16 Facts About Tusculum

Tusculum is a ruined Roman city in the Alban Hills, in the Latium region of Italy.

Tusculum was most famous in Roman times for the many great and luxurious patrician country villas sited close to the city, yet a comfortable distance from Rome .

Tusculum is located on Tuscolo hill on the northern edge of the outer crater rim of the Alban volcano.

Tusculum is first mentioned in history as an independent city-state with a king, a constitution and gods of its own.

The Tusculum citizens were therefore recorded in the "Tribus Papiria".

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In Sulla's civil war Tusculum supported the Marians but after Sulla's victory in 82 BC it became a colonia and parts of the city wall were rebuilt.

An example is the so-called villa of Lucullus, which later belonged to Flavia gens, which was built in terraces on the slope of Tusculum facing Rome: the vast terrace now houses virtually all the historical centre of Frascati.

Gregory I of Tusculum rebuilt the fortress on the Tuscolo hill, and gave as a gift the "Criptaferrata" to Saint Nilus the Younger, where the latter built a famous abbey.

Tusculum had in this time several notable guests: Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, and his wife Empress Agnes in 1046, the Pope Eugene III from 1149, Louis VII of France and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1149, Frederick Barbarossa and the English Pope Adrian IV in 1155.

From 1167 the residents of Tusculum moved to the neighbours or little villages as Monte Porzio Catone, Grottaferrata and mostly to Frascati: only a little group of defence troops remained in the old city.

When in 1183 the Roman army again attacked Tusculum, Barbarossa sent a new contingent of troops to its defence.

The buildings destroyed in Tusculum became a big open quarry of materials for the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns of the Alban Hills.

In 1825 the archaeologist Luigi Biondi excavated to find out Tusculum, engaged by Queen Maria Cristina of Bourbon, wife of Charles Felix of Sardinia.

Tusculum was an expert in ancient monuments topography and studied the Tusculum monuments, reporting the results in The Roman Campagna in Classical Times published in London in 1927.

Tusculum brought here a relic of the master, handed it over to him by monk Gregory Nazianzus.

Cross of Tusculum there was already in 1840, as reported by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, rector of the English College.