Rocchette and Rocchettine were built within sight of one another above the same narrow valley in the Sabina Hills, north of Rome. Both grew around medieval fortresses guarding the route between Rieti and the Tiber Valley, and for centuries they shared much the same history. Rocchette is still inhabited today, but Rocchettine has been empty since the 1950s.
Rocchette belongs to the municipality of Torri in Sabina, in the province of Rieti, in a landscape of olive groves and small settlements placed where the terrain once offered a military advantage; the village takes its name directly from the fortress around which it developed. In the Middle Ages it was known as Rocca Bertalda, while the stronghold facing it across the valley was Rocca Guidonesca: together the two controlled a passage important enough to justify building two fortified settlements so close to one another.
