as “raniturco”, potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, and so on.
The San Cesareo Estate covered more than 1600 hectares of highly fertile land, stretching between the territories of Rocca Priora, Montecompatri, Colonna, Rome, Zagarolo and Palestrina.
In ancient times, this was the Ager Labicanus, the territory of the Latin city of Labici, currently identified with Colonna or Montecompatri. Famous for its fertility, it was mainly devoted to vine and fruit growing, especially in the hilly areas, while in the valley bottoms cereals were grown.
The Greek philosopher Athenaeus, in the mid-second century BCE, speaks of Labican wine, describing it as “… having a mild and vigorous taste, halfway between Falernum and Albanum…” (Deipnosophistae, I 26 f.), whereas Silius Italicus (Punicae VIII, 366) calls the Labicani “skilled in using the plough” (abiles ad aratra Labici…).
Still at the end of the second century CE, the Labicanum region was famous for its production of choice grapes. In fact, Clodius Albinus, one of the rivals of Septimius Severus for the Empire, used to include in his luncheon menu “…uvarum Labicanarum pondo viginti…”, i.e. six and a half kilos of Labican grapes, as the Historia Augusta tells us in the Life of Clodius Albinus (chap. XI).
This region was also chosen as the country residence of some of the most important characters of ancient Rome, such as Manlius Manilius, the famous jurisconsult and founder of the Ius Civilis, as well as Consul in 149 BCE.
Suetonius tells that on the ides of September in 45 BCE, Caius Julius Caesar wrote his will “in Lavicano suo” (Caesar, 83, 1), meaning at his Labicanum villa, which has been identified on the site of San Cesareo itself. At the same villa, which then became part of the Imperial estates, on 28 September in the year 306 CE, the Praetorians and people of Rome came to acclaim as Augustus the son of Maximianus Herculius, Marcus Valerius Maxentius, who was staying here with his wife Valeria Maximilla and his son Romulus.
But let us now return to the life of the “Capranicotti” colonists last century on the San Cesareo Estate.
Farming was practiced using the “fallow” system. Every year many tons of wheat, maize, barley and oats, rye and millet were produced. Lupins and broad beans were also extensively cultivated.
With the availability of this raw material, the colonists’ cuisine was almost exclusively vegetarian, also because we should remember that the Roman countryside was rich in herbs, bulbs and legumes produced spontaneously by its vulcanic soil.
The typical dishes of the Roman Campagna were thus acquacotta (vegetable soup), pasta made with or without eggs, polenta, maize pizza, maize biscuits, maize dumplings with beans and broad beans. These were accompanied by an infinite variety of wild and cultivated herbs, such as ramoracci, dandelion, salsify, wild asparagus, broccoli, artichokes and vegetable marrow, the “Pantano” variety of tomato, as well as beet, wild endive, borage, endive, cress, etc., not to speak of a variety of wild aromatic herbs used in soups and for seasoning.
But besides being proven corn farmers, the “Capranicotti” were also accustomed to the raising of animals, especially sheep and goats, as well as pigs and cattle. Meat therefore formed part of their diet, even if not more than two or three times a month.
The cooking of meat was limited to roasting and boiling. Indeed, the “allesso” (boiled meat) was a typical way of preparing beef. Pieces of meat were placed in the “callaro”, the typical large cauldron of the Roman Campagna, placed in the centre of the hut on a hearth that was always kept alight. The “callaro” was used for vegetable soup, for polenta and pasta, for herbs and vegetables, as well as for boiled meat. The “callaro” was in fact the focal point of the colonist’s life, at a time when, if the season went badly, the problem of “famine” was soon to appear.
Sheep and goat raising naturally also provided the typical cheese produce of the Latian countryside, such as fresh ricotta, ripe sheep’s cheese and the famous Roman pecorino.
To conclude this brief note on the farming cuisine of the Roman Campagna – and more specifically on the farmers coming from Capranica Prenestina -, I must mention the bakery and its products: bread, either of wheat or more particularly of maize, or the “maritozzi” mentioned above, enriched with muscatel raisins (zibibbo), pizza made from polenta, cakes – first and foremost the “pizza sbattuta” – followed by many kinds of biscuits. At Christmas, panpepato and pangiallo, and at Easter the sweetened bread, eaten at dawn on Easter Sunday, together with lamb or kid offal, hard-boiled eggs and “corallina” salame, at a breakfast that retains much of pagan ritual. Another item of pagan origin is the “pupazza” (doll), a cake in the shape of a queenly woman, with an egg enclosed in her lap, like an ancient fertility goddess. Still today, in families from Capranica Prenestina, on Easter Sunday grandmothers give one as a gift to their grand-daughters, or to their grandsons’ wives, as a wish for future prosperity. Thus, unaware, they perpetuate a very ancient rite practiced by farming peoples since the dawn of time, crystallised over the centuries and still alive today at the threshold of the twenty-first century, in the form of a culinary creation. As Luigi Volpicelli said, “A people’s cuisine is an expression of its civilisation and is a direct part of its cultural values”.


Edited by EMILIO FERRACCI
Translation by KEN HURRY