Genzano it story

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Thursday, February 4, 2016

More history about Monteserico

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, mre history about Monteserico
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Imagining old history of Monteserico
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This is the castle of Monteserico today, during its history this castle was once a Norman castle, famous owners and rulers; Robert the Guiscard duke of Southern Italy, then came Frederic II and many others. We need to say that around this castle there have been many wars, there is even a large hill called, Serra della battaglia (the hill of the battle)
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One of the most recent and famous people that has owned and lived for a short while in this castle was Lydia Borelli; she lived in this castle for a while, perhaps she wanted some quiet place to live after her very successful carrier as an actress. Here under I am posting a link where you can read lots about her life.

Lyda Borelli - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Imagining old history of Monteserico

Now, let us just imagine how this small castle might have been built in the first place, today nobody seems to know who, when or the real reason this castle has been built, but from what we have found we have formed some possible ideas of its history, so let us say how we see this castle story.

In the beginning there must have been people of this region living in the caves where today stands the castle, they could have been local shepherd or perhaps other outside people, anyhow everything has to have a beginning, some of these people could have originated from Greece or somewhere else, they came up the valley of the river Bradano and settled here in Monteserico and also in the town of Genzano, since in Genzano even today there is this chasm called the Greek chasm, of course this is very early in history.

Then came the Roman Era with their conquest of southern Italy and then most of the known world, so, the Romans ruled over this part of Italy for a very long time; during that time some of the Roman leader may have started a holiday villa or just a building to live in and rule over the countryside, that is what the Roman did best, they usually would build something wherever they went so that they would be able to run that part of their conquest easily and at the same time bring civilization to the people in that region. So we believe that since the Roman times there has been a building there that some Roman landlord used and looked after, it might also have grown and modified many times.

When the Western Roman Empire collapsed around in 475-76 AD, when the German Odovacer deposited Romulus Augustulus, and in affect became king of Rome.

After the fall of the Roman Empire there wasn’t any real peace in Italy, so people had to try to protect themselves the best way they could, this in affect made people build castles, so this villa or whatever was built in Monteserico started to take the form of a small castle.

The first time that a sort of a castle or fort is mentioned is in the 800 AD. You see there were many wars so Monteserico castle and other castles in this part of the region became fortified forming a line of defence against the enemy; please note that this is before the Norman came to southern Italy, so when Robert Guiscard came to this part of Italy the castle was already there, as we can see from some important battles that happened in those times.

Some known Monteserico history

Let us mention the owner that we know or we think we know that have owned the castle of Monteserico, So, let us start with famous owners like Robert Guiscard duke of southern Italy in 1047 of Apulia and Calabria and later on the Two Sicilies etc. Born 1016 died 1085

Another famous one is Fredrick II that owned this castle, after Frederick II, 1194-1250, of course it is not easy here to follow a chain of event, but we know that these castles and other holdings always changed hand, it is said in history that there was a Roberto D’Angio who had married a Sancia he donated the castle to a family member del Bosco who saw husband of Aquilina Sancia, and when he died Aquilina Sancia became owner of Monteserico.

From Aquilina Sancia it was inherited from her daughter Giacoma Rachele who married Roberto San Severino the count of Carignano and Terlizzi, and then it was passed to the family Dentice delle Stelle under the queen Giovanna and the to the Ruffo.

During this time Monteserico had also a small town or suburb, but around 1400-1430 it slowly vanished, there was not an explanation why this happened but it happened.

After Aquilina Sancia there were the Sanseverino who had the castle. After that in 1603 was a Genoese Grimaldi, in 1613 was the Doria, at the end of 1700 was some descendents of the Sancia family and after that was abandoned.

It was bought from the Baron Dell’Agli-Certi the 30-01-1857, and then it was sold to the Cafieri the 30-03-1875 but by then it was too run down to live in.

After world war 1 the tenant Gardini bought a portion of the land from the Cafieri and the castel of Monteserico, it was used for holiday or resting place from this actress: Lyda Borelli (22 March 1884 – 2 June 1959) was an Italian actress ofcinema and theatre. She was born in Genoa, and died in Rome. Her career in theatre started when she was a child, acting on stage with Paola Pezzaglia in the French drama I due derelitti.

There might be other things to add but I don’t know what else to say at the moment, except that this military castle of Monteserico is a small fortress that has got many unknown stories, some of them are love stories and some of them are war stories; whether we will be able to tell these stories one day we do not know.

Anyhow, we hope that we have told you this story of Monteserico castle for everybody to read, but it has also been especially written for those people that come from Genzano, so that they can remember their native town and our Monteserico castle.

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Dear readers, we have written several hubs about the town of Genzano di Lucania, we have written some history also of this town and the castle of Monteserico, of course there are several other things that could be said about the past, but today we have to start to look at the future, because there are things happening in southern Italy, so we are going to look at the modern history making around these places, you see I like to forecast what could happen around these places, just looking at what is happening just now. So let us look at what could happen in out next post about Italy modern history. I hope that I will be able to write just one long post and then we will go back to tell you our own personal story. So see you in our next post, Italy modern history.

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Genzano it story
More history about Monteserico
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, an old man views
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Monday, January 11, 2016

Monteserico historic events in brief

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, monteserico historic events in brief
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This is another photo of the castle of Monteserico, it shows the castle walls very clearly how they were built with stones, if you know about building you would understand what we want to convey here; you see, in those old times they built very different from today.

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This is the Norman's leader, Robert Guiscard 1015-1085 he ruled over Monteserico castle, Count of Apulia and Calabria (1057- 1059 and then Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily 1059- 1085 AD.

Historic events in brief

Dear readers, this post is also the continuation of the history of the castle of Monteserico, you see, in this post we are still talking about the castle, so, we are continuing to look at the history around this castle. Anyhow, the history during the first millennium of this castle is not know very much, but it is believed that there were some caves that the shepherds and other inhabitant of this region used for themselves, before the castle of Monteserico was built. Some people say that this part of Southern Italy has seen many battles; they even suggest that Spartacus with his other slave friend have been here, while they were in Southern Italy, as history tells us when the slaves rebelled and formed their own army under their leader Spartacus, they went to live near the Ionian Sea, now Monteserico is part of the territories that runs into the Ionian Sea through the river Bradano and its tributaries, there might be also another story why Spartacus could have come this way; you see in Genzano town even today there is this chasm called the Greek chasm, the only thing that this can mean is that there was a Greek colony living in this chasm; and Spartacus being Greek for sure would be attracted from this countrymen community, so even Spartacus could have come in Monteserico and in Genzano territory.

Now let us go back to talk about our castle of Monteserico and let us imagine how this castle came into being a castle; as we all know everything most time starts small and then starts growing, so, some people say that at the beginning, this could have been a Roman villa used to run the countryside and for holiday, then turned as a monastery of the Greek orthodox religion. Then as the time went by and many wars and other things happened around this place it kept growing until we find that the Normans at the beginning of the second millennium have this castle, and they rule over most of southern Italy from this castle of Monteserico; well at least this is how this castle history looks like.

After the Normans the castle of Monteserico changed many owners, and some of which we are going to mention as soon as we get around; one of the most known historic people was the Swedish duke of southern Italy Frederic 2nd, but the most known historic person known from the inhabitant of Genzano is Aquilina Sancia queen of Monteserico. The reason for this is that while this Aquilina Sancia was there she built a monastery of the Clarisse in Genzano and this monastery attracted people that lived around to move and live around this monastery and for this reason Genzano town is said that Aquilina Sancia is the founder of the existing Genzano, today we know that this is not correct, since there is some historic evidence that the town of Genzano has existed since the Roman times.

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More historic events

Here we are saying that we are going to look at some historic event that would help establish the history of this castle, today it is hard to do that because there isn’t any history written properly about this Monteserico castle, so we are going to rely on search done about sixty years ago from the writer Ettore Lorito who has done some search and written a book about Genzano including the castle of Monteserico:

The writer Ettore Lorito suggests that the beginning of the castle is ancient, but nobody really knows when it was started; anyhow we would like to tell you what he has written in this very shortened and translated version, since here we are writing this article about this castle; we are doing this since the original is written in Italian. Now if there are some people that would like to read the original Italian version they should go to this link; http://genzanoit.blogspot.com/, this is one of my blogs, so I am going to explain how to navigate to this link, first of all click on the link above, once you have reached the blog, you need to navigate down the left side column until you reach Home pages, in Home pages find the link, Genzano in Italiano, (it 1) and click on it, go down the page and then click on the link, Scrittori e poeti, a few names of writers come up, click on Ettore Lorito, some links for two books come up, click on GENZANO DI BASILICATA Cronografia; within this book there is also the story of the castle of Monteserico.

Now that I have explained how to find the Italian original version, let me start to tell this shortened version in English.

It is thought that very early at the place where the castle is today there were caves below it that the local people used to live in; today it might seem strange to think that people lived in caves, but they did, so that was already a start for people to continue to live there. So very likely when the Romans conquered southern Italy some of them might have built a villa, this was only natural as this gave them the control of the country side, this is one of the possible ways how this castle was started. It is also believed that Spartacus and his Roman slave’s friends have been in this country and fought with the Romans, and also that even the Roman council Marcello and Hannibal have fought on this territory, but there is no mention of the castle in those times.

Some people say that the castle was built around 900 AD just because they have found some written story; one of this is the following.

The writer Deblaisiis in his Norman Conquest said that in the year 929 AD Guaimaro and Ladolfo to repay the Norman for the help they had given at Monte Serico and Monte Peloso gave them some castles including one in Spinazzola; so the castle of Monteserico was already there and perhaps it had been there as a villa at the beginning and then modified into a castle after the fall of the Roman empire, when most localities had to look after themselves, since there was not a Roman army to guard the country. Anyhow, because in 929 the castle was already there, it was not built by the Norman as some people believe.

Now just to make this story shorter, let us go to when the Norman had somehow got possession of the castle of Monteserico after many battles, you see even today after a thousand years there is a hill called (Serra della battaglia) this laterally means “the hill of the battle” But even though the Norman and their allied won that battle on this hill, they were not able to take the castle this time, because the castle was well defended; but somehow they got there some years later.

Anyhow, we know through history that Robert Guiscard a Norman by birth became duke in southern Italy, I would like to say more who has owned the castle, but for me to name other names that owned this castle is hard to know unless I find an historic list, but we can say that through marriages, exchanges and other things the castle of Monteserico was ruled from this Spanish princess Aquilina Sancia around 1300 AD.. In those times there was also a suburb near the castle, but it slowly disappeared around 1400 and 1430 AD.

I believe that this post is becoming too long and we have still a few things to say about this castle, so see you in our next post, where we are trying to work out about more history about this castle.

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Genzano it story
Monteserico historic events in brief
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, more history of this castle
------------------------------

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Friday, December 18, 2015

The Norman castle of Monteserico

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, the Norman castle of Monteserico
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This is the Castle of Monteserico in the territory of Genzano di Lucania, as a castle size it is smallish, but its history is somehow more important that one may think possible.
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The Norman Casle of Monteserico

Dear readers, the castle that we are going to talk about in this article is a small castle, so it is not well known except for a few historic facts that have happened there, or around this castle in the past. So I have thought that in order to get a larger amount of people interested in castles and their history, we have borrowed this link of Leeds Castle, so that you could enjoy this mixed reading about castles, so anyone that likes to read this hub can view it just by clicking on the link.

Leeds Castle - 'The World's Loveliest Castle'; A Photographic Essay

Greensleeves Hubs

But let me make this clear the post that I am writing here under in this blog, it is going to be our own small castle of Monteserico, as I have said I would like the public to be interested in the castles and the castles history and if they are they can read both articles. But be warned the castle of Monteserico is only a very small castle compared to Leeds Castle, but it has got its own history, which we are trying to write the best way we could.

The castle of Monteserico

Welcome to our article, ‘The castle of’

We could have called this hub, The Norman castle of Monteserico, since The Normans first they fought around this castle to conquer it and then used it to run their conquest in this part of Southern Italy around 1040 AD, in second place we could have called it, ‘the castle of Federico II’, since he used this castle as sit for the “magister massarium Apuliae” while he was master of Southern Italy around 1220- 1250, but because it has many names and many owners, today we all call it the castle of Monteserico, because that is how is called the zone of southern Italy. So, let us talk about the castle of Monteserico, in Genzano di Lucania

First of all we would like to explain to our readers the following situation: Strange as it may seem the town of Genzano di Lucania has two castles, one is in the town itself and another one is in the country, the castle that is in the town has been modified and today is used as the Town Hall (Municipio), but we are not going to talk about the castle in the town today, we have just mentioned this to explain to our readers the town of Genzano, as this involves both castles; so, today we are going to talk about the castle in the country and we call this castle, Monteserico castle; here we need to say that the name of “Monteserico” in Genzano, not only refer to this castle but it also refer to the county itself; in fact this name would cover about three quarter of Genzano territory.

Monteserico castle is a very old castle that a long time ago had a small town or village of its own, some people believe that the Normans built it, but most people don’t agree with it and have other explanations of how this castle came about before the Normans, and the Normans may have modified it and used this castle, while they were ruling over their conquest in Southern Italy, we will talk about this again as we continue with this castel story.

Now if we connect what historically is known today, we will soon see that this castle of Monteserico was there before the modern Genzano came into existence, we say the modern Genzano because there is some evidence that Genzano existed in the Roman times, as it is mentioned in the archive of Potenza that two martyrs Donato and Secondo were executed in Genzano around 258 AD, for more details see our hub Genzano di Lucania history, therefore the town of Genzano existed even then but for some reasons it is not motioned much as if it did not exist until later on as our story will show.

Now let us go back to talk about Monteserico castle, this castle is/was completely independent from the town of Genzano di Lucania, in fact the modern town of Genzano seem to have come into existence well after the Norman invasion of Southern Italy. We are saying this because even though today Monteserico Castle is situated in the territory of Genzano, the founder of the existing Genzano came from this castle, history tells us that this castle is the castle that the queen Aquilina Sancia lived in before Genzano town was built or perhaps it would be more correct to say rebuilt and Aquilina Sancia is said to be the founder of Genzano, today we know that it is not true, because there has been a very old Genzano before.

Anyhow nobody knows exactly who started to build this castle of Monteserico, and it has many stories about its origin, what we know today is that this was one of the main castles that the Normans used to rule over Southern Italy in the beginning of the second millennium, and that in this part of southern Italy there have been many wars and this castle has had many owners, another historically well-known owner was “Frederick II” about 1194-1250, check the links below.

Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen - YouTube

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia, the free ...

Frederick the Second, 1194-1250 - Google Books

Some other owner of the castle we will try to mention in our text when we write our next posts. Anyhow today it happens that this castle has been restored to safe keep the heritage of this part of Southern Italy; but it is a very quiet country place, it seems almost forgotten except for the people that work around in the fields that produce some of the best durum wheat that is used to make pasta and other wheat products. However, if one is keen to know this part of Italian history one can learn something about it from these posts here and also from our hub The castle of, and then try to visit the place preferably during spring or summer.

I believe that we have said enough in this post, we hope to see you in our next post, about the castle of Monteserico, see you soon.

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Genzano it story
The Norman castle of Monteserico
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Monteserico historic events in brief
------------------------------

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Sunday, December 6, 2015

Massacre in Genzano

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Welcome to our blog, Genzani it story
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Massacre in the town I came from

This is the crime scene, where this dreadful thing happened. everybody wonders why this things happen even in a town as quiet as Genzano; We could say that really there is no explanation for this crime.
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Massacre in the town I came from

Massacre in Genzano

Dear readers this post is going to be an old post that I have posted in hub pages about 4 years ago, I am doing this just to follow my trend of posting, as you know we are talking about my life story and about Genzano di Lucania; anyhow let us tell this very violent story, just as I wrote it the first time when it happened.

This year 2011 in Genzano di Lucania there won’t be any joy for Christmas, no matter which way you look at it, it does not look good. Christmas is supposed to be a peaceful and happy family gathering, and everybody should cherish the company of their friends and close relatives; but this year in Genzano di Lucania this will not happen, and if some people will be able to put aside what has just happened in Genzano will be a small minority.

When such terrible things happen just at Christmas Eve one should be forgiven to thing that there is no God, otherwise why God let this horrible things happen one may ask for good reasons?

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Here are some links that show how the local media reported this crime, they are of course written in Italian as this is the native language of the place.

Potenza: strage di Genzano, condanna dalla famiglia dell'omicida

Famiglia sterminata in Lucania, oggi l'autopsia. L'omicida in ...‎‎

A meno di 24 ore dalla tragedia che il 24 dicembre ha sconvolto Genzano di Lucania dove Ettore Bruscella ha quasi annientato una famiglia.

What has happened

Listen! My heart cries to hear this horrible news; you see this is the town that I came from and I have always thought that nothing violent would ever happen it this friendly town where everybody knows everybody, so to thinking of murdering people in this town is impossible, but that was/is until today, because today has happened something so horrendous that has changed everything, as a triple murder has happened, and it has happened just on Christmas Eve, so what sort of Christmas will the inhabitant of Genzano have this Christmas?

I am afraid to say, but this Christmas will be a very said one for most Genzanesi, just to think that one of their own has killed three people, it is incomprehensible one can only think and say that the killer has lost his mind, what else can it be?

The killer is 77 years old that means that he is an old man and he should have known better but he didn’t. I have to say that I have talked to the killer a couple of times when I were in Genzano about thirty years ago and he seemed all right then, but when I think about it I have always known that he was a man that would easily turn to violence; So what sort of man is he one may ask?

He is a skinny man of average height very alert and sensitive, he was/is lame I don’t know exactly why or what happened to him when he was young, but somehow I know that he was usually restless even when he was a kid, and as the story goes he peeked up one of those unexploded petard too soon after it fell, but the petard exploded and so he was wounded and became lame. He happened to do that because he belongs to a family that are specialized in firework, and that is why he happened to be there when that unexploded petard fell. Notwithstanding this incident he continued to work at the family fireworks factory and this is what he has mostly done all his life, except perhaps when he migrated to Australia for a few years in the seventies, this is how I can describe this heartless killer, Ettore Bruscella.

You see I have migrated to Australia from this Genzano town when I was young, and I am still in Australia today, therefore we are wondering today to which family the victim belong, there are too many Menchise families in this town, so we wonder whether we can be related to them, there are no description on the Italian news for us old Italians to understand that, you see we would like to see written the names of the parents of the victims, so that we could recall who they are, or a given name that some families have, or perhaps even where they lived or their farm possessions, just to give us a better idea who they are. So we who are away from our native town are left wondering about this fact of life.

Anyhow I am going to publish what I have written already, and by doing that I will be informing my countryman what has happened, and I also hope that some of my countryman will let us know a few more details about this terrible event, so that we may learn the facts as they are.

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Who are they?

Who are the victim’s relatives we wonder?

(I would like to edit and add this discussion to my hub)

As I have already said above, for lack of more detailed information, at this stage we don’t know exactly who the victims are, even though we know their names, we don’t know to which family they belong, they could even be some of our relatives who know. For us that have been away from our native town of Genzano for 50 years or more, it is near impossible to figure out who the victims are, just by using what we have learned from the Italian news, but we would like to know anyhow, so, I and my wife who is also from Genzano have tried to assume to which family the victims could belong, so at the moment we have assumed that the victims may indeed be some distant relatives, I am saying distant as they may fall in that category when we start thinking that we are not related anymore because the link is too far back.

Although I am a Menchise I believe that they are not related to me because of this name, But they could be related to me in a different way. For instance I assume that the victims could be related to me in this way on my mother side, starting from me and working my way back I can see; me, my mother, my grandma and my grandma parents Ceruzzi, from here I could go forward to the present generation of the victims. So, from my grandma parents Ceruzzi who had a large extended family including my great uncle Leonardo who had I believe a son Gerardo who once was vice mayor in the town of Genzano in the fifties and a daughter Marietta who married a Menchise and had a family including Leonardo Menchise who is the husband and father of the victims, this is what we believe they are. I wonder how close we are to the truth.

Here I have to say again that this is only an assumption, or a discussion if you like to call it, that we have had in order to find out who they are?

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One more shock

What we have written about above took place in December 2011 and that was really shocking, but for Genzano di Lucania that quiet town in Southern Italy the trouble are not yet over, as there is another murder in June 2012.

An old lady aged 75 was found dead from one of her relatives, who was wondering why she did not return to Rome, when she had rung them and said that she was returning, anyhow this person went in her house and found her dead.

This is what was reported from the Italian and local media, unfortunately these reports are written in Italian, anyhow these are the links: ( quanto scrive La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno)

(Update (28/06/2012) - È stato fermato dai carabinieri) Stopped by the Carabinieri (Carabinieri is the old way the police were called when there was the monarchy in Italy, today the monarchy is gone but the name remains for this type of police force.)

Anyhow, the police have stopped this Tunisian, who is the prime suspect and he was living near the house of said old lady murdered and he was about to move or run away from Genzano. Check the link below:

Genzano di Lucania: fermato un tunisino per l'omicidio di ...

The reasons for this murder are not yet known, but this is another horrible murder, as she was raped and violently beaten causing death, perhaps it was a robbery gone wrong for a start, but who knows?

At this point of time one should question some other reason why this has happened, since the murder is this Tunisian that broke free from the prison during the civil war in Tunisia and Libya. One should really ask whether it is wise to allow all these refugees freedom on the Italian soil, and whether they should be restricted. Until the authorities make sure that they are real refugees that the war has forced them to flee their country of origin.

Anyhow, this is all we are going to write in this hub for the time being, until something else comes up about, Genzano di Lucania murderous happenings, or something else that could be reported in a hub like this. So now, let us go back to talk about more attractive things in Genzano.

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I believe that this post has become too long, so see you in our next post, where we are going to write about this castle of Monteserico, which happen to be in Genzano territory; see you soon.

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Genzano it story
Massacre in Genzano
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, the castle of Monteserico
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