Alatri (FR)

Alatri (FR) is in Ciociaria, in the province of Frosinone, about 100 kilometers from Rome, on a hill that overlooks the Sacco valley at the foot of the Monti Ernici. By car you take the A1 Rome-Naples motorway, exit at Frosinone and follow State Road 155 toward Fiuggi for about 20 minutes. Alternatively you exit at Anagni-Fiuggi and come down the same state road from the opposite side. The trip from the Raccordo takes a good hour and a half. By public transport the simplest solution is the Cotral bus that leaves from the Anagnina terminal (metro A) and arrives in Frosinone via Anagni, Ferentino and Alatri. The ride takes 100 minutes and the useful stop is Alatri Quaraticciolo, at the foot of the center. The line runs on weekdays and Saturdays, not Sundays, so the ride should be checked on the Cotral site before leaving. If you prefer the train, take the regional on the Rome-Cassino line from Termini to Frosinone and from there the Cotral bus Frosinone-Alatri-Fiuggi, which stops at Porta San Pietro, on Via Circonvallazione and at Porta San Francesco. You park along the ring road and in the lots under the walls, because the historic center is largely a limited-traffic zone and is visited on foot, uphill. The acropolis, the walls and the churches are free to enter. The Museo civico di Alatri, in Palazzo Gottifredo at number 5 Corso Cavour, is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, closed Monday, and the full ticket costs €4. The museum's website lists the updated hours and discounts, and it's a good idea to check it before the visit because some guides still give the old split schedule. For a full day, acropolis plus museum plus churches, you need at least five hours.

Alatri is one of the Ciociaria towns to see in a day from Rome, with Anagni, Ferentino and Fiuggi a few kilometers away, and it's best to plan it together with the Museo archeologico di Frosinone if you want to understand the civilization of the Hernici. If you're coming from abroad, you'll find the English-language guides to Ciociaria on ItalyPlanner. If you want a certified tour leader for a private day outside Rome, you'll find the services of TourLeaderPro. The other destinations in Lazio are gathered on the page of tourist attractions.

Alatri (FR), the city of the Cyclopes: why it's worth the trip

Alatri has a little under 28,000 inhabitants (27,553 in the updated 2024 census) and is the third city of the province of Frosinone by population, after the provincial capital and Cassino. It is the ancient Aletrium, one of the main cities of the Hernici, the Italic people of Osco-Umbrian language who occupied the middle Sacco valley and the mountains that still bear their name. The inhabitants are called alatresi, alatrensi or, in the oldest and most beautiful form, alatrini. The historic center rises on a two-peaked hill, which scholars call bigeminal, covered with olive groves and facing the Ernici range, which separates Lazio from Abruzzo.

Legend has Alatri born from a ray of sunlight, and the same legend has it founded by Saturn in the golden age together with the other Saturnian cities of Lazio, all with the initial A: Alatri, Anagni, Arpino, Atina and Ferentino, which in that story was called Antino. The myth counts for little for chronology and a lot for the history of culture: it is the way the ancient geographers and then the eighteenth-century scholars explained walls that no one knew how to date, enormous blocks fitted together without mortar that looked like the work of giants. Hence the nickname Alatri bears with pride: the city of the Cyclopes.

The monument that justifies the trip all by itself is the pre-Roman acropolis, called the Civita, ringed by megalithic walls in polygonal masonry preserved in an exceptional way, with the Porta Maggiore and its monolithic lintel, and the Porta Minore, called the Gate of the Phalluses for the three symbols carved on the jamb. Around it, a second wall circuit, also in polygonal masonry, runs for over two kilometers and in the Middle Ages received quadrangular towers to defend the gates. Inside the walls the city preserves the Romanesque-Gothic collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the co-cathedral basilica of San Paolo with the relic of the Incarnate Host, a miracle of 1228, the churches of San Francesco and San Silvestro, the proto-monastery of San Sebastiano just outside the town, the three monumental fountains of the nineteenth century, Palazzo Gottifredo with the civic museum and Palazzo Conti-Gentili with the large wall sundial. Our opinion: Alatri is the most complete Hernici city, more than Anagni for archaeology and more than Ferentino for medieval art, and it is still underrated by the tourism that stops at the Castelli Romani.

The history of Alatri (FR) from its origins to today

The Hernici and Rome: Alatri before and after 306 BC

Human presence in the territory of Alatri is attested from the Copper Age, the period archaeologists call Eneolithic or Chalcolithic. The dating of the walls, on the other hand, has a long and curious history. The French archaeologist Louis-Charles-François Petit-Radel (1756-1836), theorist of the so-called Pelasgian constructions, placed the foundation of Alatri before the second Pelasgian colony, which by his calculations dated to 1539 BC. Today nobody supports such a high chronology: the most recent research places the construction of the walls between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, and I discuss it further on in the chapter on the acropolis.

In historical times Alatri belongs to the Osco-Umbrian people of the Hernici, who had their religious capital in nearby Anagni. In 380 and 362 BC the Hernici came into conflict with Rome. In the revolt of 306 BC Alatri remained loyal to the Urbs: Livy, in the Ab urbe condita, records that Alatri, Ferentino and Veroli did not join the rebellion and that the contribution of the Hernican troops was decisive for Rome in a phase of war against the Aequi and Volsci. The old Alatri account adds that the city warned Rome of the imminent attack. This is scholarly local tradition, not a datum from Livy, and it should be taken as such. The reward of loyalty was concrete: Alatri kept its own laws and a broad autonomy, and enjoyed a period of prosperity that reached its peak in the first 40 years of the 2nd century BC with the urban reorganization promoted by the censor Lucio Betilieno Varo, known thanks to the epigraph kept in the civic museum.

The small temple of Alatri, of the Etruscan-Italic type, whose remains are in the civic museum, dates to between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. A famous full-scale reconstruction can be seen in Rome in the garden of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia. In 90 BC, with the Social War, Alatri obtained full Roman citizenship and became a municipium. Christianity, according to tradition, would have arrived already in the apostolic age, but the presence of Christians in the city is not documented before 380.

From the fall of Rome to the medieval commune of Alatri

After the end of the Western Empire the city suffered the invasions and the war between Odoacer and Theodoric. In 543 Alatri was sacked by Totila and destroyed. The following year it entered the Roman Duchy, subject to the authority of the pope. It is in this world of ruins and monastic rebirth that the tradition of the visit of Saint Benedict to the proto-monastery of San Sebastiano in 528 must be read, which I discuss further on.

In 1173 Alatri won communal autonomy: the election of the consuls dates to that year. In 1186, during the struggles between papacy and empire, the city was besieged by the army of Henry VI and held out. In the 1200s the commune of Alatri expanded at the expense of its neighbors: it subdued Collepardo and then Trivigliano, attacked Vico nel Lazio, which was subjugated at the beginning of the 14th century, when Frosinone too was forced to take part in the parliament of Alatri and to supply troops to the Hernican commune. A period of strong economic, building and monumental development opened in 1286 with the appointment as podestà of Cardinal Gottifredo di Raynaldo, the figure who left the most marks on the city: the palace that bears his name, the Gothic enlargement of Santo Stefano, the epigraph in Leonine verses that celebrates him.

Alatri in the 1300s and 1400s

The Avignon captivity coincided with a phase of decline: in 1324 the city was conquered by Francesco da Ceccano. The earthquake of 1349, the same one that ruined half of central Italy, severely damaged the town and brought down the great pointed arches of Palazzo Gottifredo. In 1357 the Egidian Constitutions, the code with which Cardinal Albornoz reorganized the Papal State, obliged Alatri to return the lordship over Trivigliano to the papacy and that over Torre to the Caetani. During the Western Schism the city was occupied by papal militias and remained forcibly loyal to Urban VI. After the entry into the city of Onorato Caetani, who captured 40 nobles, the people of Alatri named the Counts lords of the city to defend themselves from further raids.

In the 1400s the rule of King Ladislaus of Naples (1408-1414) divided the city into factions. Apart from the brief lordship of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1434, Alatri then had to submit to the direct power of the Church, which grew ever more stifling.

Alatri in the 1500s and 1600s: plague, earthquakes and Ignazio Danti

In the 16th century the Sack of Rome and the Spanish occupation that followed left Alatri impoverished and struggling with the plague. The situation worsened with the long struggles with neighboring communes and with the occupations by Cesare Caetani first and Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba, afterward. Social and religious reorganization came from an exceptional bishop: Ignazio Danti, the Perugian Dominican, mathematician and cosmographer to Gregory XIII, who led the diocese from 1583 to 1586 and who designed the monastery of the Annunziata here. The 1600s were marked by two earthquakes, in 1617 and 1654, and by the plague of 1656, the same one that emptied Rome and Naples.

Alatri in the 1700s and the Roman Republic

In the eighteenth century the city reached 8,000 inhabitants, reformed its local institutions and in 1729 established the College of the Pious Schools, entrusted to the Piarist fathers, who would remain in Alatri until 1971. With the Roman Republic of 1798 a pro-French ruling class emerged, brought down in July of the same year by a popular rebellion that ended in a massacre. In the reorganization of the papal province of Campagna and Marittima, renamed the Department of Circeo, Alatri became head of a canton of a vast territory. From 1809 to 1814 it was under Napoleonic rule, with the deportation to France of many dissidents and of Bishop Giuseppe Della Casa.

Alatri in the 1800s: aqueduct, fountains and Risorgimento

The Restoration brought political uncertainty and brigandage, a sign of the backwardness of the Papal States. But it also brought the public work that changed the daily life of the city, the aqueduct wanted by Pius IX, funded by the pope in 1863 and inaugurated in 1866, from which the three monumental fountains by Giuseppe Olivieri were born. With the Second Roman Republic of 1849 the patriot from Alatri Sisto Vinciguerra was elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly. After Unification the population reached 13,000 inhabitants, assistance services were strengthened, literary and political life flourished and the town soon outgrew the ancient wall circuit. In 1917 the inauguration of the local Rome-Fiuggi-Alatri-Frosinone railway took the city out of isolation. The line stayed in service until 1978.

Alatri in the 1900s: the war and the Fraschette camp

The Second World War cost Alatri heavy human losses and the ruin of monuments and homes, including the clock that crowned the facade of the town hall. In 1941 an internment camp was set up in the locality of Fraschette, in operation from October 1, 1942 to April 19, 1944 and then turned into a refugee camp, active until the 1970s. I talk about it in a separate chapter, because it is one of the most important and least told pages of history in Lazio. In the postwar period Alatri became an economically thriving city, with strong development of commercial activities, and since 2010 the Ferentino-Sora expressway has brought it even closer to the motorway.

Traditions, festivals and folklore of Alatri (FR)

The calendar of festivals in Alatri follows the liturgical year and the story of the patron saint. On January 11 San Sisto "Ginnàr" is celebrated, the anniversary of the arrival in the city of the relics of the martyr pope Sixtus I. The big feast of Saint Sixtus, on the other hand, falls on the first Wednesday after Easter. The Good Friday procession is a historical-religious reenactment of the Passion, Via Crucis and Golgotha, which starts from the church of San Matteo and goes through the streets of the center. For Corpus Domini the streets are covered with the Infiorata, carpets of petals that remain the most photogenic way to see the medieval alleys. September 8 is the feast of Maria Santissima della Libera, co-patron of the city. The Onion Fair is held and the Palio delle Quattro Porte is run, a race in costume similar to the ruzzola game in which a wheel of Parmesan of about 30 kilograms is rolled along a course that ends at the cloister of San Francesco.

The Natale of Alatri, the solstice festival

The most singular festival, though, is secular and astronomical. On June 21, the day of the summer solstice, Alatri celebrates its own Natale: at six in the morning people gather on the acropolis to welcome the first ray of sun, with live music and projections among the walls, and in the evening in the cloister of San Francesco the Golden Cyclops prize is given to citizens who have honored the city. The idea comes from the legend of the founding from a ray of sun and from studies on the astronomical orientations of the gates. A second event, less attended, is held at the winter solstice, on December 21. My advice is to pick June 21: getting up at four to be at the Civita at dawn with the few alatrini who go every year is an experience worth more than any guided visit.

The Cyclopean walls of Alatri (FR) and the legends of the megalithic city

Alatri is called the city of the Cyclopes for the state of preservation of the acropolis of the Civita, one of the greatest examples of ancient architecture in Italy and the symbol of the megalithic cities of Lazio, to which mysteries and legends have always been tied. The monumental blocks make up a compact curtain in which two gates open: the Porta Maggiore, with its extraordinary monolithic lintel, and the Porta Minore or Gate of the Phalluses, equipped with an inclined plane to climb to the upper platform, where the pagan temples were replaced by the Duomo and the Episcopio.

At the Porta Minore you observe a phenomenon that has fed a lot of literature: on the days of the equinoxes the sun penetrates the whole polygonal corridor above the gate, about 17 meters long, and thus marks the timing of the two equinoxes. The ray, according to those who have measured it, retreats or advances by about 50 centimeters a day, indicating if it is the spring or the autumn equinox. From this observation archaeoastronomy research has started that goes far beyond the measurable fact: some claim that the acropolis would be a sort of stargate and that its alignments would find correspondences with Hattusa, capital of the Hittite empire, with the Giza plateau and with the so-called pyramids of Visoko in Bosnia.

The hypothesis of the star temple of Alatri

The so-called Templum is a graffito carved on an outcropping rock at the highest point of the acropolis, identified in 2008 by Ornello Tofani together with Professor Gianni Boezi. According to their reading, by extending the two carved arrows toward the horizon and projecting them onto the celestial vault you would obtain, through the effect of the precession of the equinoxes, a pendulum movement of the stars from 170 degrees of azimuth (calculated on 10,750 BC) to 90 degrees in 2012 BC. The same arrows would have indicated in 5300 BC the progressive rising of the three stars of Orion's belt, Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, then of Sirius, and to the east of the Gemini and of Auriga, giving shape to a star temple. The structure of the acropolis, still according to this hypothesis, would recall the number three several times: in the sides of the walls, in the three phalluses carved on the northwest side of the fertility gate, in the three false doors of the south side toward the Porta Maggiore, read as a symbol of the passage of the deities. Tofani also maintains geometric links between the acropolis of Alatri, the pyramids of Giza, Mecca, Carnac in Brittany, Hattusa, Xi'an and Visoko, places with megalithic settlements that would be joined by lines.

I'll say it plainly, because the reader needs to know what they are looking at: the graffito exists and can be seen, the orientation of the gates and the golden section in the ratio between the height and base of the two gates are observations repeated by several scholars, while the datings to 10,750 BC and the lines between continents are hypotheses that academic archaeology does not share. The cautious version is that of the Soprintendenza and of the excavations of the 1970s: a Hernici acropolis, restructured in the Roman age, carefully oriented by builders who knew the sky. The real mystery, and that's all, is how they lifted 27 tons of lintel.

What to see in Alatri (FR): the acropolis of the Civita

The acropolis of Alatri, the Civita

The acropolis of Alatri, called Civita, occupies the top of the hill at the center of the historic center. The walls in polygonal masonry are made of several courses of polymorphic megaliths, often three meters long, quarried from the same hill and made to fit together by interlocking without lime or cement: try to slide a knife blade between two blocks and it won't pass. The circuit describes a trapezoidal area of about 19,000 square meters, a little under two hectares, with a perimeter of about 600 meters. The old figure of two kilometers refers to the outer urban wall, not to the acropolis. The maximum height is reached at the Pizzale, the southeast corner, where 15 stacked blocks reach almost 17 meters. On the corner stone a worn bas-relief has been read as a winged figure or as a solar globe. The excavations carried out between 1976 and 1979 yielded materials that go back at least to the fifth century BC, and they are the basis for the interpretation accepted today: a Hernici sanctuary made monumental, then rearranged in the Roman age.

Besides the access ramp, the acropolis has two gates: the Porta Maggiore in the southeast stretch and the Porta Minore or Gate of the Phalluses toward the northwest, opposite each other. On the upper platform stand the co-cathedral basilica of San Paolo and the Episcopio, on the podium of the ancient hieron, the Hernici altar, and on the remains of a temple that tradition dedicates to Saturn. From the terrace you see the whole Sacco valley as far as the Lepini and, on clear days, the profile of Monte Cacume above Patrica.

The Porta Maggiore of Alatri and the 27-ton lintel

The Porta Maggiore is 4.5 meters high and 2.68 wide, and its lintel measures 5.13 meters in length by 4 in depth and 1.3 in thickness: a single block, with an estimated weight of about 27 tons, the second monolith of this type in Europe after the one of the Lion Gate of Mycenae. You pass under it with your head up and you understand why nineteenth-century travelers spoke of Cyclopes. The three large rectangular niches, about 90 centimeters deep, opened in the wall on the south side, are the false doors that the archaeoastronomy studies talk about. The more prosaic explanation takes them as service or cult spaces, and it remains the most probable.

The Porta Minore or Gate of the Phalluses

The Porta Minore measures 2.12 meters by 1.16 and is covered by a corridor of nine monoliths in progressive overhang, the false vault that the builders of the Aegean Bronze Age knew well. On the jamb the three carved phalluses are apotropaic symbols of fertility and protection, common in the Italic world. On the same gate traces of inscriptions in the Oscan language can be read. It is the gate of the equinoxes, the one with the ray that crosses the corridor, and it is also the less crowded one: whoever is short on time enters through the Porta Maggiore, whoever has taste leaves through this one.

A curiosity about Alatri (FR)

In front of the Porta Maggiore the curiosity concerns the inscription of Lucius Betilienus Varus, kept in the civic museum and dated to the first 40 years of the second century BC. It's not just any celebratory slab: it is the final accounting of an administrator. The text lists, one by one, the works that the censor had carried out at his own expense or under his own direction: the streets of the city, the portico that climbed from the forum to the acropolis, the field for the games, the sundial, the market, the plastering of the basilica, the seats, the swimming pool, the water tank near the gate, the lacus ad portam, and the conduit that brought water up to the acropolis, overcoming a steep drop. It is the most complete document we have on an urban intervention in an Italic city of the Republican age, and it explains why Alatri, a faithful ally, was a rich city in those years. When you climb the ramp that leads from the square to the Civita you are walking, in all likelihood, along the same line as the portico of Betilienus. The portico no longer exists, the slab does, and the museum displays it so that it can be read in full: it is the piece of the museum for which the ticket is truly worth it, much more than the models.

The urban walls of Alatri (FR) and the gates of the city

The second polygonal circuit of Alatri

Roughly concentric with the acropolis, and similar in building technique, is the second and wider wall circuit: more than two kilometers long and preserved almost in its entirety, it delimits an area of about 25 hectares, the historic center, and is distinguished by the way the wall sections are grafted onto naturally rugged and uneven terrain, exploiting the rock outcrops. Along the circuit, at the oldest road routes, five gates open, originally all topped by monolithic lintels. The only one preserved in its original structure is Porta San Benedetto, on the side facing north. The others, Porta San Pietro, Porta San Francesco, Portadini and Porta Sant'Anna, have taken on medieval and modern forms but keep in their names the neighborhoods and fountains that precede them.

When the walls of Alatri were built

The dating of the circuit has long been debated, also in relation to the acropolis and the general chronology of polygonal masonry. According to Filippo Coarelli the urban walls would go back to the early first century BC, in the context of the struggles between Marius and Sulla and after the establishment of the municipium. The dating derives from the excavations the scholar carried out in the original embankment behind Porta San Benedetto and from an inscription (CIL X 5806) that would commemorate the construction of the outer walls by the quattuorvir Publius Betilienus Hapalus, a municipal magistrate. A more recent interpretation reads the same inscription as the record not of the construction but of the repair of a stretch of the circuit, damaged during the Social War between 90 and 80 BC. The construction would then have to be moved to the fourth century BC, at the time of the wars between the Hernici and Rome. For the acropolis Coarelli himself proposes the fourth-third century BC. Hold on to this: the walls of Alatri are in any case older than Caesar, and the stones you touch are more than 2,000 years old.

The medieval towers on the walls of Alatri

In the Middle Ages the whole circuit, except the southern stretch already defended by a double megalithic barrier, was reinforced with tall quadrangular towers from which the territory was controlled. The exception is the tower called Brocchetti, circular with a truncated-cone base. You can see them well by driving or walking the ring road, which goes around the city following the line of the walls: it's the right walk for late afternoon, when the raking light brings out the interlocking of the blocks.

The churches of Alatri (FR), one by one

The co-cathedral basilica of San Paolo, the duomo of Alatri

On the summit of the acropolis, on the podium of the ancient hieron and on the remains of the temple attributed to Saturn, stand the basilica of San Paolo apostolo and the adjoining Bishop's Palace, of early medieval origin: there is record of it from 930. A major renovation in the eighteenth century gave both buildings the eighteenth-century lines you see today. The facade in stone and brick was built with the bell tower by Jacopo Subleyras between 1790 and 1808, on the model of the major Roman basilicas, with a single order of paired pilasters. In 1884 the attic and the pediment were added. On the dignity of minor basilica the sources diverge: a local tradition traces it to the first visit of Pius IX in 1850, other sources attribute it to an act of Pius XII of September 1950. The interior is a Latin cross, with three naves, with a long raised transept at the presbytery. Among the artistic material are the remains of a Cosmatesque pulpit of 1222, with the porphyry and serpentine inlays that the Roman marble workers brought all the way down here.

The church holds part of the relics of the patron saint, the pope and martyr Sixtus I, in a very ancient lead urn on whose lid is carved the inscription HIC RECONDITUM EST CORPUS XYSTI PP. PRIMI ET MARTIRIS. At the end of the right nave rests the body of Saint Alexander the martyr, taken from the cemetery of San Callisto and given to the church of Alatri in 1640. In the dedicated chapel, still in the right nave, the relic of the Incarnate Host is venerated, the Eucharistic miracle of 1228: a young woman, urged on by a sorceress, kept the consecrated host in her mouth to take it home and use it in a love potion. She put it away in a bread chest and after a few days found it turned into flesh. She confessed everything to Bishop Giovanni, who informed Rome, and Gregory IX replied with the bull Fraternitatis tuae of March 13, 1228, the oldest papal document that recognizes a Eucharistic miracle. The host can still be seen, in a case, and it is the reason pilgrims come to Alatri from all over Italy.

The collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Alatri

The collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the square of the same name that is the city's living room, dates to the fifth century and was built on the ruins of a pagan temple. Its Romanesque-Gothic look is due to the deep transformations of the thirteenth century. On the outside the large rose window of the early fourteenth century dominates, and the facade with three portals and the tower bell tower is the backdrop of every photograph of the square. Inside are kept the wooden group of the Madonna of Constantinople, of the thirteenth century, a Virgin enthroned with Child of the Byzantine type that tradition says was brought from the East. The Triptych of the Redeemer by Antonio da Alatri, the local late Gothic painter of the fifteenth century whom we will meet again in almost all the churches of the city. The Virgin with Child and Saint Savior of the first half of the fifteenth century. The baptismal font of the thirteenth century. It's the church I recommend seeing first, because it teaches you to recognize the hand of Antonio da Alatri before meeting it in the country chapels.

The church of San Francesco and the cloister

Built between the second half of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth, San Francesco has a compact Gothic structure. The facade has a pointed-arch portal and a rose window with radial small columns. The interior, with a single nave, was renovated in the Baroque age and preserves a well-known Deposition of the Neapolitan school of the seventeenth century and a cloak of the thirteenth century that tradition attributes to Saint Francis of Assisi. The adjoining convent is today the exhibition hall known as the Chiostro, where exhibitions are held along with the Golden Cyclops concert. In a narrow cavity of the former convent survives a fresco of great interest, a Christ Pantocrator at the center of a labyrinth, which I talk about in the next chapter.

Something nobody tells you about Alatri (FR)

No quick guide tells about the labyrinth of Alatri, because for years it has been almost invisible: it is in a narrow cavity between two walls of the former convent of San Francesco, and it is reached only with visits organized by the cloister. It is a fresco about 140 centimeters in diameter that represents a circular labyrinth with 11 coils and 12 circles, of the type called Chartres, with at the center a bearded and haloed Christ Pantocrator, in a dark tunic and golden cloak, holding a closed book in his left hand and pointing with his right to the entrance of the labyrinth. The association between the labyrinth and Christ is rare: in the French cathedrals the labyrinth is on the floor and empty at the center, here it is on a wall and at the center is the face of God. The Soprintendenza dates it between the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century, and the radiocarbon analysis of the plaster indicates a range between 1300 and 1420, so the years of the construction of the church. And they link it to the culture of the friars minor, for whom the labyrinth was the figure of the soul's path toward salvation. Some have wanted to see in it a Templar symbol, and Alatri does in fact have a Templar legend that is interwoven with the Gate of the Phalluses and with the three phalluses read as three nails. It is a reading suggested by widely popular books, not by documents. What nobody says is simpler and more beautiful: the painter chose the labyrinth without dead ends, the one in which you don't get lost and in which the only path, however long, always leads to the center. A fourteenth-century Franciscan could not have said better that the road is only one. The restoration completed in April 2012 opened a door that makes access easier, but the visit remains accompanied. Ask the cloister if it's possible to see it the same day and, if not, come back. It is the most original work in Alatri and the least photographed, because a wide-angle lens barely fits in the crack.

The church of Santo Stefano and the monastery of the Annunziata

Built between the end of the tenth and the start of the eleventh century in modest dimensions and Romanesque forms, the church of Santo Stefano was renovated and enlarged in 1284 at the will of Cardinal Gottifredo di Raynaldo according to the characteristics of Gothic architecture. An inscription records the enlargement: it is carved in Gothic letters on two slabs placed on the jambs of the portal, in Leonine verses, rhymed hexameters and pentameters, dedicated to the cardinal. In the sixteenth century the church lost its left nave to make room for the monastery of the Annunziata, wanted and designed by Bishop Ignazio Danti in 1586 and still active. In 1984 it received the visit of John Paul II. The alterations of the following two centuries distorted the medieval building, leaving intact only the trilobed portal, repositioned on the right side, and the medieval cross-bearing lion placed at the apex of the pediment. The late Baroque interior holds a seventeenth-century altarpiece with Saints Stephen, Benedict and Scholastica on the main altar and, on the left wall, the Calling of Matthew painted in 1739 by Filippo Palazzetti. On the bell tower is installed the bell called San Benedetto's, which tradition traces to the sixth century and says was given by Saint Benedict of Norcia to the proto-monastery of San Sebastiano, run by Deacon Servando, during the visit of 528. If the dating were confirmed it would be one of the oldest bells in Europe. The tradition is beautiful, the proof is missing.

The church of San Silvestro alle Piagge

In the Piagge neighborhood, in dialect Piaje, the church of San Silvestro was built between the tenth and eleventh century with a single nave. In 1331 the left nave and the sacristy were added. It keeps its Romanesque lines, with the austere simplicity of the exterior, the sobriety of the interior and the ceiling of wooden trusses, and it is the church that attentive visitors love most. Remarkable, for expressive intensity and antiquity, is the fresco of Saint Sylvester with the dragon of the twelfth century, on the right side of the apse: the pope who according to legend freed Rome from the dragon of the Forum is here in a peasant and powerful version. On the opposite side are votive images, scenes from the New Testament and series of saints datable between the thirteenth and fifteenth century. From the interior you descend into the crypt of the ninth century, with cross vaults and a fresco of a Blessing Saint in a Byzantine-like manner.

The church of the Piarists and the Marriage of the Virgin

The church of the Piarists was built between 1734 and 1745 on a design by the Calasanctian father Benedetto Margariti of Manduria, joined to Palazzo Conti-Gentili where the Piarist college had its seat, and is dedicated to the Marriage of the Virgin, as the inscription on the facade says: IN HONOREM DEIPARAE SPONSAE AD MDCCXLV. The travertine facade, conceived as a self-standing organism, reinterprets Borromini-style motifs: two horizontal tiers with a double order of Tuscan pilasters that frame, under a wide mixtilinear pediment, the single portal with the central window above it. In the side sections the windows framed by wide projecting moldings were meant to end, in the original design that was never completed, with two twin bell towers. The interior, a Greek cross with apsidal ends, is dominated by the upward tension of the Corinthian pilasters, joined by an unbroken entablature on which rest the large round arches that hold up the dome. Against the monochrome stucco decoration stand out the eighteenth-century canvases of the three altars: on the main altar the Marriage of the Virgin painted in 1731 by Carmine Spinetti, at the sides a Crucifixion by the Venetian painter Benedetto Mora and an unsigned Saint Joseph Calasanctius, of the second half of the eighteenth century, in honor of the founder of the order. The Piarists left Alatri in 1971. Today the church hosts exhibitions and events. It is the best Baroque building in Ciociaria, and I say it knowing that in Frosinone and Veroli they would not agree.

The church of San Benedetto and Blessed Cimatti

There is record of this small church from 1138. Just inside Porta San Francesco, built leaning against the Cyclopean walls, it has a single nave with an apse and a bell gable. Until 1330 it was the church of the Franciscans of Alatri and for centuries it was flanked by the city hospital, in existence since at least 1186 and originally one of the many hospitals of the city. From 1945 to 2010 it housed the tomb of Sister Maria Raffaella Cimatti, now Blessed, who worked in the old hospital and in the adjoining pharmacy and whom the older alatrini still remember in person.

The church of San Michele and the Antonini fountain

In Piazza Sant'Anna, facing the Antonini fountain, the church of San Michele was part of the vanished hospital of Santo Spirito. It has a single nave and a small bell gable. Under the church an underground space preserves a Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence.

The church of Santa Lucia

Already existing in the fourteenth century and originally dedicated to Saint Simeon, it took its present name in 1600. It holds a wooden Madonna of the fifteenth century, one of those dressed statues that in Ciociaria go out in procession once a year.

The proto-monastery of San Sebastiano and the grange of Tecchiena

The proto-monastery of San Sebastiano, on the slopes of the small hill Monticchio just outside Alatri, was built at the end of the fifth century at the wish of Liberius, praetorian prefect of the Gauls under Theodoric, who entrusted it to Abbot Servando. It hosted one of the oldest cenobitic communities of the West, so much so that some scholars do not rule out that the Regula Magistri was written right here, the monastic text that inspired Saint Benedict of Norcia, who according to tradition stayed there in 528. The complex appears today as a building with medieval lines with thirteenth-century decorations depicting the life of Christ and of the Madonna. A part belonged to Sir John Leslie, an Irish nobleman and soldier decorated with the Legion of Honor. On the Monticchio hill, around the eleventh century, the people of Alatri built some fortifications. The continual disputes with Ferentino, which broke out into real acts of war, led Innocent IV in 1245 to deprive the commune of every right over what remained of the castle, taking the Tecchiena area into the property of the Church and reselling it in 1395 to the Carthusians of Trisulti. The monks founded a real farm there, transformed in the second half of the eighteenth century into the complex of the Grancia, the granary, which they ran until the early twentieth century: several building blocks with eighteenth-century lines that fuse building and landscape. Nearby some ruins of the castle can be seen. The visit to the proto-monastery depends on the openings of the community that looks after it: ask at the parish or at the cloister of San Francesco.

The Capuchin convent on Colle San Pietro

The Capuchin convent stands on Colle San Pietro, near the historic center, where in antiquity a temple dedicated to the goddess Bellona rose. In the first Christian centuries a church dedicated to San Pietro was built there, around which in the thirteenth century a community of Benedictine nuns developed. In 1566 the Capuchins took over and extensively rebuilt the monastery. In the church of San Pietro, late Renaissance but renovated in the second half of the eighteenth century, you see a monumental main altar in walnut wood, built by Father Giovanni da Collepardo in 1755, with the luminous altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception by the painter from Alatri Vincenzo Cerica.

The church of the Donna on the Fiuggi state road

The church of the Donna is on State Road 155 to Fiuggi, at the point where Via Provinciale branches off, which climbs to the center of Alatri. Built in the fifteenth century, it bears the marks of the interventions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the entrance was moved from the side facing Alatri to the opposite one, on the state road, with a new neo-Gothic facade. Inside remain traces of the original Gothic arches under an eighteenth-century polychrome coffered ceiling with false trusses. The presbytery is covered by a keel vault coffered with rosettes, the choir loft above the entrance by a frescoed cross vault with a starry sky. Of the old votive paintings survive a Madonna enthroned with Child and four saints and, to the right of the entrance, a fresco attributed to Antonio da Alatri with the Virgin, the Child and Saint John the Baptist. After a restoration lasting 15 years the church returned to use in 2012.

The church of the Maddalena, the old leper hospital

Dedicated since 1196 to the penitent Magdalene, the church stands near the center, at the foot of Monte Sant'Angelo in Formis, in the place anciently used as a leper hospital. The position outside the gate, near water and far from houses, is the typical one of leper churches. The building, sober and essential, was built at the end of the eleventh century. On the facade preceded by a porch stands out the portal with lunette, topped by a narrow, deeply splayed single-light window. The interior, with a single nave, is held up by three large arches that support the roof. On the walls is preserved a series of fifteenth-century frescoes of male and female saints, probably the work of Antonio da Alatri, with the dominant theme of the Magdalene, repeated several times. On the right wall a fourteenth-century bishop saint, then a Saint Peter of the first half of the sixteenth century and a fifteenth-century Trinity near the entrance. The cycle closes with the draped Madonna with Child painted in the presbytery. On the entrance wall a large painting by Raffaele Zappelli of 1877 depicts Saint Christopher with the Child Jesus.

The church of the XII Marie and Antonio da Alatri

It is a typical rural chapel outside the town, built in the late fourteenth century starting from a small shrine, with a single nave. The name comes from the 12 Marian depictions that, with a series of male and female saints, cover its walls, attributed to the late Gothic painter Antonio da Alatri. Entering, on the left wall, you see a Madonna with Child, a Saint Anthony Abbot and another Virgin flanked by a double depiction of Saint Leonard with the unmistakable attribute of the shackles, next to the kneeling figure of the patron who commissioned it. To another hand belong the figures of Saint John the Baptist, of Christ in the tomb and of Saint Florian on the back wall. In the small icon with the Madonna with Child between Saints John the Evangelist and Pope Sixtus I, and in the panels with the Virgin with Child and a praying saint, the Sienese style decidedly prevails, a sign that in the fifteenth century Tuscan models circulated in Ciociaria. Again on the left wall Antonio da Alatri paints three Virgins with Child with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Lucy and Saint John the Baptist. On the entrance wall the last two images of the Maternity of Mary. Antonio da Alatri, documented in the first half of the fifteenth century, is the painter of the city: a provincial late Gothic painter, cultured and repetitive, recognizable by his oval faces and long hands. The XII Marie are his masterpiece and open on request: the key has to be asked for in town, and it's worth it.

The church of Portadini and the nursing Madonna

The church of Portadini is just outside the southern stretch of the walls, near the gate of the same name, in an ancient resting place for peasants on their way between the city and the fields. A single room, a simple facade with the door, two side windows and a central one. The interior preserves a Renaissance icon by an unknown author with a nursing Madonna. The historical archives of the comune tell that in May 1619 the image, struck by a stone on the cheek, swelled up bleeding, and the event is reported among the public acts of the time. The image is venerated on the feast day of the Madonna della Risurrezione.

The church of San Matteo and Good Friday

A short distance from Porta San Francesco, San Matteo already existed in the thirteenth century with an attached hospital, later suppressed. In 1778 Bishop Speranza granted it to the confraternity of the Passion, and it is still today the gathering point and starting point of the Good Friday procession.

The church of the Madonna della Sanità in Colleprata

It is a chapel in the Colleprata area. It preserves a dropsical Madonna and three other frescoes, a Christ, a Magdalene and a Saint Sebastian, by the Master of the Madonna of Alvito, the anonymous painter of the fifteenth century who takes his name from the panel kept in the Valle di Comino.

My advice for visiting Alatri (FR)

Alatri is visited on foot and uphill, and the most useful advice is not to start from the acropolis. Leave the car along the ring road or in the lots below Porta San Francesco, enter through the gate and climb along Corso Vittorio Emanuele passing in front of Palazzo Gottifredo. That way you arrive in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore from below, with the collegiate church and the sundial of Palazzo Conti-Gentili opening up in front of you all at once. From there the ramp that climbs to the Civita is short and brings you to the Porta Maggiore when you have already understood the city. At the top walk around the whole platform, go into the cathedral for the Incarnate Host and the Cosmatesque pulpit, and come down through the Porta Minore, on the opposite side, then following the outer circuit of the acropolis walls, which is a shaded path of 20 minutes. Realistic times: an hour and a half for the acropolis and the cathedral, an hour for the civic museum, an hour for Santa Maria Maggiore, San Francesco and San Silvestro, and the rest of the afternoon for a church outside the gate of your choice, the XII Marie or the Maddalena, with the key requested in advance. The museum closes at 18:00 and on Mondays: put it in the middle of the day, not at the end. If you have only half a day, do the acropolis, the cathedral and the collegiate church and give up the rest without regret. Avoid the early afternoon hours of August on the Civita, where there isn't a thread of shade, and prefer spring or early autumn. The best period of all is the days around June 21, when the festival of the Natale of Alatri gets places that are otherwise closed to open. One last practical piece of advice worth gold: the Cotral stop useful for the center is not the hospital one, which is out of the way, but Porta San Pietro or Via Circonvallazione. For a day organized with a guide and private transport from Rome, the most convenient formula for a group of friends or for a company, start from the TourLeaderPro services for small groups.

The palaces of Alatri (FR): Gottifredo, Conti-Gentili, Grappelli

Palazzo Conti-Gentili and the sundial of Alatri

Palazzo Conti-Gentili, a noble building of the thirteenth century, forms one of the sides of Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore and is joined on one flank to the church of the Piarists, with which it shares its recent history: for over two centuries it was the seat of the College of the Pious Schools, run from 1729 to 1971 by the Piarist fathers, and today it hosts the high school. On the facade the large wall sundial, with the hour lines and the zodiac signs, is the mark left by the school: the Piarists taught mathematics and astronomy, and the sundial was their teaching tool displayed to the city. It is the detail of the square that visitors look at last and that is best looked at first.

Palazzo Gottifredo, the civic museum and the tower-houses

Conceived with total independence from the usual forms of medieval architecture in Alatri, Palazzo Gottifredo, imposing in height, was built around the middle of the thirteenth century as the residence of Cardinal Gottifredo di Raynaldo, a rich feudal lord of Alatri and papal diplomat in the years of the struggle against the empire. The design comes from the fusion of two sturdy tower-houses, different in style and era, connected by a wide longitudinal body that winds with a faceted profile along much of Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The stylistic differences can be read in the different ornamentation of the two main entrances and above all in the arrangement of the upper openings: irregular and sparse in the older corner tower, orderly and organic in the remaining building blocks, with the two levels of mullioned windows that make it the most important medieval palace of the city. The interior, compromised by the earthquake of 1349 that brought down the great pointed arches of the central sector, was restored by the architects Giovanni Fontana and Alfredo Spalvieri. A portion of the palace hosts the civic museum, which I talk about room by room further on.

The town hall of Alatri

The original building was raised in the first half of the twelfth century and renovated in 1395 and 1558. Between 1863 and 1870 it took on its present neoclassical forms through the work of the architect Raffaele Boretti. The clock that crowned its facade was destroyed in the bombing of the Second World War.

Palazzo Grappelli and the jazzman Stéphane Grappelli

Palazzo Grappelli is a mighty building of the thirteenth century equipped with a tower, the Torre Grappelli. Also known as Palazzo Patrassi or Patrassi-Grappelli from the name of the first owners, it was a reference point of the city's political life in the communal age and in the seventeenth century was enlarged at the will of Paolo Grappelli. Ferdinand Gregorovius, who passed through here in 1858 during his excursions in the Ernici, described it like this: "A wide inner courtyard, fine stone staircases, a magnificent hall, where a little theater had been set up, many rooms with painted ceilings and walls adorned with frescoes, and finally, amid some side buildings in terrible condition, a ruined tower revealed that there had once been a fortress." To the Alatri family of the Grappelli marquises belonged the famous jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli, born in Paris in 1908 to an Italian father: the name of 1930s swing has roots in this palace.

Palazzo Molella and the library

Palazzo Molella belongs to the Molella family of Alatri. Previously it must have belonged to the Caccianti, an Alatri family very active between the fifteenth and sixteenth century, as shown by the stone coat of arms of clearly Renaissance design on the entrance portal. It hosts the Molella library.

Palazzo Amore e Stampa and the old synagogue of Alatri

Also of the thirteenth century, Palazzo Amore e Stampa owes its present look to the radical renovation of 1855. The original look can be guessed from the walled-up mullioned windows and the pointed arches of the ground floor. The complex absorbed the city's old synagogue, which stood on the side of Vicolo Vezzacchi, where a stone panel with the symbol of a Jewish family is still visible. The Jewish community of Alatri, like those of Anagni and Ferentino, is documented in the Middle Ages and disappeared with the expulsions from the Papal States in the sixteenth century. In the past the palace hosted the Collegio Stanislao Stampa. Today it is the seat of the Musicapolis association and of the Ente morale Stampa.

The monumental fountains of Alatri (FR) and the aqueduct of Pius IX

The Fontana Pia

The monumental fountain inaugurated in 1870 and dedicated to Pius IX, in gratitude for the sizable sum of money the pope gave the city in 1863 for the new aqueduct, is the work of the architect Giuseppe Olivieri. The simplicity of the elements, drawn from medieval tradition, serves an openly scenographic structure that, in its modest dimensions, appears delightful for its technical finish: the dynamism rises from the large quadrangular basin of the base through the helical structure of the knotted dolphins up to the two basins with lion heads, in a graceful play of water. It was built in the last year of the Papal States, and dedicating it to the pope a few months before Porta Pia says a lot about Alatri's loyalty to Rome.

The Fontana Antonini

In the Spidini district, at the end of Corso Umberto I facing the little church of San Michele, the Antonini fountain was built in 1869. As the central inscription says, the costs were borne by Count Filippo Antonini, gonfalonier of the city, who entrusted the design to Giuseppe Olivieri himself. The front is simple and recalls the portals of the surrounding palaces: everything is gathered in the classical motif of the round arch, to which every other element of the composition obeys. The allegorical construction, inspired by the heraldry of the Antonini, can barely be guessed in the dragons that spout water and in the eight-pointed stars that interrupt the archivolt and the piers of the arch.

The Fountain of Porta San Pietro

Contemporary with the other two and also by Giuseppe Olivieri, it was built after the Trovalle aqueduct, inaugurated on December 27, 1866 right at this spot with a provisional spring. It has a simple and unassuming tone, with the relief softened by the central frame that joins the large basin in front with the two scrolls that enclose the rich decoration of the coat of arms of Alatri. The clarity of the warm-toned travertine and the elegance of every chiseled detail make it a small and refined masterpiece, and make those who love stone prefer it to the more famous Fontana Pia.

The Museo civico di Alatri (FR) room by room

The Museo civico di Alatri, founded in 1932 and housed in the restored rooms of the thirteenth-century Palazzo Gottifredo at Corso Cavour 5, is a small museum, well ordered and richer than it seems. It is visited in an hour and is divided into three cores.

The archaeological and epigraphic section

The epigraphic section gathers the slabs that document Roman Aletrium: funerary inscriptions, dedications, and above all the inscription of Lucius Betilienus Varus, whose story is told in the curiosity. It is the piece to stop in front of. Next to it, a polychrome floor mosaic datable between 90 and 80 BC and the materials from the acropolis excavations of 1976-1979, which go back at least to the fifth century BC. Here are also kept the remains of the small Etruscan-Italic temple of the third-second century BC excavated at the end of the nineteenth century just outside the walls, with the painted architectural terracottas, antefixes and cladding slabs, which allowed the full-scale reconstruction in the garden of Villa Giulia in Rome. Whoever has seen that reconstruction with its bright colors understands, in front of the originals, how faithful it was.

The demo-anthropological section and the charcoal burners' cradle

The demo-anthropological section, born from the Gambardella collection, displays about a thousand objects among tools and equipment of the farming and craft tradition of southern Lazio: plows, looms, grain measures, the tools of the cobbler and the cooper, the life of a town that until the 1950s lived on olives, wheat and charcoal. The object everyone remembers is a cradle made of iron rod, to be hung between two trees. It was used by couples of charcoal burners, who spent weeks in the woods of the Ernici making charcoal, to keep newborns off the ground and safe from animals. It is a piece of ethnography more eloquent than many pages on the Monti Ernici.

The Biennale art gallery

The third core is a collection of contemporary art with the works of the art biennials that the comune organized in the twentieth century. It's not the reason you come to Alatri, but it tells of a city that after the war wanted to stay alive. The distributed museum also includes, with the same ticket or with dedicated routes listed on the official site, the gates of the acropolis and the outer circuit of the polygonal fortifications.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

Everyone knows that at Villa Giulia, in Rome, at the end of the garden, there is a full-scale Etruscan-Italic temple with painted colors, the double-pitched roof and the antefixes with Gorgon heads. Thousands of visitors a year photograph it. Almost no one knows that this temple is the temple of Alatri. The reconstruction was carried out at the end of the nineteenth century on the basis of the excavations conducted in the territory of Alatri, where the small sanctuary of the third-second century BC had yielded the architectural terracottas in such quantity and condition as to allow the reconstruction of the whole roof cladding system: eaves slabs, antefixes, acroteria, the decoration of the pediment. The scheme followed is the one described by Vitruvius for the Tuscan temple, with the deep pronaos, the wooden columns and the recessed cella, and it is still today the only life-size reconstruction of an Italic temple that can be visited. The original pieces are partly in Alatri and partly in Rome, and at Villa Giulia it's worth remembering it: this is Alatri transplanted to Rome. The rarely mentioned fact has a practical consequence: whoever goes to Alatri after seeing Villa Giulia recognizes in the civic museum the fragments of the roof that they saw remade new, and the visit changes meaning. The temple was of the Etruscan-Italic type and not Etruscan: the Hernici were not Etruscans, but in the third century BC the architectural forms of Lazio were by then the same from Veii to Cassino, and the temple of Alatri shows it better than any textbook.

Archaeology and memory outside the walls of Alatri (FR)

The excavations of Monte Lungo

In the 1970s, on the hill of Monte Lungo, in dialect Mont'long', a farmer pointed out some carved stones that recalled the construction of the walls of the acropolis. The later excavations, led by the Soprintendenza of Lazio with the local Archeoclub, brought to light remains of walls entirely similar to those of the Saturnian cities, belonging to the group of the so-called first manner, the oldest and most irregular of polygonal masonry. The hypotheses, published in 1988, range from a twin village to a military outpost. The one considered most probable, linked to the lack of organic unity in the walls, sees in these structures the trials made by the builders before setting about the founding of the city. If so, Monte Lungo is the Cyclopes' training worksite.

The Fraschette internment camp

The Fraschette internment camp was established in 1941 by the military authorities of the Fascist regime in the territory of Alatri, in the locality of Fraschette, along the road to Frosinone. It went into operation on October 1, 1942 and stayed active until April 19, 1944. Designed for prisoners of war, it became a place of internment for civilians, mostly Slavs and Greeks, and for citizens of the other nations at war with Italy: whole families deported from occupied Yugoslavia and from the Greek islands, in wooden barracks, with the hunger and cold of the Ciociaria winters. In the postwar period it was converted into a refugee camp and took in Italians from Istria, Dalmatia and Africa, then refugees fleeing the Communist regimes, above all Hungarians after 1956, and it stayed active until the 1970s. Today few structures of the area remain, and a memory that the comune and associations have begun to gather with study days and a memory trail. It's not a postcard visit and that is why I recommend it.

The right photo to take at Alatri (FR)

The right photo of Alatri is the one of the Porta Maggiore seen from below, from the ramp, with a person standing under the lintel to give the scale: without the human figure the 27 tons of monolith don't read and the photo looks like any wall. It is taken in the morning, when the sun lights the southeast side of the acropolis and the blocks show all their facets. In the afternoon the gate is in shadow and the stone becomes flat. The second photo is from the terrace of the Civita toward the valley, with the roofs of the historic center in the foreground, the bell tower of Santa Maria Maggiore on the left and the line of the Monti Ernici in the background: it works well in late afternoon, with the light coming from the west and filling the Sacco valley. Whoever wants the photo that not everyone has goes to the Pizzale, the southeast corner, and photographs the 15 stacked blocks from below, with a wide-angle lens, with the modern houses leaning against the walls: it is the image that best explains the coexistence of the Cyclopes and today's alatrini. At the Porta Minore the best photo is from inside the corridor toward the outside, against the light, with the nine overhanging monoliths framing the light. At the equinoxes, early in the morning, the ray that crosses the whole corridor is a photo worth an early wake-up. In Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore the sundial of Palazzo Conti-Gentili photographs well only at noon, when the gnomon marks the true hour and the lines can be read. For the Infiorata of Corpus Domini and for the Palio of September 8 you have to be there at dawn: after 10:00 the streets are full and the carpets of petals already trampled. A last photographer's tip: the acropolis has no barriers, a pair of shoes with a good sole and a little attention at the edges are worth more than any lens.

How to really visit Alatri (FR)

Duration, route and guided visits in Alatri

For the essentials, acropolis, cathedral and collegiate church, two and a half hours are enough. For the whole city with the museum you need five or six hours. For the churches outside the gate with the frescoes of Antonio da Alatri you have to plan a second visit or a car and the patience to look for the keys. The civic museum organizes guided routes to the gates of the acropolis and to the outer circuit of the fortifications, listed on its site, and they are the best choice for those who want to understand polygonal masonry instead of just looking at it. A private tour leader who starts from Rome and takes care of transport for the whole day can be found on TourLeaderPro.

Alatri with children

Alatri with children works better than many cities of art, because the story of the Cyclopes tells itself and the walls can be touched. The ramp of the acropolis is short, the platform at the top is safe if you keep the children away from the edges, the Gate of the Phalluses with the dark corridor is a game. The civic museum is liked for the charcoal burners' cradle and for the models. The frescoed churches tire them out after the second. Stroller: hard in the historic center, with stairs and cobblestones, better a backpack. Public restrooms and drinking fountains are found along the ring road and in the square.

Accessibility in Alatri

The historic center is uphill, with stone paving and frequent steps. Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, Corso Vittorio Emanuele and the collegiate church can be reached in a wheelchair with a companion. The Civita is reached from the drivable ramp, steep but passable, while the Porta Minore and the outer circuit of the walls are on path and stairs and are not accessible. The civic museum is in a medieval palace on several levels: ask at the ticket office which rooms can be reached without stairs.

How much it costs to visit Alatri and how to save

Alatri is an inexpensive city. The acropolis, the walls, the cathedral, the collegiate church and all the churches are free. The civic museum costs €4 for the full ticket, with discounts listed on the official site for young people, seniors and groups. The guided routes to the gates of the acropolis have a separate fee. The trip from Rome by Cotral bus costs a few euros with the regional distance-band fare. By car you allow for the motorway toll to Frosinone or Anagni. Whoever comes with a group can arrange openings and reduced prices with the museum.

What's around Alatri within 10 minutes

Alatri is at the center of a triangle of cities and villages that can be visited in a day. 10 minutes by car away is Collepardo, with the caves and the road to the Certosa di Trisulti. A quarter of an hour away are Fumone with the castle where Celestine V died a prisoner, Veroli with the abbey of Casamari, Ferentino with its polygonal walls and Fiuggi with the baths. 20 minutes away are Anagni, the city of the popes, Guarcino, Vico nel Lazio with its intact medieval circuit and Trevi nel Lazio toward the sources of the Aniene. A little farther is Boville Ernica. On the way back to Rome you can stop at the Bosco di Paliano, at Genazzano, at Carpineto Romano in the Lepini or, on the Pontine side, at Cori and Artena with the lago di Giulianello. For those who read in English, the ItalyPlanner guide to Fumone is the natural complement to a day in Alatri.

When to go to Alatri and when to avoid it

The right seasons are spring, from April to June, and autumn until November, when the olive groves are harvested and the light on the Ernici is the clearest of the year. Winter is cold but often clear, with snow on the peaks as a backdrop to the acropolis. The August summer is torrid on the Civita, with no shade. You go early in the morning or after 17:00. Festival days have a flip side: Good Friday, Corpus Domini, September 8 and June 21 fill the city and close the streets to traffic. Whoever wants to see the monuments at ease picks another day. Whoever wants to see Alatri alive picks exactly those.

What to eat in Alatri

The cuisine is that of the Ciociaria hills: extra virgin olive oil from the olive groves that cover the hill, pecorino and ricotta from the flocks of the Ernici, cured meats, durum wheat bread baked in a wood oven, homemade pasta dressed with meat sauces, lamb and abbacchio, and in autumn mushrooms and chestnuts from the woods of Collepardo. The Onion Fair of September 8 recalls that the onions of Alatri were a market product. The Palio is run with a wheel of Parmesan, and not a local cheese, by a tradition whose origin no one can explain. The wines are those of the Frosinone area, with the Cesanese from nearby Piglio and Anagni as the table bottle. I don't name restaurants: you eat well in the trattorias of the center and along the ring road, and the rule is to look for the ones full of alatrini at lunch.

Some important events that happened here in history

In 306 BC, while the other Hernici rebelled, Alatri stayed loyal to Rome and Livy recalls it by name among the cities that chose the winning side. Centuries of autonomy depended on that choice, and the wealth that paid for the works of Betilienus Varus in the second century BC. In 90 BC the city became a Roman municipium. In 543 Totila sacked and destroyed it, and the following year it entered the Roman Duchy under the pope: the papal destiny of Alatri begins there and lasts until 1870. In 1173 the commune was born with its consuls. In 1186 the walls held against the siege of the imperial army of Henry VI, and the medieval towers you see on the circuit are the consequence of that alarm. On March 13, 1228 Gregory IX signed the bull that recognized the miracle of the Incarnate Host, the first papal act of this kind, and made the cathedral of Alatri a Eucharistic sanctuary. In 1286 the appointment of Cardinal Gottifredo as podestà opened the city's great Gothic building project. In 1349 the earthquake brought down the arches of Palazzo Gottifredo and half the city. In 1586 Bishop Ignazio Danti designed the Annunziata. In July 1798 the rebellion against the pro-French ended in a massacre. In 1850 Pius IX came on a visit, and in 1863 he funded the aqueduct inaugurated in 1866, the work that gave running water and three monumental fountains to a city that until then had made do with cisterns. In 1917 the railway arrived, in 1978 it left. From October 1, 1942 to April 19, 1944 the Fraschette camp confined thousands of Slavic and Greek civilians. In 1944 the war destroyed the town hall clock and many houses. In 1984 John Paul II visited the nuns of the Annunziata. In 2008 the discovery of the Templum graffito on the Civita reopened the debate on the astronomical orientations of the gates. It is almost 2,400 years of documented history on a single hill, and what strikes you, rereading it, is how many times Alatri chose Rome and how many times Rome remembered it.

Who has passed through Alatri (FR)

Many have passed through Alatri, and the list says what the city has represented over the centuries. The censor Lucius Betilienus Varus was not passing through: he was from here, and in the second century BC he rebuilt the city at his own expense. Saint Benedict of Norcia, according to a tradition that the alatrini defend, stayed in 528 at the proto-monastery of San Sebastiano run by Deacon Servando, and would have left there the bell now on the bell tower of Santo Stefano. It is tradition, not document, but it is consistent with the date of the Rule and with the antiquity of the monastery. Cardinal Gottifredo di Raynaldo, from Alatri and a papal diplomat, governed the city from 1286 and filled it with Gothic. In 1583 Ignazio Danti arrived as bishop, the Dominican who had laid out the sundial of Santa Maria Novella in Florence and the geographical maps of the Vatican Gallery. He stayed here three years and left the monastery of the Annunziata. In the eighteenth century the Piarists arrived, who kept the college for two and a half centuries, and with them the sundial on the square. Louis-Charles-François Petit-Radel, the French archaeologist of the Pelasgians, studied the walls between the eighteenth and nineteenth century and made them known to cultured Europe. From then on Alatri entered the itineraries of the Grand Tour travelers who detoured from Via Casilina to see the Cyclopean cities. Among them the most celebrated is Ferdinand Gregorovius, the German historian of medieval Rome, who in 1858 traveled through the Ernici and described Alatri, Palazzo Grappelli and its frescoes in his Wanderings in Italy. Pius IX came in 1850, the first pope to visit in centuries, and 13 years later he paid for the aqueduct. The patriot Sisto Vinciguerra, from Alatri, was a deputy to the Constituent Assembly of the Roman Republic of 1849. Sir John Leslie, an Irish officer, bought a part of the proto-monastery of San Sebastiano. Stéphane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt's violinist, descended from the Grappelli marquises of this palace. Filippo Coarelli, the greatest topographer of ancient Rome, dug behind Porta San Benedetto and proposed the dating of the walls that is still debated. John Paul II went up to the Annunziata in 1984. And every June 21, at six in the morning, the first ray of the solstice sun passes over the acropolis, the most punctual visitor of all.

Quick questions about Alatri (FR)

Where is Alatri and how far is it from Rome?

Alatri is in the province of Frosinone, in Ciociaria, about 100 kilometers from Rome. By car on the A1 with the exit at Frosinone or at Anagni-Fiuggi and then State Road 155, it takes a good hour and a half from the Raccordo.

How do you get to Alatri by public transport?

By Cotral bus from the Anagnina terminal (metro A) on the line to Frosinone via Anagni and Ferentino, 100 minutes, stop Alatri Quaraticciolo, on weekdays and Saturdays. Or by the regional Rome-Cassino train to Frosinone and the Cotral bus Frosinone-Alatri-Fiuggi. The schedules should be checked on the Cotral site.

How much does it cost to visit Alatri?

The acropolis, walls and churches are free. The Museo civico di Alatri costs €4 for the full ticket. Discounts and fees for guided routes are on the museum's official site.

What are the hours of the Museo civico di Alatri?

Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, closed Monday. Some guides still report a split morning and afternoon schedule: the museum's site is the authority.

Is the acropolis of Alatri always open?

Yes, the Civita is an open urban space, with the cathedral and the Bishop's Palace at the top, reachable on foot at any hour from the ramp and the two gates. The outer circuit of the walls is a free path.

How much time do you need to visit Alatri?

Two and a half hours for the acropolis, cathedral and collegiate church. Five or six hours for the whole city with the civic museum. A second visit for the frescoed churches outside the gate.

What are the Cyclopean walls of Alatri?

They are walls in polygonal masonry, limestone blocks of irregular shape fitted together without mortar, built between the fourth and third century BC by the Hernici and rearranged in the Roman age. The acropolis has a perimeter of about 600 meters, the urban circuit exceeds two kilometers.

Why is Alatri called the city of the Cyclopes?

Because the ancients and then the eighteenth-century scholars attributed to giants the building of walls with blocks three meters long and a 27-ton lintel. The name has remained as a title of honor.

What is the Gate of the Phalluses of Alatri?

It is the Porta Minore of the acropolis, on the northwest side, 1.16 meters wide, with three phalluses carved on the jamb as symbols of fertility and protection and a corridor covered by nine overhanging monoliths. At the equinoxes the sun passes through it entirely.

What is the Incarnate Host of Alatri?

It is the relic of the Eucharistic miracle of 1228, a consecrated host turned into flesh, recognized by Gregory IX with the bull of March 13, 1228 and kept in a chapel of the right nave of the cathedral of San Paolo.

What is the Natale of Alatri?

It is the summer solstice festival, on June 21: at six in the morning people gather on the acropolis for the first ray of sun, and in the evening in the cloister of San Francesco the Golden Cyclops prize is given. The winter solstice, on December 21, is also remembered.

Are there free museums in Alatri on the first Sunday of the month?

The civic museum is run by the town and doesn't automatically follow the free first Sunday of the state museums. Any free days are announced on the museum's and the town's websites.

Is Alatri good for kids?

Yes, and it's one of the best-suited destinations in the Ciociaria: you can touch the walls, the Porta dei Falli is a corridor to explore, and the museum has the charcoal burners' cradle. A stroller is not recommended in the historic center.

Is Alatri wheelchair accessible?

In part: Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, the main street and the collegiate church yes, with a companion. The Civita from the ramp with effort. Porta Minore, the walk around the walls and the crypts no. In the museum, ask at the ticket office which rooms have no stairs.

Where do you park in Alatri?

Along the ring road that follows the walls and in the lots below Porta San Francesco and Porta San Pietro. The historic center is a limited traffic zone.

Can you take photos in the churches and the museum in Alatri?

In the churches yes, without flash and outside services. In the civic museum the rules are posted at the ticket office, and as a rule photos without flash for personal use are allowed.

What's the difference between Alatri and Anagni?

Anagni is the city of the popes, with the cathedral and the frescoed crypt, and it has a more compact medieval center. Alatri has the archaeology, the megalithic acropolis and the walls, plus medieval churches and palaces. Together they make the perfect Ciociaria day.

What's the difference between the walls of Alatri and those of Ferentino?

Both are in Hernican polygonal masonry, but in Alatri the acropolis is preserved almost intact, with its two gates and the monolithic lintel, while Ferentino has the town circuit with the Porta Sanguinaria and an acropolis largely transformed by the bishop's palace.

Where can you see the temple of Alatri?

The original remains, with the architectural terracottas, are in the civic museum. The full-size reconstruction is in the garden of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome.

When is the Palio delle Quattro Porte of Alatri held?

On September 8, for the feast of the Madonna della Libera, together with the Onion Fair: a wheel of Parmesan of about 30 kilos is rolled to the cloister of San Francesco.

Which churches in Alatri have the frescoes of Antonio da Alatri?

Santa Maria Maggiore with the Triptych of the Redeemer, the church of the Donna, the Maddalena with the series of the saint, and the church of the XII Marie with the 12 Madonnas. The last three are outside the gate and open on request.

What do you eat in Alatri?

Hill-country Ciociaria cooking: oil from the olive groves of the hill, pecorino and ricotta from the Ernici, homemade pasta with meat sauces, lamb, mushrooms and chestnuts in autumn, wines of the Frusinate area and Cesanese from the nearby towns.

The reaction is always the same: under the Porta Maggiore everyone goes quiet. It's the Hernican city I recommend first to anyone who thinks Lazio ends at the Castelli, and I recommend it with one condition: climb up to the Civita on foot, from below, and leave through the Porta dei Falli. Whoever visits in an hour from the car has seen a wall. Whoever gives it a day has understood why the Romans kept it as a friend.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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