Bracciano historical timeline

The exact date of Bracciano's founding is not known.

The formation of the medieval settlement is attributed to incastellamento, the movement of population into fortified hilltop centres that reshaped Lazio between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. On the summit of the hill a tower was built, datable to the twelfth century, and it was later absorbed into a fortress constructed by the Prefetti di Vico between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — the core from which the present castle grew.

The oldest certain documentary attestation of the town dates to 10 January 1234. On that date a laudo was drawn up in castro Brachiani, in platea ante domum Arsuli de Porta — in the castle of Bracciano, in the square before the house of Arsulus de Porta — by members of the family of the Prefetti di Vico, as part of delimiting and dividing the property belonging to the castles of Bracciano and Santa Pupa, today's Manziana. A second document, of 10 March the same year, names Landolfo and Goffredo Amatore as lords of Bracciano and Santa Pupa.

A group of deeds from 1290, preserved in the archive of the hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, still records the presence of the Prefetti di Vico in the territory: Diodato di Santa Pupa ceded to the hospital, along with other property, a sixteenth part of the castle.

The castle that grew from that tower is the Castello Orsini-Odescalchi, and it survives as a particularly well-preserved medieval castle — which is unusual in a region where most fortresses were rebuilt as palaces or ruined outright.