Ocosce stands on the eastern edge of the plateau of the same name (with many Roman remains) that looms over Cascia and the Corno Valley below and is directly linked to Cascia by a steep, pedestrian path.

The settlement – stretching on either side of a road along the crest that leads from the entrance arch to the parish church – currently looks more like a relay village than that of a castle on a crag, as one would imagine from its prominent position, edged to the west by a compact curtain of houses set out in a semi-circle, with an arched passage very similar to a gate. 

The problem it has in common with many other places about the real nature of this type of settlement, whether village or castle, has to be clarified without merely referring to the already mentioned transformation around the 16th century, as it concerned the entire area around Cascia and modified the role and character of many of the towns. Not always does the existence of structures or traces of fortification of a “villa” refer necessarily to a previous castle; the latter is, in fact, identifiable only on the basis of more complex elements of structure, social organisation, as well as architectural elements. The nature, therefore, of “walled ground” that many villages have is incompatible with their main agricultural function, but in some cases it could be the legacy of forms of feudal economics; in other cases it is the apparently conscious product of a certain organisation of the area that anticipates centralised, compact settlements that end up by looking like the castle they depend on, as if it were their model.