Tor Pagnotta

Great

looks very beautiful

See Rome

Lots of history, little valued.

Tor loaf, whose name is a corruption of the name Piliocti or Piliocta, which appears in some documents from the 13th century, stands on a hill above Via della Cecchignola, just before the Grande Raccordo Anulare. The visible ruins are all that remains of a medieval fortress erected in a strategic point, from where you could control both the Via Laurentina and the Ardeatina. The Tor Pagnotta estate (more than 400 ha) was part of the S. Alessio heritage. In the thirteenth century it belonged to a certain Petrus de Rubeis, from whom it passed to the magister Jordanus, notary, who on May 3, 1259 ceded it - following an exchange - to the Order of the Knights Templar. Still in 1393 the "Tenimentum Casalis Pignotti" appeared to belong to the Templars. After many changes of ownership - to the Society of Recommended, to Cardinal Gabrielli, the Cenci, the Verospi and others - the area became, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a possession of the Torlonia family. The tower was part of a complex network of lookout towers of the Roman countryside, which allowed to sight and give an immediate alarm in case of imminent incursions by Saracen pirates from the Tyrrhenian front.