Was it a dovecote or a burial ground in Roman times?
A deep cave, with two big entrances and many little man-made niches, the columbarium of Monte del Frate facing the Setta river, is visible from the road connecting Badolo and Brento.
Although no artifacts or historical documentation permit accurate dating, most scholars have attributed these tiny cells to Ancient Roman funerary architecture, referring to similar examples especially in Latium and Tuscany.
These structures, with their rows of niches, could have been used by the Romans to store the ashes of the cremated.
Without proof, however, another less imaginative hypothesis has been set forth: that it was simply a structure created for raising pigeons.
