At the foot of Mount Vettore, the village of Montegallo was built in the seventh century and called Castello di Santa Maria in Gallo, appearing as a fortified mountain settlement. From the Middle Ages it was a safe and inaccessible place to retreat, and until the sixteenth century gathered all the inhabitants of the Aso valley.
Today the territory of Montegallo covers a very broad and varied area, made up of hamlets, groups of houses and isolated churches. The capital of the municipality is located in the village of Balzo, around which another 23 villages are scattered to make up Montegallo.
At Uscerno, another of the villages, the building called “Le Casette” has a museum of rural art, open to the public since 2005. A small display includes the objects and work implements most representative of the life of a mountain farming family.
Hidden in the higher countryside there are two gems, the two Farfa churches of Santa Maria in Lapide and Santa Maria in Pantano.
The church of Santa Maria in Lapide is located along the Rio torrent, the main tributary of the Fluvione. It is an ancient church, which belonged to the Farfa community. The aisleless Latin cross plan has no apse. Along the path leading into the woods near the church we find an aedicule called the “Lapide”, marking the point where the old road passed to reach the church.
Santa Maria in Pantano is a small church nestled in the woods and is 30–40 minutes on foot from the hamlet of Balzo. It can only be reached on foot and is located at 1,159 metres above sea level.
The first church built dates back to AD 780 and is also known as “Santa Maria della Sibilla”, as seventeenth-century frescoes in its interior depict not only episodes from the Gospels and the life of the Virgin Mary, but also four sibyls, further evidence of the importance of myths and legends in this area. The cycle is by Martino Bonfini and in flanking the Life of Mary with the figures of sibyls probably refers to the ancient legend that the Apennine Sibyl sinned by pride in believing she was the virgin destined to give birth to the Son of God.
