Ferrazzano

Ferrazzano sits on a ridge at 872 meters, five kilometers south of Campobasso, with a long view over the Biferno valley that gave it the nickname Sentinella del Molise. The Samnites lived on this hill before Rome, and Sulla's troops built a garrison here during the Social Wars; houses rose around it and the medieval village took shape. By the twelfth century the fief belonged to Riccardo Camarda, then to the Giniaco and Sangro families, finally to the Carafa, who built the stone castle with two round towers in the sixteenth century.

The De Niro family of Hollywood comes from these fieldstone row houses: Giovanni Di Niro and Angelina Mercurio sailed from Ferrazzano in 1887 and the immigration office at Ellis Island recorded their name as De Niro. The hills around the village have produced olive oil long enough that the commune carries the Città dell'Olio mark.