Colle di Tora

Its origins?

Today Colle di Tora is probably what remains of the ancient and mysterious city of Tora, mentioned by several classical authors - including Dionysius of Halicarnassus - as an important place of worship. In the Lombard era, Colle di Tora was part of the Turano gastald but, as from the 9th century until 1864, it was mentioned as Collepiccolo, among the inhabited villages owned by the Abbey of Farfa. In the 9th and 10th centuries the incursions of Saracens and Hungarians became increasingly frequent and this led to the birth of a fortified settlement that was the origin of the town we know today. In the following centuries the lordship on Collepiccolo passed from hand to hand, from the Brancaleoni, to the Orsini up to the Borghese princes. In the mid-19th century, with the establishment of the Roman Republic, Collepiccolo was annexed to the department of Clitunno, one of the eight departments into which the Papal State had been divided. Nevertheless the village has never expanded significantly, in fact at the 1713, census its population was 350, more or less the same as today. The construction of the dam, completed in 1939, and the subsequent drying up of the valley that gave birth to the Turano Lake, represented luck for this long line of houses stretching over a rocky spur, since this new scenery conferred Colle di Tora such a new attractive aspect to deserve the title of “pearl of little Switzerland".