The Duchessa Mountains: a beautiful name for the mountains that embrace the Valle del Salto to the east, almost where Lazio borders with Abruzzo, Regional Nature Reserve since 1990. There we also find the beautiful Duchessa Lake, one of the most attractive sites in the park and one of few glacial lakes in the Apennines, fed only by rain and snow.
The view, from 1788 metres of height, is priceless.
The name Montagne della Duchessa is a tribute to Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma, Piacenza, Leonessa and Cittaducale, by Francesco De Marchi, a military engineer in her retinue and mountain lover, the first man who climbed up the top of Gran Sasso in 1573.
Margaret is certainly one of the most interesting and significant figures on the 16th century European political scene, with her excellent governing skills inherited from Charles V, her biological father, a strong personality and the desire to excel, she managed to establish herself in a male environment. She wrote an important page in the history of the Sabina territory. In 1569, she settled in Cittaducale, a politically strategic town on the border between the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal State.
Cittaducale
With the arrival of Margaret’s court, Cittaducale experienced important social and economic changes, with a new lifestyle and new agile, elegant, but rigorous Renaissance buildings that provided a counterpoint to the robust piers of the medieval fortified ones. Witness to this change in taste is the restructured Palazzo della Comunità, used as a court residence by Margaret and transformed into a more comfortable and hospitable home, where parties and banquets were organized, but in keeping with the new, austere trend that took hold so strongly on the artistic scene of the Farnese domains.The work carried out on the Palazzo del Capitano, was also new in the Sabina area. Now seat of administrative offices, the two buildings are joined by a loggia, so practical and functional that makes one think it may have been wanted by Margaret herself, to emphasize her authority as sovereign and excellent administrator.