The town was built following a large-scale plan for the reclamation and rational cultivation of the countryside, undertaken by the Main Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, which was given the land in 1456 by the Apostolic Chamber. The operation was intended to guarantee that Pope Callistus III would have the funds necessary to arm the fleet against the Turks, who were attempting to conquer Constantinople. Building began in the mid-seventeenth century around three main features of the city layout, including the church built over the ruins of an ancient aedicule, the Agucci granary for storing household goods, and the inn. A fortress of representation was built during that period for the governor of the Charitable Institution, but it was never completed. The estate, known as Rocca Respampani, is set in the magnificent countryside and is now owned by the town administration, which is having it restored. In the historic centre, we can admire the new parish church, which has an eighteenth-century appearance, flanked by the "little houses" for the ministers of the Charitable Institution of the era, and the fountain of the gargoyle. An area in the old gaols (1737) houses a small antiquarium whose display cases hold Etruscan and Roman artefacts found in the area, including an amphora and an Etruscan-Corinthian olpe dating to the seventh-sixth century BC, a bucchero oinochoe with a zoomorphic handle with a feline shape, a bucchero flask dating to the sixth century BC, and Nenfro urns from the Hellenistic age with the figure of the deceased sculpted on the lid. There are also ceramics, inscriptions, coins, mosaic fragments and other remains from the Roman era.