The village of Macerino

Macerino is a small village near Acquasparta,”gathered” on the top of a hill of almost 700 meters surrounded by thick woods that also cover its slopes. Framed in an uncommonly suggestive environmental and natural setting, that of the Martani Mountains, Macerino is the “guardian” of an important past. It had considerable political importance in the Middle Ages, especially during the fourteenth century, since it was one of the five Castellati, (that is castles that had jurisdiction over other neighboring castles of lesser importance) of the Terre Arnolfe,a vast territory that extended from the surrounding area to what had been the Roman city of Carsulae up to the Valle del Serra. The document of 1093, which evidences the passage of the domain of Terre Arnolfe to the Church, contains the first reference to Macerino, which in the following centuries, like the centers of this territory, remained under the control of the Rectors of the Patrimony of San Pietro. The walls of the medieval castle are still well preserved with four corner towers that enclose the compact inhabited area with stone houses, whose layout is almost the original one. Inside the castle walls, on which you can see the pierced stones in which the animals were tied, you will find the church of San Biagio and Palazzo Massarucci from the 16th century, which overlooks a small square with a characteristic well. The church of San Biagio dates back to the 11th century and has 16th century frescoes. Other interesting frescoes can be found in the church of San Giovenale, near the village cemetery, some of which are from the seventeenth century, while the one that portrays "San Francesco in ecstasy" is attributable to a thirteenth-century painter of the Umbrian school. Located just outside the walls, the church of the "Madonna del Fiore" (XVII century), with a gabled façade, holds fragments of paintings on the back wall, in the center of which you can see the "Madonna and Child among the Saints John the Baptist and Carlo Borromeo” and on the sides two roundels with the images of a Madonna in the one on the right and of San Francesco d'Assisi in the other.