Giulianello is a Renaissance village surrounded by greenery on a small hill near Cori and near a small volcanic lake which today is a natural monument. Its history is very ancient and the whole area was inhabited by the ancient people of the Volsci, as can be deduced from some ancient hydraulic works on the lake.
But its name is linked to a Roman history: this was the 'Fundus Jualianus' or an area that belonged to the Gens Julia, that of Julius Caesar. Since the republican period the Romans built some villas for the cultivation of the fields.
In the Middle Ages the population abandoned the plain and took refuge in fortresses protected by walls with a small castle on the hill and around 1100 the Castrum Juliani was born.
In the thirteenth century the castle was sold to the Conti di Segni family and for many years it was little considered due to struggles between the descendants of that family. The situation began to improve from 1450 when Donna Costanza Conti rebuilt the castle, strengthened the walls and built a church.
A legend says that in the church there is a statue of a child that dates back to the 16th century and which was made from a wood from Gethsemane. The statue has been revered since 1768 and a copy of it was at the Ara Coeli in Rome but was stolen.
Every year the inhabitants of Giuliano celebrate the statue on January 6 with the ceremony of the 'Bambinello kiss' where the statue is carried in procession and you can kiss it.
His son Antonio Maria Salvati completed his mother's work by building a small Renaissance village still dominated today by the large Palazzo Salviati and buildings serving the palace such as the stallion, the former granary and the 'cantinaccia' for oil and wine.
You enter the village through a large entrance gate that crosses the walls and which was designed in the 16th century by Giovan Battista da Sangallo, brother of the most famous Antonio da Sangallo.
With the Salviati family there is the golden age of Giulianello which is then sold to the Borghese princes at the end of the 18th century.
Feudalism ended in 1808 with the arrival of Napoleon in Italy and Giulianello began to decline due to constant quarrels of local lords to become a 'ghost town'.
With the abandonment of the fields and the arrangement of the lake waters, malaria arrived and the decline continued until the reconstruction after the Second World War.
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