Santa Croce di Magliano, Province Campobasso, Molise, Italy

The area was inhabited since antiquity thanks to the fertility of the lands and the temperate climate. The Romans, who liked to establish their towns in the plain, in the middle of rural areas, as they did here during probably the first century BC, in the vicinity of the present Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria di Melanico. In the Middle Ages the Roman settlements gave rise to "casali", that is rural hamlets, the most important of them Santa Croce, which in the Swabian period (13th century) is recorded as a fiefdom of the Stipide family, to be later a fiefdom of the Monastery of Sant'Eustachio. In the 17th century it belonged to the Ceva Grimaldi family, while the last lords, when the feudal system was abolished in 1806, were the Falconieri-Lante Della Rovere family.