The Porta Collitrone in Toffia is one of the three gates to the town center. On the south-western side of the town, in a point strategically impregnable as the tip of the rocky outcrop on which Toffia was built.
Collitrone Door Panoramic Point
Position
Via Collitrone, 51
02039 Toffia (RI)
Opening hours
Always open
Contacts
Tel.
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Porta Collitrone is worth a visit – best done on foot, walking through the smaller and peripheral alleys of the historic center of Toffia – because it offers visitors a suggestive panorama of the Farfa Valley, from the monumental complex of the former Franciscan convent of S. Alessandro to the perched Municipality of Mompeo, from Fara Sabina to the Ugonesca Tower of Montopoli.
The Porta Collitrone (Collitrone Door) in Toffia is one of the three gates to the town center. On the south-western side of the town, in a point strategically impregnable as the tip of the rocky outcrop on which Toffia was built, Porta Collitrone is now also accessible by car, through a newly built ring road on the west side of the town.
Local elderly laidies are used to tell, today, that in their youth was normal and conventional to go down the ditch to wash the clothes, in summer and in winter, from Porta Collitrone, through the ancient connection paths used for centuries by the people in everyday life – “… the problem was not descending or washing them, but back up with wet cloths and the basket on the head, while water drained on you … “– you can leave the town going down through both the paths.
Porta Collitrone surely deserves a visit – better if walking along the little alleys and peripheral historical center of Toffia- because it offers visitors a captivating view of the Valley of Farfa, the monumental complex of the former Franciscan monastery of St. Alexander in the rocky Town of Mompeo, from Fara Sabina to the Ugonesca Tower in Montopoli.
CURIOSITY
Our Lady of Collitrone
Leaving Toffia crossing Porta Collitrone, not far from the village going down along the steep slope leading to the old bridge on the Rio / Carlo Corso (a small creek), you will chance upon a small shrine called Madonna del Collitrone (Our Lady of Collitrone), probably built for a vote.
The aforementioned area is called in vernacular I Bussi, above the so called Rocchetta, where two small streams surrounding Toffia – the Rio / Carlo Corso and Riana – marge flowing into the Farfa river and shape a sort of Island.
The elders say they heard – so we graze the legend – that when the road was used as a privileged link with the Farfa Abbey, the bishop passed from there and, before entering the country and go into the church, he would stop in the shrine of Our Lady of Collitrone wearing the cassock.
The small chapel was restored in 1924 by Ms. Chiara Massari from Toffia for the last time.
The trail is steep and little marked.