Monte Soratte (ancient: ''Soracte'') is a mountain ridge in the

Metropolitan City of Rome Metropolitan City of Rome Capital ( it, Città metropolitana di Roma Capitale) is an area of local government at the level of metropolitan city in the Lazio region of the Republic of Italy. It comprises the territory of the city of Rome and 120 o ...

, central

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. It is a narrow, isolated

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

ridge with a length of and six peaks. Located some south east of

Civita Castellana Civita Castellana is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Viterbo, north of Rome. Mount Soracte lies about to the south-east. History Civita Castellana was settled during the Iron Age by the Italic people of the Falisci, who called it "Fa ...

and c. north of

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, it is the sole notable ridge in the

Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the Riv ...

Valley. The nearest settlement is the village of Sant'Oreste. Saint Orestes or Edistus, after whom the settlement is named, is said to have been

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

ed near Monte Soratte. The highest summit is above sea-level. The ridge is part of a Natural Reserve housing a variety of vegetation and fauna. It is also characterized by the so-called ''Meri'', pits which can be up to deep.

History and sights

The area was used by the ancient

Italic peoples The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. The Italic peoples are descended from the Indo-European speaking peoples who inhabited Italy from at leas ...

of the area (

Sabines The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divid ...

, Capenates, Falisci) and the Etruscan civilization for the cult of the God Soranus. Mount Soratte was mentioned by

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

("vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte?" ''Carm.'' i. 9), and Virgil, who stated that Apollo was its guardian deity. The hermitage of St. Sylvester is just below the summit. According to a legend, its church was founded by Pope Sylvester, who had taken refuge there to escape Constantine's persecution. The church houses 14th- and 15th-century frescoes. Another four hermitages are on the ridge. The church of ''Santa Maria delle Grazie'' was built in 1835 over a pre-existing 16th-century edifice and houses a once highly venerated image of the ''Madonna''. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe mentioned the peak in '' Italian Journey'', his diary of his travels through Italy from 1786–1788. He wrote that "Soracte stands out by itself in magnificent solitude. Probably this mountain is made of limestone and belongs to the Apennines." In his 1902 memoir ''The Path to Rome'', Hilaire Belloc sketched the mountain in the final days of his walking pilgrimage from Toul and wrote: "It stood up like an acropolis, but it was a citadel for no city. It stood alone, like the soul that once haunted its recesses and prophesied the conquering advent of the northern kings." During World War II, after the 8 September 1943 Frascati air raid, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring moved his headquarters from Frascati to the bunkers in Monte Soratte.

References

{{authority control Soratte World War II operations and battles of the Italian Campaign