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The Poggio Catino skeleton
The identity of the “Poggio Catino Skeleton” is still a mystery. The only historical fact is that the skeleton was found in 1933 inside the ruined tower of a baronial palazzo in Poggio Catino. The discovery was made by Vincenzo Biraghi, whose family had owned the palazzo for many years. Numerous scholars sought to establish the identity and reconstruct the story of the skeleton by referring to archival documents and popular legends, ascertaining that the skeleton was that of a woman aged about thirty who had lived in the sixteenth century. The chronicles of the period gave different versions of her story, none of which were ever proven. Biraghi recounted that the skeleton was found in a cell beneath the ruins of the tower, and was stretched out on the ground with its arms around its bent legs and shackles on its wrists and ankles.
Some of the legends that sprang up around the woman held that she was taken hostage by the Orsini family who captured the stronghold in the sixteenth century. Others were more romantic and cast her as a châtelaine and the wife of the powerful Geppo Colonna, lord of Poggio Catino. She fell in love and was loved in return by another nobleman of Poggio Catino, and Colonna took his revenge by having her locked up in an underground cell and leaving her to starve to death.
No one knows which is the true version of the story, but the fact remains that the unknown woman died a most terrible death.
