Therocca in Roman times would more likely be a site of a venerable cult than a dwelling, like the high place of Athens, itsAcropolis. Though the earliest documentation is not earlier than the eleventh century, it was during the Lombard times that farming communities, which had presented a Roman pattern of loosely distributed farmsteads or self-sufficientRoman villa, moved from their traditional places on the fringes of the best arable lands inriver valleys, where they were dangerously vulnerable from theRoman roads, to defensive positions, such as had once been occupied byEtruscan settlements, before the settled conditions of thePax Romana. Historian J.B. Ward-Perkins made the following observation regarding therocca at the town ofFalerii.[1]
AtFalerii ... the inhabitants simply transferred their town back from its Roman site on the open plateau to the old cliff-top site of Falerii Veteres, to which they gave the significant name ofCivita Castellana, or "the Fortress Town"; just as in antiquity, security was once again the basic consideration.
Similarly, in Greek-speakingCampania, the inhabitants ofPaestum finally abandoned their town after raids bySaracens and moved a few miles to the top of a cliff, calling the new settlementAgropoli (i.e., "acropolis"). Where such fortress villages were sited at the end of a ridge, protected on three sides by steep, cliff-like escarpments, therocca was often sited to control the narrow access along the crest of the spur.
Locally the termrocca simply designates the local fortified high place.
Specific examples show the range of structures that may be called arocca:
Rocca Sanvitale, began in the 13th century, mostly completed by the 15th century, is a remarkable fortress house in thecomune (municipality) ofFontanellato, nearParma.
InValletta, Malta,Casa Rocca Piccola is one of the last remaining unconvertedpalazzi, that is still lived in today by a noble family.
In Sardinia, the Rocca Doria, a stronghold of theDoria of Genoa, gives its name to the communeMonteleone Rocca Doria.
From the earliest stage, when church androcca were the only stone structures,[2] "the distinction between 'castles' and 'villages' is already one of degree rather than kind". (Ward-Perkins 1962:401). Their protectiverocca has extended its name to many other small communities:
Rocca di Papa in the region calledCastelli Romani in the hills surroundingLazio has given its name to itscomune. Twelfth-century documents name the Castrum Rocce de Papa ("Rock Castle of the Pope"), because here livedPope Eugene III.
^J.B. Ward-Perkins, "Etruscan Towns, Roman Roads and Medieval Villages: The Historical Geography of Southern Etruria",The Geographical Journal128.4 (December 1962:389-404), pp. 399ff. Ward-Perkins notes the establishment of a villa of Roman pattern as late as ca 780,Pope Adrian I's recently rediscoveredDomusculta Capracorum near Veii, which Ward-Perkins does not take as exceptional but as evidence "that the system of land tenure operating in the territory of Veii at the end of the eighth century was still one of villas and large, open estates on the late Roman model" (Ward-Perkins 1962:402); villages were carved out of the former estate in the tenth century.
^Ward-Perkins 1962:401 points out that the familiar "medieval" character of surviving villages, with their cobbled streets and stone houses washed with colorfulintonaco, upon examination are invariably structures built in the sixteenth century and later.
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