The village of Cervaro is located in a scenic location on the Cassino plain, on top of a rocky hump of the mountain of the same name. Its exceptional strategic position makes it the dominator of the valley below and of the important Pastenelle pass.
The Cervaro-Viticuso provincial road leads from here to the Abruzzo National Park.
There are two popular traditions that try to explain the origin of the name Cervaro: one of these tells of a white fawn that went to graze on Mount Pesculum and is allegedly depicted in the town’s coat of arms.
Another links it to the diction ‘Acerba ara’, which indicated the tomb of the young Roman patrician Tertullus, a defender of the city who was killed by the Goths. In the early Middle Ages, the abbot of Montecassino had a castle built to defend the town, which he called Castrum Cerbari.
Destroyed during the Second World War, the town was rebuilt with modern town-planning criteria: there are some interesting fountains.
On the provincial road, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Aquilone, stands the sanctuary of the Madonna de’ Piternis, built around a small niche, which stood on the site of an apparition of the Virgin to a shepherdess from the village.
Cervaro then went through the dark centuries of the barbarian invasions and depopulation, to be reborn as an important fortress centre together with the nearby castle of Trocchio. so much so that it constituted a veritable antemurale of the Montecassino Abbey towards the south.
The local gastronomy is typical of Ciociaria, with the tasty extra virgin olive oil from Cervaro, Malvasia wine and fresh tagliolini.