Arcinazzo Romano

Arcinazzo Romano is a municipality of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital at about 850 meters of elevation, with just over 1,200 residents, barely 60 kilometers by road from the Grande Raccordo Anulare and 80 from Piazza Venezia. The town hall and the parish of Santa Maria Assunta are in the historic center, at Via Santa Maria 1 (parish phone 0774 808696). The archaeological site that brings most visitors here, the Villa of the Emperor Trajan, is not in the town but six kilometers farther up, in the locality of Altipiani di Arcinazzo, along Via Sublacense at kilometer 30: full ticket €3, reduced €2, phone 0774 808006 and 348 1231869, email direzione.villatraiano@comunearcinazzoromano.it. The hours change with the season and the sources available do not agree with each other: before leaving it's best to phone the museum or check the municipality's website, because climbing all the way up here and finding the gate closed is a lost morning. By car you arrive from the A24 with the Vicovaro-Mandela exit and then Via Tiburtina Valeria and Via Sublacense. By bus you take the Cotral from the Ponte Mammolo terminus, on Metro Line B, toward Subiaco, and from Subiaco you continue toward the upper valley.

To place Arcinazzo Romano within the range of day trips, the page on the surroundings of Rome gathers the villages and sites reachable in an hour and a half by car.

Where Arcinazzo Romano is and how you really get there

Arcinazzo Romano occupies the highest step of the Aniene valley on the Roman side, leaning on the limestone ridges of the Monti Affilani. Monte delle Pianezze reaches 1,332 meters, Monte Altuino 1,271. They are limestone mountains, therefore mountains that drink: karst is widespread here, water disappears on the surface and reemerges in springs, and this is the reason why a Roman emperor decided to build himself a residence at this very point and not another.

To Arcinazzo Romano by car

The fastest route from Rome is the A24 motorway toward L'Aquila, Vicovaro-Mandela exit, then State Road 5 Tiburtina Valeria to the junction with State Road 411 Sublacense, which goes up the valley passing through Agosta and Subiaco. From Subiaco you keep climbing toward Affile and Arcinazzo Romano. Anyone who wants to save the toll can take the whole Tiburtina from the eastern outskirts of Rome, but it is at least 40 minutes more and at peak hours many more. A practical tip that no GPS gives: the last hairpin bends below the town are narrow and in winter stay in shade all day, so they ice over before everything else. If you come down in the evening and the temperature is close to zero, keep to the inside lane and forget about hurrying.

Parking in town is a real problem on the days of the sagra and on August weekends. The historic center is a maze of alleys and stairways where the car doesn't go in and shouldn't: you leave it in the open areas along the ring road and walk up. At the Altipiani, by contrast, space is almost never lacking, except on snowy Sundays, when half the province goes up to build a snowman.

To Arcinazzo Romano by public transport

There is no railway. The Rome-Subiaco line was closed in 1934 and part of its route has become a road. The only public transport is the Cotral intercity bus, which leaves from the Ponte Mammolo terminus, the end of Metro Line B, and goes up the valley to Subiaco, Piazza Falcone. From there the runs leave for the towns of the upper valley. The schedules are few, concentrated on school commuting, and on Sundays they thin out quite a bit: they should be checked on the carrier's website before setting out. Our opinion is firm: Arcinazzo Romano by public transport only works if you sleep in the area. For a day trip from Rome you need a car, or a chartered coach.

How much time you need to visit Arcinazzo Romano

The historic center can be toured in an hour and a half walking slowly and looking at the facades. Trajan's Villa with the Antiquarium asks for at least another hour and a half, two if you are accompanied by someone who knows how to tell its story. The Altipiani deserve the afternoon, or the whole day if you have the right shoes and want to climb Altuino. A well-done trip from Rome to Arcinazzo Romano is a full day, leaving at eight and returning at sunset. Anyone who tries to squeeze it into half a day together with Subiaco ends up seeing both badly.

Arcinazzo Romano in figures: elevation, climate, population

The numbers of Arcinazzo Romano say a lot about the character of the place. Just over 1,200 residents, the main built-up center at 850 meters, the only hamlet, the Altipiani, a little above. The climate is that of a mid-altitude Apennine mountain, with cold winters and a big temperature swing, and summers that don't exceed 30 degrees. In winter the minimums drop to 10 below zero with an ease that surprises anyone arriving from Rome: altitude counts, but the basin and the flows of cold air that come from the Abruzzo Apennines count more. Between January and March snow is not an exceptional event, it is the statistical norm.

This combination, cool in summer and snow in winter, explains why Arcinazzo Romano has an enormous floating population compared with its size. The Altipiani have about 200 permanent residents, who increase on weekends and in summer easily triple. Anyone who arrives in August finds a lively town. Anyone who arrives in November finds a town of 1,200 people who all know each other. They are two different experiences and should be chosen on purpose.

The historic center of Arcinazzo Romano, alley by alley

The old town is a medieval layout intact in plan and reworked in elevation. Don't expect a village restored for tourism: here the houses are lived in, the laundry is hung out, and the defensive system is read inside the walls of the dwellings instead of in a separately preserved circuit of walls. You need a good eye, or you need someone to tell you where to look. That is what follows.

Porta Nuova, the entrance to the village of Arcinazzo Romano

The best-preserved piece of the defensive system is Porta Nuova, a round arch built with squared stone blocks and now completely absorbed into the structures of the town. The houses have grown up against it: the arch still holds, but above and at the sides people live. This is a typical condition of the castra of the Aniene valley, where the gate was never demolished because it served as a passage and as structural support. Stop under the arch and look at the bedding of the blocks: the regular squaring points to workers who knew their business, not makeshift masonry.

The medieval tower and the two-light windows of the houses of Arcinazzo Romano

Of the medieval tower, ruins remain. It is not a monument you can visit and shouldn't be sought as such: it is a square-plan structure set into the curtain of the village, which you read in the texture of the masonry. Walking through the alleys you instead come across remains of walled-up two-light windows in the facades of some buildings, arches of doorways with a stone archivolt ring, and the gateways that used to close the town. They are the signs of a settlement that between the 12th and 15th centuries had its own architectural dignity, later flattened by centuries of poor remodeling.

The advice: don't look for the monument, look for the detail. A blocked-up two-light window inside a plastered wall tells more than a newly restored tower, because it tells of the life that has passed over the stone.

The church of Santa Maria Assunta in Arcinazzo Romano

The parish church is the most important building in the historic center and the main reason why it is worth climbing all the way into the town even if your goal is the imperial villa. The original layout was modest. It was enlarged in 1575 and rearranged in its final form during the 19th century. The recent restoration has put the surfaces back in order. Today it has three naves with a barrel vault, a layout that gives the interior an unexpected compactness for a village building.

The piece that matters is the entrance portal. It was not built for this church: it comes from Trajan's Imperial Villa and was mounted here in 1629. Two small columns with capitals and other marble elements frame the opening, and it is 2nd-century imperial marble reused 15 centuries later to make the door of a mountain parish. Inside the story continues: the altar is also made of marbles from the villa, and two ancient composite capitals have been reused as holy water fonts. Anyone who walks in distracted passes next to two Roman capitals without noticing, and touches them with a wet hand.

This is the thing that must be understood in Arcinazzo Romano before any other: Trajan's villa was not destroyed, it was dismantled and redistributed. One part ended up here, another at the monasteries of Subiaco, another who knows where. The portal of the parish church is the most visible proof of this transfer.

The bell tower of Santa Maria Assunta: defensive tower or not?

The bell tower is a square-plan structure of the 12th century, therefore older than the church it now serves. Its original purpose remains uncertain. A defensive function has been supposed, a reasonable hypothesis for a square tower of that period in a border castrum, but no archaeological investigation has so far confirmed it. It should be said this way, as an unverified hypothesis: anyone who tells it to you as a fact is simplifying. Look at the masonry of the first tier and compare it with that of the upper bell chambers: the change in texture is visible to the naked eye and is the real clue to two different building phases.

The chapel of Santa Lucia and the frescoes of Silvestro Coardi

A small 16th-century temple in the historic center, the chapel of Santa Lucia is the most precious room in the town in terms of painting. It preserves frescoes with Saints Lucy, Catherine and Francis, while on the vault the Virgin and Child is painted. The works are attributed to Silvestro Coardi. The chapel has no regular opening hours: it is a devotional building tied to the life of the community and its anniversaries, and to go in you have to ask at the parish. It is not a slight to visitors, it is the normal condition of dozens of chapels in the Aniene valley.

Santa Lucia also has a role that no guide tells and that we will come back to later: it was the little church where the flowers of the Infiorata of Corpus Domini were kept, waiting to be burned on the night of Saint John.

The church of San Giorgio, patron saint of Arcinazzo Romano

Saint George the Martyr is the town's patron saint and his church was founded in 1575. The building you see today, however, is not the 16th-century one: the Diocese of Tivoli and Palestrina, on which the parish depends, records a rebuilding in 1957. Anyone expecting a Renaissance interior is disappointed, and does well to know it beforehand. Inside is kept a representation of the saint in medieval dress, an iconography less banal than the usual classicizing armor: the knight in a knight's dress of his own time, not an ancient warrior's.

The church of the Cross and the church of Sant'Antonio Abate

Completing the picture of the sacred buildings of Arcinazzo Romano are the church of the Cross and the small church, or rather chapel, of Sant'Antonio Abate. Both depend on the parish of Santa Maria Assunta. They are minor buildings, open irregularly, that belong to the devotional fabric of the town more than to the tourist circuit. Sant'Antonio Abate in particular is the patron saint of domestic animals: in a town that lived on sheep farming and transhumance until yesterday, this is not a decorative dedication, it is a declaration of what kept the community alive.

Trajan's Villa at the Altipiani of Arcinazzo Romano

The monument that gives Arcinazzo Romano a place in the history of Roman archaeology is the villa of the Emperor Trajan, who reigned from 98 to 117 AD. Five hectares of residence distributed over two terraced sectors, in an area crossed by the Aniene, whose waters were considered in antiquity among the best and most wholesome that Rome could drink. This is the point that explains everything: an emperor does not choose a mountain 60 kilometers from home for the view, he chooses it for the water and for hunting. Trajan's Villa is a hunting residence, and hunting was for the emperors of the 2nd century an exercise in representation as much as a pastime.

No ancient document names it: the problem of the sources

Here we must be honest about the degree of certainty. No ancient source explicitly names an imperial villa at this point. The attribution to Trajan rests on archaeology, that is on brick stamps, building techniques and the decorative apparatus, and on a literary hypothesis: some scholars have proposed that the residence described by Pliny the Younger in the Panegyricus of Trajan, of 100 AD, corresponds to this one, because of the coincidence of the features of the landscape. It is an interpretive proposal, not documentary proof. It should be held as such, because the difference between knowing and believing you know is the whole job.

Ennio Quirino Visconti and the excavations of 1777

The first archaeological investigations of which we have news date to 1777 and 1778 and bear the signature of Ennio Quirino Visconti, one of the greatest antiquarians of late 18th-century Rome, the man who would later curate the Museo Pio-Clementino. Visconti found a considerable quantity of marbles. And here begins the bitter part of the story: those marbles did not end up in a museum, they were reused as building material for churches and monasteries in the area, including the Benedictine complexes of Santa Scolastica and San Benedetto at Subiaco. The villa was, that is, excavated and dismantled at the same time. The portal of the parish church of Arcinazzo Romano, mounted in 1629, shows that the removal of material had begun well before Visconti and had been going on for centuries.

The modern scientific investigations were carried out by the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of Lazio and the site has been turned into a museum site. Today you visit an equipped area with routes and panels, not a field of abandoned ruins: it is an enormous change compared with the situation 30 years ago.

The lower sector: the villa's reception area

The complex is organized in two sectors with different orientations, which indicates two distinct design moments. The lower sector, oriented from northeast to southwest, is the reception area: a large rectangular space of about 100 meters by 40, with two wide semicircular fountain basins placed at the ends of the garden. Picture the scene: a garden about a hundred meters long, closed at both ends by semicircular stretches of water, with the mountain all around. It was not a place where people lived, it was a place where people received.

The semicircular basins are the element that makes the sector readable even to someone who is not an archaeologist. Look for them: they are the point where you grasp the scale of the project.

The upper sector: the palatium, the baths and the vivarium

The upper sector, oriented from northwest to southeast, is larger and housed the private part. It included the palatium, that is the residential block proper, perhaps flanked by a bath complex, and a vivarium, the basin for raising fish. A vivarium in the mountains at 850 meters is not a whim: it is the proof that water here was abundant and controlled, and that the villa had a hydraulic system worthy of an imperial residence.

Among the documented architectural elements are peristyles, cryptoporticoes and a nymphaeum decorated with semicircular apses, niches and marble cladding. The cryptoportico is a covered, semi-underground corridor that served to support the terracing and at the same time to offer a shaded route: anyone who has visited Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli recognizes it immediately, because it is the same architectural vocabulary applied on a smaller scale and at a much higher elevation.

Marbles, paintings and stuccoes: what remains of the decoration

The preciousness of the marbles, paintings, stuccoes and the entire decorative apparatus documents the magnificence of the villa's rooms. Fragments remain, and it is precisely the quality of the fragments that says how high the level was: cladding in imported colored marbles, modeled stuccoes, painted plasters. Anyone who arrives hoping for intact frescoed walls will be disappointed, and anyone who arrives knowing how to read a fragment of marble crustae will leave satisfied. It is a visit for people who accept reconstructing in their heads what the eyes no longer see.

The municipal Antiquarium of Arcinazzo Romano

The municipal Antiquarium is located inside the archaeological area and gathers the most significant finds that emerged from the excavation campaigns. The collection is made up of architectural and decorative elements, evidence of the organization of labor during the construction of the villa, and objects that tell of daily life inside the residential complex. The museum provides informational material that helps the visitor understand what is in front of them, and there is also a three-dimensional video reconstruction that puts the elevations back on their feet.

The section on the organization of labor is the most original part and the most neglected by hurried visitors. It tells who materially built the villa: crews, materials, timing, trademarks on the bricks. In a town that has learned to live with the idea of an emperor, the real surprise is discovering the names of the workers.

There is also a second exhibition site in the historic center of the town, on Via San Nicola, dedicated to restored frescoes and stuccoes from the excavations. It is a piece of information that almost nobody has: most visitors arrive at the Altipiani, see the archaeological area and leave without knowing that the rest of the decoration is displayed six kilometers lower down. Before going up, ask the museum if the historic center site is open that day.

Hours, tickets and guided visits to Trajan's Villa

The ticket costs €3 full price and €2 reduced. Guided visits are available. On the hours the available sources diverge, and at a site run by a municipality of 1,200 inhabitants the hours change with the season and with the availability of staff: the only sensible thing is to phone 0774 808006 or 348 1231869, or write to the museum's address, and have the day and time confirmed. For groups booking is essential, not just recommended.

A warning: the archaeological area is outdoors and at 850 meters of elevation. In July and August it should be visited early in the morning, because at midday the plateau offers no shade and the stone gives back heat. In winter, with snow, the visit may be suspended. The shoulder seasons are the right time, and May in particular, when the meadows around are in bloom and the light is still low.

The Altipiani di Arcinazzo, the hamlet that is called Little Switzerland

The Altipiani di Arcinazzo are a karst plateau about three kilometers long by a kilometer and a half wide, at about 850 meters of elevation, wedged between the Monti Affilani to the northeast and the western Monti Ernici to the southwest, astride the watershed between the Sacco valley and the upper Aniene valley. Administratively the plateau is divided among four municipalities and two provinces: Arcinazzo Romano for the Roman part, and Trevi nel Lazio, Fiuggi and Piglio for the Frosinone part. This administrative division explains why the place has always had complicated management and why the name changes depending on who is saying it.

The peaks that close the horizon are Monte Scalambra, 1,420 meters, on the Ernici side, and Monte Altuino, 1,271 meters, on the Affilani side. The vegetation passes from holm oaks and oaks to beech woods as you climb between 800 and 1,000 meters: it is an ecological step that you cross walking in 20 minutes and it is one of the most instructive aspects of a walk up here.

Why the Altipiani di Arcinazzo have an alpine look

The definition of Little Switzerland that Romans have stuck on this plateau is not advertising, it is descriptive. A flat upland, closed in by mountains, covered with meadows and surrounded by conifers planted in the 1900s produces a landscape that doesn't resemble the rest of the Apennine Lazio, made of steep slopes and perched villages. Here you walk on the flat, and walking on the flat in the mountains is a rarity that the Roman public appreciated right away.

From inn to holiday resort: the tourist history of the Altipiani

The plateau has not always been inhabited. In the 1700s the transformation into a residential center was tied to the inn of Meo Passeri, a rest stop along the road. Even earlier, the territory had hosted a castle in the area of Via Setacciara and the fortress called Palazzolo on Monte Altuino: control posts on a pass, because that is what this is, a pass between two valleys.

The real leap came between the 1960s and the 1990s, when the Altipiani became one of the holiday destinations of the Roman middle class. Villas were built, hotels and restaurants opened, and the plateau lived its golden season. Today that season is over and you can see it: many villas are closed 10 months a year, some accommodation businesses have pulled down the shutter. Our opinion, without beating around the bush: the Altipiani di Arcinazzo today are worth the trip for the landscape, for the imperial villa and for the walks, not for a social scene that no longer exists. Anyone who arrives looking for the atmosphere of the 1970s feels disoriented. Anyone who arrives looking for meadows, beeches and archaeology finds more than they expected.

The snow season at the Altipiani di Arcinazzo

On snow we need clarity, because it is the point where a misunderstanding most often arises. The Altipiani di Arcinazzo are not a ski resort with lifts: they are a snowy plateau where you go to walk, to sled, to ski with skins and to cross-country ski when the snow holds. The real resorts are elsewhere, and there are three of them, all reachable in under an hour by car: Campo Staffi above Filettino, Campocatino above Guarcino, and Monte Livata above Subiaco. A shuttle service connects the Altipiani to Campo Staffi in the winter season.

The practical consequence is that the Altipiani work very well as a logistical base for a budget ski week: you sleep here, you ski there, you come back here for dinner. And they work very well for anyone who wants to walk on snow and not ski down it, that is for families with small children, for snowshoe hikes and for anyone who brings the dog.

Summer at the Altipiani di Arcinazzo

In summer the plateau changes job. It becomes the place where Romans go up to get 20 degrees when in the city there are 38, to have a barbecue under the pines, to take the children cycling on an almost flat road. The activities organized in the area include mountain biking, horseback riding, hang gliding and caving, the latter a logical consequence of the karst that riddles these mountains. The most traveled trails climb Monte Scalambra and Monte Altuino, both with manageable elevation gains and views that on clear days reach far.

Unrequested advice: the August Sunday barbecue at the Altipiani is a Roman rite worth being a spectator of at least once, but if you want silence go up midweek, or go in September, when the beeches start to turn and the plateau goes back to belonging to the people who live there.

Arcinazzo Romano, the Monti Affilani and the Monti Simbruini Park

The territory of Arcinazzo Romano belongs to the Monti Affilani, the limestone group that closes the Subiaco basin to the south. A little farther on begins the Monti Simbruini Regional Nature Park, the largest protected area in Lazio, which includes the municipalities of the upper Aniene valley: Subiaco, Vallepietra, Filettino, Trevi nel Lazio and the others. Arcinazzo Romano is not within the park's perimeter, but it looks onto it closely, and anyone who spends a few days in town has the park at the doorstep. On the hiking side this is the good news: you sleep outside the park, with fewer restrictions and lower prices, and you walk inside the park.

The name Simbruini comes from the Latin sub imbribus, under the rains, and it says everything about the hydrological character of these mountains. They are the mountains that fed the aqueducts of ancient Rome: the Anio Vetus, the Anio Novus, the Marcia and the Claudia drew their water here, in this valley. When you look at the Aniene at Arcinazzo Romano you are looking at one of the reasons Rome was able to become a city of a million inhabitants. It's not rhetoric, it's hydraulics.

Anyone who wants to explore the Monti Simbruini as a destination in their own right finds in the area a network of marked trails, mountain huts and visitor centers. The rules are those of every Apennine protected area: you stay on the trails, you don't pick plants, fire is banned outside the equipped areas and the dog has to be kept on a leash, because here the Apennine wolf is present and the sheepdogs guarding the flocks are not joking.

Arcinazzo Romano: origin of the name and the ghost of Ponza

The current name is recent and administrative. Arcinazzo Romano was conferred on the town by Royal Decree number 287 of May 29, 1891. Before that date the settlement was called Ponza, and it has nothing to do with the island of Ponza in the Tyrrhenian: the place name derives from the gens Pontia, a Roman family originating from these places, and from the Massa Pontiana, the late-antique land district that included the territory.

The change was gradual. In 1872 Victor Emmanuel II, with Royal Decree number 1053 of October 15, changed the name from Ponza to Ponza d'Arcinazzo, evidently to distinguish it from the Pontine island in a just-unified Kingdom that was putting its homonyms in order. 19 years later the noun Ponza was dropped altogether. The inhabitants, however, never stopped: in the local speech the old name survives, and hearing it used in the square is one of the small satisfactions for anyone who comes here with an attentive ear.

Where the word Arcinazzo comes from

On the etymology of Arcinazzo two traditions and one linguistic explanation circulate. The first tradition holds that the name derives from Arcinia, a concubine of the Emperor Claudius who supposedly owned a villa in the area. The second brings in a patrician of Subiaco, a certain Narcio, who in the 4th century supposedly donated to Pope Damasus I an arx, that is a fortified area, at the foot of Monte Altuino. From this would also derive the name of the inhabitants, who are called narzini and not arcinazzesi. The linguistic explanation, the soberest and most probable, traces Arcinazzo back to the corruption and vulgarization of the Latin arx, which indicated precisely the fortified summit.

Three versions, only one certain fact: the name speaks of a stronghold. And the stronghold was there, as shown by the tower in the center and the fortress of Palazzolo on the Altuino. The rest are tales that the town has handed down, nice to report and not to pass off as documented history.

The history of Arcinazzo Romano from the Aequi to the Papal State

Prehistory and transhumance

In the pre-protohistoric period the territory of Arcinazzo, rugged and isolated, knew only sporadic settlements, distributed along the transhumance routes that connected the Roman plain with the Apennine hinterland of Lazio and Abruzzo. Not a stable settlement, then, but a corridor: flocks that went up in June and came down in September, and men who followed the flocks. This condition as a land of passage shaped everything that came after.

The Aequi and the municipium of Afilae

In the pre-Roman period the Aniene basin was organized around the settlements of the native peoples with whom Rome had to contend in the first centuries of its expansion in the Latium Vetus. Among them the Aequi, of Oscan-Umbrian origin, had a dominant role in the area. It is commonly believed that the municipium of Afilae, endowed with an ordo decurionum and priestly colleges, in whose territory the Villa of Trajan would later rise and, in the Middle Ages, the center of Ponza-Arcinazzo, fell under the control of the Aequi, and that it constituted one of the hilltop fortified oppida intended to control the territory.

Those oppida were used in the wars that between the 5th and 4th centuries BC led Rome to the definitive victory of 304 BC, according to Livy. It was a war more than a century long, fought on these mountains, and ended with the absorption of the Aequi into the Roman state. Walking on the Altuino you walk on an ancient front.

The Roman age and the system of the villae rusticae

With the conquest came centuriation. The territorial division of the area already dates to 133 BC, as the Liber Coloniarum attests, and was aimed at optimal agricultural exploitation. From it was born a system of villae rusticae particularly developed in the foothill belt. They were not luxury villas: they were farms, with the owner's part and the productive part, the press, the granaries, the slave quarters. Trajan's imperial villa grafts itself onto this already organized fabric, as a monumental exception inside a worked countryside.

From that system of villae, in the Middle Ages, the system of the massae originated, large land aggregates that held the agrarian landscape together when the Roman municipal organization dissolved. One of these divisions is known to the sources as Massa Pontiana, and it is from there that the name Ponza comes.

The abbey of Subiaco and the first mentions of Ponza

The absolute protagonist of the medieval history of the Aniene valley is the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, founded by Saint Benedict at the beginning of the 6th century. For a thousand years every event in these towns passes through it. The first mention of Ponza dates to AD 720 and is recorded in the Liber Censuum of Cencio Savelli, the future Pope Honorius III: the Massa Pontiana is sold to the titulus of Sant'Eustachio in Rome. In 923 the Regesto Sublacense associates a settlement with the place name, so no longer only a land property but a village.

A fortified castle is explicitly mentioned only in 1109, in the Chronicon Sublacense. The text tells of an episode of 1087: a certain Ildemondo, founder of the family of Pope Alexander IV and probably of Lombard origin, usurped the castle of Ponza from the abbey of Subiaco. The abbot reacted, obtained the help of the papal militias and brought Ponza and Affile back under the abbey's dominion. In 1176 Pope Alexander III formally granted Ponza and Affile to the abbey of Subiaco, which kept feudal possession until 1735. From that year Ponza passed to the Apostolic Chamber, which held it until 1870.

Revolts, destruction and the Roman Republic

The castrum was not always docile. In 1435 the men of Ponza and Affile destroyed the castle of Roccasecca, a fortified settlement located near the present center of Roiate: a war between towns, of which there were dozens in this valley, fought over pastures, waters and borders. At the end of the 1700s the people of Ponza took an active part in the conflict between France and the Papal State in the years of the proclamation of the Roman Republic, between 1798 and 1799.

For the centuries before the Unification of Italy the documentation becomes fragmentary, but the picture remains clear: subjection to ecclesiastical power, first the abbey's and then the Chamber's, for almost 800 consecutive years. When you visit Arcinazzo Romano you visit a town that had a monastery as its master for longer than Italy has existed as a state.

The 1900s and the war on the Altipiani

The harshest chapter of the 1900s concerns the Second World War. The Altipiani were occupied by German troops, who treated the wounded there and set up bread production for the soldiers. The anti-aircraft artillery hidden on the plateau shot down some aircraft, eight according to locally collected memory. It was a brief and violent phase in a place that within 20 years would become a synonym for vacation, and this contrast is the most interesting thing to keep in mind while strolling among the 1960s villas.

Festivals, traditions and folklore of Arcinazzo Romano

The calendar of Arcinazzo Romano is still that of a farming and pastoral community, with a religious structure and a pre-Christian undercurrent that here has never truly gone out.

The Sagra del Marrone of Arcinazzo Romano

At the end of October the town celebrates the Sagra del Marrone. The marrone is the noble chestnut, larger and sweeter, and these slopes produce a quality that in Lazio has few rivals. On the tables of the sagra, besides roasted chestnuts, appear truffle polenta with sheep sauces, goat and sheep cheeses, and the local wine, which is the Cesanese del Piglio, the first denominazione di origine controllata e garantita of Lazio. A mountain pairing, tannic and fatty, that has no ambition of elegance and no need to have any.

The feast of Saint George the Martyr, twice a year

The patron saint is celebrated twice: on April 23, the liturgical date, and on August 23. The double occasion is typical of mountain towns and has an evident practical reason: in April the community is that of the residents, in August it is that of the emigrants who come back and the summer vacationers. The August feast is bigger, noisier and better attended. The April one is truer. If you have to choose one, and you want to understand the town, choose April.

The pilgrimage to the Santissima Trinità of Vallepietra

From Arcinazzo Romano departs the pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Santissima Trinità of Vallepietra, one of the oldest and most intense in central Italy. The sanctuary is set under a rock wall of Monte Autore and is reached on foot. The companies of pilgrims arrive singing and the songs are multi-voiced, passed down orally. Anyone who witnesses an arrival of pilgrims in May or June sees something that has nothing folkloric about it and everything religious.

The Infiorata of Corpus Domini and the little church of Santa Lucia

For Corpus Domini the Infiorata is set up. The detail that makes this Arcinazzo tradition different from the others is what happens afterward: at the end of the religious event the flowers used for the carpets were gathered, considered charged with sacred value, and kept in the little church of Santa Lucia. They were not thrown away. They stayed there until the night of Saint John, June 24, and that night they were lit. The summer solstice was the magical time par excellence, a dispenser of beneficial influences, and the blessed flowers of Corpus Domini fed the solstice fire.

It is a perfect short circuit between Catholic liturgy and the pre-Christian agrarian calendar, and it is one of the most interesting things that can be told about this town.

The Fire of Saint John and the children's formula

On the night of Saint John children were swung toward the fire while a formula in the local dialect was recited. The formula said, in the speech of here, sballeca sballeca San Giuanni, te puzzi fa più ranne, più ranne deju campanile, sballeca sballeca San Giuanni: that is, surpass, surpass, Saint John, may you grow taller, taller than the bell tower. When the flames were high, the more developed child jumped over the fire saying three times San Giuanni meo, famme cresce de più. When the flames were lower, it was the person swinging him who recited, again three times, San Giuanni meo, fa cresce questo bambino.

The meaning is transparent: the solstice fire makes you grow. The bell tower is the measure of the greatest height imaginable in a mountain town, and asking to surpass it is asking the impossible for a good cause.

The Foco Santo, a therapeutic practice of folk magic

Until a few years ago in Arcinazzo Romano a therapeutic practice of clear magical value was handed down, the Foco Santo, which took place between the night of the 23rd and that of the 24th of June, the feast of Saint John the Baptist. The rite, extra-liturgical, had the declared function of warding off rickets in children: a disease anything but rare in the past, a direct consequence of widespread undernourishment. With time the practice also acquired a sacred justification, as a psychophysical and medical remedy.

It is worth dwelling on this. The Foco Santo is not just scenery: it is the way a poor community tried to heal the crooked bones of its children, when there was nothing else. Telling it as a folkloric curiosity means not having understood it.

What you eat in Arcinazzo Romano

The cooking of this Apennine belt is poor in ingredients and rich in good fats: sheep, goat, chestnuts, mushrooms, black truffle, cheeses. The local marrone goes into desserts and soups, polenta is dressed with sheep sauce and truffle, and arrosticini and pecora al callaro belong to the Abruzzo transhumance tradition that reaches all the way up here. The sheep and goat cheeses of the area should be asked for directly from the producers: they can be found in the town's shops, but you have to ask, because the good piece is not always in the window.

The reference wine is Cesanese, in its two denominations from the nearby province of Frosinone, and Cesanese del Piglio in particular, which is produced on the slopes below the Altipiani. It is a red of medium structure, a bit rough, with a bitterish finish that works very well with sheep and doesn't work at all with pastries. Order it at the table and forget the prestigious labels of other regions: here the local wine is truly competitive.

A last professional note: in the dead months, November and February, many places at the Altipiani close or reduce their opening days. Anyone who goes up off season should phone first, or plan to eat in town and not on the plateau.

Arcinazzo Romano with children

This is a place that works with children, and it works for concrete reasons. The plateau of the Altipiani is flat and grassy, so you walk and run without drop-offs and without changes in elevation. The archaeological area of the imperial villa is outdoors, you walk it in an hour, and the Antiquarium's three-dimensional video reconstruction does what no panel manages to do: it puts the walls back up in front of the eyes of an eight-year-old child. With snow, the plateau is one of the safest places in Lazio to take little ones sledding without lining up at the lifts.

The historic center, on the other hand, is less suited to strollers: stairways, cobblestones, sloping alleys. With very small children it's best to keep the town for a short walk and concentrate the day on the Altipiani.

Accessibility in Arcinazzo Romano

It has to be said frankly. The medieval historic center, with its stairways and sloping alleys, presents significant architectural barriers and cannot be traveled independently by someone who uses a wheelchair. The Altipiani, by contrast, offer flat and wide routes, and the flat part of the archaeological area is more manageable, even if the ground remains unpaved and irregular in some stretches. Anyone with specific accessibility needs does well to call the museum before leaving and have the route described: the staff know the terrain and answer precisely.

What to see around Arcinazzo Romano within half an hour by car

Arcinazzo Romano is a good center of gravity for exploring the upper Aniene valley and the Ernici belt. Here is what you can easily reach, with a note on each.

Subiaco, the Benedictine monasteries and Sant'Andrea

Subiaco is about 20 minutes away and deserves a day from anyone who has more than one day. The monastery of San Benedetto, called Sacro Speco, is built backed against the rock wall and preserves cycles of frescoes ranging from the 13th to the 15th century. The monastery of Santa Scolastica is the only one of the 12 Benedictine cenobia of the valley to survive without interruption, and in its printing house the first books with movable type in Italy were printed in 1465.

In town, the co-cathedral of Sant'Andrea Apostolo is a neoclassical Latin cross building built between 1776 and 1789 to a design by Pietro Camporese and Carlo Colombi, and inaugurated personally by Pope Pius VI. It was badly damaged by the bombings of the Second World War and rebuilt in the 1950s according to the original features. In the side chapels it keeps valuable 18th-century canvases. It faces Piazza Sant'Andrea together with the Seminary building and the Civic Palace. The link with Arcinazzo Romano is direct and material: part of the marbles of the imperial villa ended up precisely in the building sites of Subiaco.

Trevi nel Lazio, the Caetani castle and the Aniene waterfall

Trevi nel Lazio is about seven kilometers from the Altipiani, at 821 meters of elevation, and is the town with which Arcinazzo Romano administratively shares the plateau. The village gathers around the Caetani castle, founded probably around the year 1000, and preserves the collegiate church of Santa Maria with its crypt, the oratory of San Pietro Eremita and Piazza degli Angeli. A little outside, the Trevi waterfall makes the Aniene leap in a wooded setting of great quality. In the territory there is also the Arco di Trevi, a megalithic structure attributed to the Aequi and traditionally dated to the 4th century BC, along the old border between the Ernici territory and the Aequi one.

Fiuggi, Piglio, Filettino and Guarcino

Fiuggi is the spa town of the diuretic waters known since the Middle Ages and frequented, according to tradition, by Boniface VIII and by Michelangelo. Piglio is the capital of Cesanese and one of the best-preserved villages of the Ernici belt. Filettino, the highest municipality in Lazio, opens onto the ski resort of Campo Staffi and the sources of the Aniene. Guarcino leads to Campocatino, the glacial basin that is the best-equipped ski area of southern Lazio.

Vallepietra, Camerata Vecchia and the abandoned villages

Anyone interested in abandoned places finds two strong destinations in the area. The ruins of Camerata Vecchia are what remains of a town destroyed by a fire in 1859, now ivy-covered ruins on a spur. Farther away but of the same emotional family is Antuni, the ghost village on Lake Turano. Vallepietra, with its cliffside sanctuary, closes the triangle. And for anyone who loves small mountain bodies of water, Lake San Benedetto on the Aniene, below Subiaco, is a short and memorable stop.

Monte Livata and Cervara di Roma

Monte Livata, above Subiaco, is the winter resort closest to Rome and in summer a plateau of beech woods and pastures. Cervara di Roma, the highest municipality of the Metropolitan City, is the town of stonecutters and artists, with its carved stairway and sculpture park. They are two half days that fit well with a base in Arcinazzo Romano.

Frequently asked questions about Arcinazzo Romano

How far is Arcinazzo Romano from Rome?

Arcinazzo Romano is about 80 kilometers from the center of Rome and barely 60 from the Grande Raccordo Anulare. By car, without traffic, you count an hour and a quarter going by the A24, while the time lengthens if you take the whole Via Tiburtina.

How much does a ticket to visit Trajan's Villa in Arcinazzo Romano cost?

The ticket for Trajan's Villa in Arcinazzo Romano costs €3 full price and €2 reduced, one of the lowest prices in Lazio for an archaeological site turned into a museum with an attached Antiquarium. The museum's hours vary with the season, so it's best to phone first at 0774 808006 or 348 1231869 to check that it is open.

What can you see at Trajan's Villa in Arcinazzo Romano?

Trajan's Villa at the Altipiani di Arcinazzo Romano is the imperial residence that Emperor Trajan, who reigned from AD 98 to 117, had built on five hectares divided into two terraced sectors along the Aniene. The adjoining Antiquarium also offers a three-dimensional video reconstruction that shows the original appearance of the rooms.

Is Arcinazzo Romano a good day trip with children?

Arcinazzo Romano works well with children, above all thanks to the plateau of the Altipiani, grassy and flat, where you can walk and run with no steep slopes and no exposed drops. The archaeological area of the imperial villa takes about an hour to walk and is entirely outdoors.

Is the historic center of Arcinazzo Romano wheelchair accessible?

The medieval historic center of Arcinazzo Romano, with its flights of steps and sloping lanes, has serious architectural barriers and can't be covered independently by someone who uses a wheelchair. The Altipiani, by contrast, offer flat, wider paths, even though the ground stays unpaved and uneven in some stretches.

What do you eat in Arcinazzo Romano?

The cooking of Arcinazzo Romano is typical of the Apennine belt, based on sheep, goat, chestnuts, mushrooms, black truffle and cheeses. The local marrone chestnut goes into desserts and soups, while the polenta is dressed with sheep ragù and truffle, a dish tied to the tradition of transhumance that climbs from these mountains all the way to Abruzzo.

What are the main monuments of the historic center of Arcinazzo Romano?

The historic center of Arcinazzo Romano keeps an intact medieval layout, with Porta Nuova as the entrance to the village and the church of Santa Maria Assunta, which holds a portal from 1629 made with marble taken from the nearby Trajan's Villa. The town hasn't been restored for tourism. The houses are still lived in.

What is there to see around Arcinazzo Romano?

Around Arcinazzo Romano, about 20 minutes away by car, you'll find Subiaco with its Benedictine monasteries, including the monastery of San Benedetto known as the Sacro Speco, built against the rock face. The area is part of the upper Aniene valley, facing the Monti Simbruini Regional Natural Park.

If you want to build a well-planned itinerary in this part of Lazio, or accompany a group, you can rely on the professionals of TourLeaderPro in Rome, who design tailor-made routes even outside the classic circuits of the capital. For those organizing group transfers, the tourist accompaniment service takes care of the logistics, which on these mountain roads is not trivial.

A Curiosity About Arcinazzo Romano

The strongest curiosity of Arcinazzo Romano is not a monument. It's a move that lasted 15 centuries. The villa of Emperor Trajan was not destroyed by an earthquake or leveled by an army. It was taken apart piece by piece and reused, with a continuity that runs through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment without a break. The portal of the church of Santa Maria Assunta, installed in 1629, is imperial marble of the 2nd century. The altar of the same church is made of marble from the villa. The two holy water fonts are ancient composite capitals turned upside down and hollowed out. And when in 1777 and 1778 Ennio Quirino Visconti carried out the first archaeological investigations and brought to light a considerable quantity of marble, that marble took the road to the building sites of Santa Scolastica and San Benedetto in Subiaco.

Let's stop for a moment on this fact, because it's enormous. The greatest antiquarian of his time digs up an imperial villa, and the product of the dig ends up on a construction site. It isn't vandalism. It's the mindset of an age in which the ancient world was first of all a quarry of noble material at no cost. Modern archaeological culture, the kind that preserves a find because it is a document, would be born only a few decades later, and Visconti himself was one of its fathers.

The practical consequence for anyone visiting Arcinazzo Romano today is that the villa is in two places at once: at the Altipiani, where the foundations, the terraces, the basins and the nymphaeum remain, and in the churches of the valley, where the marble remains. Whoever visits only the archaeological area sees half of the work. My practical advice is to reverse the usual order: first the portal of the parish church, with your hands on the capitals, then the climb to the Altipiani. That way the third terrace stops being a meadow with some low walls and becomes a building, because you've already touched the marble that clad it.

There's also a minor curiosity, but a delightful one: the demonym of the inhabitants. They're not called arcinazzesi, they're called narzini, and the name comes from the tradition of Narcio, the patrician of Subiaco who supposedly donated the arx to Pope Damasus I in the 4th century. A town that changed its name twice by royal decree keeps in the name of its inhabitants a memory older than both decrees.

One Thing Nobody Tells You About Arcinazzo Romano

That the museum has two sites. Practically all the information in circulation talks about the archaeological area and the Antiquarium at the Altipiani, at kilometer 30 of Via Sublacense, and stops there. There is in fact a second exhibition site in the historic center of the town, in Via San Nicola, devoted to the restored frescoes and stuccoes from the excavations of the villa. That is: the painted and modeled part of the imperial decoration, the most fragile and the hardest to read in the field, is not where you look for it. It's 6 kilometers lower down, in the town, on a street that most visitors never walk.

The consequence is that a great many people visit Arcinazzo Romano, look at the terraces, buy the 3 euro ticket, leave, and don't know they've seen only part of the heritage they came for. Before going up, ask at the museum's number if the historic center site is open that day and how to get in. Don't take it for granted that it is: a municipality of 1,200 residents runs two museum sites with the staff it has.

The second thing nobody says concerns the relationship between Arcinazzo Romano and the Monti Simbruini Park. The town is not inside the perimeter of the protected area, it only looks onto it. For hikers this is a little-advertised advantage: you sleep outside the park, with lower costs and fewer rules, and you walk inside the park a few minutes away by car. Anyone who compares weekend prices in Arcinazzo Romano with those of the towns inside the perimeter will immediately understand what I'm talking about.

Third thing, and it's about snow. On travel portals the Altipiani di Arcinazzo often appear next to the words ski resort. They aren't one. There are no ski lifts on the plateau. There are snowy meadows where you go on foot, with snowshoes, with a sled and with cross-country skis when the snow holds. The real slopes are at Campo Staffi, Campocatino and Monte Livata, and in the winter season a shuttle service runs from the Altipiani to Campo Staffi. Anyone who loads skis in the car thinking they'll find the chairlift under the hotel makes a wasted trip, and it happens more often than you imagine.

My Advice for Visiting Arcinazzo Romano

There's only one piece of advice and it's worth more than all the others put together: call ahead. It's not a courtesy formula, it's the difference between a good day and a wasted one. The Trajan's Villa museum has hours that vary with the season and with the staff available, and the sources you find online give time slots that differ from one another. The numbers are 0774 808006 and 348 1231869. A two-minute phone call tells you if the site is open, if the second site in Via San Nicola can be visited, if a guide is available and if you need to book. For groups, booking is not optional.

The second piece of advice concerns the order of the day. Do the historic center early in the morning, when the town wakes up and the churches are more likely to be open for the weekday Mass. Go up to the Altipiani around 11:00, visit the archaeological area and the Antiquarium before lunch, have lunch on the plateau, and spend the afternoon walking, toward the Altuino or simply along the meadows. Sunset on the Altipiani, with the low light on the beeches, repays the day all by itself. Anyone who does the opposite, meaning archaeology in the afternoon, risks a closed museum and the sun in the face on a plateau with no shade.

Third, the season. The best time to visit Arcinazzo Romano is May, June and September. May for the flowering meadows and the long days. June for the festivals and for the fire of San Giovanni. September for the light, for the silence you find again and for the first chestnuts. July and August are crowded and hot even up here, and the magic of the empty plateau disappears. October is excellent for those who come for the marrone festival and for the foliage of the beech woods. January and February are for those who love snow and accept that half of the services are closed.

Fourth, and here I give an unpopular opinion: don't try to do Subiaco and Arcinazzo Romano on the same day starting from Rome. In theory you can. But the monasteries of Subiaco ask for three hours done properly and the imperial villa asks for two. Add the transfers and the lunch stop and you find yourself rushing in both places. If you have only one day, choose. If you have two, sleep in the area. It costs little, the evening meal in town is good and early morning on the Altipiani is the best part.

Fifth, shoes. Even for the archaeological area alone you need closed shoes with a lugged sole, because the ground is unpaved and sloping, and after rain it becomes slippery. I see people arrive in beach sandals with a regularity that never stops surprising me.

Another Well-Known Fact, Yet Rarely Mentioned

That this valley is the hydraulic engine of ancient Rome, and that Arcinazzo Romano is one of the best observation points for it. The fact is known to anyone who has studied the aqueducts: four of the great Roman aqueducts, the Anio Vetus, the Anio Novus, the Aqua Marcia and the Aqua Claudia, drew their water in the upper Aniene valley. Yet when people talk about these towns they talk about medieval villages, monasteries and food festivals, and almost never about the reason why ancient Rome invested enormous sums and first-class engineering here.

The very name of the range says it: Simbruini comes from the Latin sub imbribus, under the rains. These are limestone mountains that absorb rainwater, filter it deep down in karst channels and give it back in springs of constant flow and excellent quality. The waters of the Aniene were considered in antiquity among the best and most wholesome available, and this reputation is the technical reason why an imperial residence rose at 850 meters above sea level, at a point that required a day's travel from the center of Rome.

Stop and think about it for a moment when you're in front of the two semicircular basins of the lower sector of the villa, or in front of the trace of the vivarium in the upper sector. An emperor who builds himself a fishpond in the mountains is showing off his control over water, which in the Roman world was the most visible form of power after the army. The same hydraulic culture that brings water to Rome over 100 kilometers of arches brings it here into a fish tank, for the pleasure of looking at it.

There is a little-mentioned and very concrete corollary: the karst that feeds the springs also creates caves and sinkholes, and caving is one of the activities practiced in the area. The same mountains that quenched Rome's thirst are riddled with holes like a sponge, and in some places you can go inside. It's not an activity to improvise. You do it with organized caving groups, never alone.

The Right Photo to Take at Arcinazzo Romano

The right photo at Arcinazzo Romano is not the one everybody takes, the plateau of the Altipiani shot head-on, which gives you a flat green meadow and says nothing. The right photo is the portal of the church of Santa Maria Assunta shot at three-quarters, with the low morning light that separates the ancient molding of the capitals from the modern plaster of the facade. In that frame you read the whole history of the town at a glance: the imperial marble of the 2nd century mounted in 1629 on a mountain church. It's a photograph that tells a story, not one that decorates.

If you're after landscape photography instead, the right time at the Altipiani is late winter afternoon, with the snowy plateau and the low sun stretching the shadows of the beeches over the snow. The contrast between the white surface and the dark lines of the trunks always works, and at that moment the plateau truly has the alpine look that earned it its nickname. In summer the same frame, at three in the afternoon, produces a washed-out photograph with no depth. The light does the work, not the place.

For the archaeological area, the best spot is the one that lets you shoot one of the semicircular basins with the Monti Affilani in the background, so that the photograph holds together the work of man and the geographic reason for the work. Go down with the camera almost at ground level. The basin gains depth and the walls emerge instead of sinking.

Three practical warnings. First, in the museum and the Antiquarium the rules on photography are set by the management, so ask the staff before shooting, above all with flash, which on painted materials and stuccoes is always to be avoided. Second, the historic center is lived in, and photographing other people's windows and hanging laundry is rude. Common sense counts for more than any regulation. Third, if you go up with a drone, check the rules in force for the archaeological area and the protected areas, because in protected sites you don't fly without authorization.

Some Important Events That Happened Here in History

The first event is military and very ancient: the long war between Rome and the Aequi, fought between the 5th and 4th centuries BC on these mountains and ended with the definitive Roman victory of 304 BC, according to the account of Livy. The fortified hilltop oppida that the territory of Arcinazzo was part of were the strongholds of that conflict. It's a war lasting more than a century, with shifting fortunes and with episodes that Roman memory later turned into exemplary material.

The second is a building event and an imperial one: the construction of the villa of Trajan, between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century AD. Five hectares on two terraced sectors, with peristyles, cryptoporticoes, an apsed nymphaeum, two semicircular basins, a palatium, perhaps a bath complex and a vivarium. An imperial building site in the mountains, with specialized workers, imported marble and a hydraulic system designed on purpose. The Antiquarium also documents the organization of that work, and it's the part I recommend looking at most closely.

The third event is from AD 720 and is documentary: the Massa Pontiana is sold to the titulus of Sant'Eustachio in Rome, and in the Liber Censuum of Cencio Savelli, the future Pope Honorius III, the first mention appears of the name the town would bear for 11 centuries. In 923 the Regesto Sublacense associates a settlement with that place name: no longer a property, a village.

The fourth is from 1087 and has the flavor of a feud. Ildemondo, probably of Lombard origin and the founder of the family from which Pope Alexander IV would come, usurped the castle of Ponza from the abbey of Subiaco. The abbot didn't take it lying down. He called in the papal militias and retook Ponza and Affile. The episode is told in the Chronicon Sublacense, which in 1109 speaks explicitly for the first time of a fortified castle. In 1176 Pope Alexander III settled the matter by formally granting Ponza and Affile to the abbey, which held them as a fief until 1735.

The fifth is from 1435 and is a war between towns: the men of Ponza and Affile destroyed the castle of Roccasecca, a fortified settlement near present-day Roiate. In the upper Aniene valley, disputes over pastures, water and boundaries were settled this way, and the fact that a castle was razed by two neighboring communities says how high the stakes were.

The sixth is from the late 1700s: the active participation of the people of Ponza in the conflict between France and the Papal State in the years of the Roman Republic, between 1798 and 1799. A mountain town under abbey rule entering the European revolutionary wars is a fact that deserves more than a line.

The seventh and the eighth are administrative but weighty for identity: Royal Decree number 1053 of October 15, 1872, by which Victor Emmanuel II turned Ponza into Ponza d'Arcinazzo, and Royal Decree number 287 of May 29, 1891, which led to the present name of Arcinazzo Romano. In 19 years a town lost the name it had borne since the early Middle Ages.

The ninth is from the 20th century and concerns the Altipiani. During the Second World War the plateau was occupied by German troops, who treated their wounded there and organized bread baking for the soldiers, while anti-aircraft artillery hidden on the upland shot down some aircraft, eight according to the memory collected on the spot. The tenth, finally, is peaceful and transformative: the tourism boom between the 1960s and the 1990s, which made the Altipiani di Arcinazzo one of the holiday destinations of the Roman middle class and changed its built landscape forever.

Who Has Passed Through Arcinazzo Romano

The first name is Trajan's, emperor from AD 98 to 117, the princeps optimus of the senators, the man who brought the empire to its greatest territorial extent with the Dacian campaigns and the Parthian expedition. Here he had his hunting residence. That it is really the villa described by Pliny the Younger in the Panegyricus of AD 100 remains a proposal of scholars, based on the coincidence of the features of the landscape: a nice hypothesis, not a document. But that the villa is his is told by archaeology and by the chronology of the materials, and that is enough to say that Emperor Trajan passed through here, and more than once.

The second name is Pliny the Younger, at least as a possible literary witness. The third is Ennio Quirino Visconti, who in 1777 and 1778 carried out the first documented archaeological investigations here. Visconti would become the greatest European antiquarian of his generation and the curator of the Museo Pio-Clementino. That his first important digs touched this mountain is a title of merit that nobody in Arcinazzo Romano claims enough.

The fourth name is Pope Damasus I, to whom, according to local tradition, the patrician Narcio of Subiaco donated in the 4th century the arx at the foot of Monte Altuino. Tradition, not document. I report it as such. The fifth is Alexander III, the pope who in 1176 granted Ponza and Affile to the abbey of Subiaco, and the sixth is Honorius III, that is Cencio Savelli, whose Liber Censuum preserves the first mention of the town's name. The seventh is Alexander IV, a descendant of that Ildemondo who in 1087 had usurped the castle.

The eighth name is from the 20th century and always surprises whoever hears it: Audrey Hepburn. The actress, married since 1969 to the Roman psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, stayed at the Altipiani di Arcinazzo in the villa of her mother-in-law Paola Bandini, together with her husband and son. These are Hepburn's Roman years, the ones in which she had left Hollywood and lived between Rome and Switzerland. The plateau that Romans called little Switzerland hosted for a few summers a woman who had chosen the real Switzerland as her home. The coincidence is too good not to tell.

The ninth is not a single name but a category: directors and film crews. The Altipiani di Arcinazzo have been used as a location for many films, for a simple technical reason, namely the availability of a landscape with an alpine look an hour from Cinecittà. The travel cost of a crew to the real Alps was prohibitive. Here they shot in a day. Many mountain scenes of Italian cinema were shot 60 kilometers from the Colosseum, and this is another of those things the town knows and the rest of the world doesn't.

The tenth, finally, is the Roman middle class of the 1960s and 1970s as a whole: professionals, doctors, lawyers, civil servants who built their second homes here and made the Altipiani a piece of Rome transplanted to 850 meters. The villas of that era are all still there, and reading them as architecture of the late 20th century is an exercise worth the walk.

Arcinazzo Romano for Visitors From Abroad

A foreign visitor who spends four or five days in Rome rarely hears Arcinazzo Romano mentioned, and this is both a shame and an advantage. The shame is that an imperial villa preserved in a mountain landscape, with no crowds and a 3 euro ticket, would be a memorable day for anyone who has already seen the Forum and the Vatican Museums. The advantage is that here you don't queue. If you're accompanying English-speaking guests, you can rely on the English guides to the Lazio region on ItalyPlanner, which collect the destinations reachable in a day from the capital, and on the overview of things to do in Rome to work out how to fit a day trip outside the city into an already full program.

The advice is always the same: on the third or fourth day, when the fatigue of the lines starts to show, get out of the city. A day on the Aniene, between the monasteries of Subiaco and Trajan's Villa at Arcinazzo Romano, puts your ideas back in order about what the territory of ancient Rome really was, which did not end at the walls.

Quick Questions About Arcinazzo Romano

How far is Arcinazzo Romano from Rome

About 80 kilometers from the center of Rome, barely 60 from the Grande Raccordo Anulare. By car, count an hour and a quarter without traffic from the A24, more if you take the whole Tiburtina.

How much is the ticket for Trajan's Villa at Arcinazzo Romano

Full price 3 euros, reduced 2 euros. It's one of the cheapest tickets in Lazio for an archaeological site with a museum and an attached antiquarium.

What are the opening hours of Trajan's Villa

The hours vary with the season and the available indications don't match each other. The thing to do is to call 0774 808006 or 348 1231869, or check the municipality's website, before setting out.

Do you need to book to visit Arcinazzo Romano and the imperial villa

For individual visitors generally not, but the check call is still essential. For groups and guided visits, booking is necessary.

How long does the visit to Trajan's Villa and the Antiquarium take

An hour and a half for the archaeological area and the museum together, two hours if a guide goes with you. Add an hour and a half for the historic center of Arcinazzo Romano.

Can you take photographs

Outdoors, in the archaeological area, there's no problem. Inside the museum the rules are set by the management. Ask the staff, and in any case avoid flash on stuccoes and painted surfaces.

Is Trajan's Villa at Arcinazzo Romano wheelchair accessible

The area is outdoors and partly flat, but the ground is unpaved and uneven in some stretches. It's best to call the museum and have the route described before you leave. The historic center of the town, with its flights of steps and sloping lanes, is not independently accessible.

Is Arcinazzo Romano good for children

Very. The plateau of the Altipiani is flat and safe, the archaeological area is visited outdoors in an hour and the museum's three-dimensional video reconstruction works very well with the little ones. The historic center is less suited to strollers.

Can you ski at Arcinazzo Romano

There are no ski lifts on the plateau. You go on foot, with snowshoes, with a sled and with cross-country skis when the snow holds. The resorts with lifts are Campo Staffi above Filettino, Campocatino above Guarcino and Monte Livata above Subiaco. In winter a shuttle connects the Altipiani to Campo Staffi.

When does it snow at the Altipiani di Arcinazzo

Snowfalls are concentrated between January and March and are frequent, with minimum temperatures that easily drop to 10 degrees below zero. There is no guarantee, though. It's Apennine snow, and the year can be stingy.

How do you get to Arcinazzo Romano by public transport

Cotral bus from the Ponte Mammolo terminus, metro line B, toward Subiaco, and from Subiaco continuing toward the upper valley. Runs are few and reduced on holidays. Check them on the carrier's website. There is no railway.

Where do you park at Arcinazzo Romano

In the lots along the town's ring road, because the historic center is closed to traffic by its very structure. At the Altipiani there's plenty of space, except on snow Sundays and on August weekends.

Why was Arcinazzo Romano called Ponza

From the gens Pontia, a Roman family originally from these places, and from the Massa Pontiana, the late antique land district. In 1872 the name became Ponza d'Arcinazzo and in 1891 Arcinazzo Romano. Nothing to do with the island in the Pontine archipelago.

What are the inhabitants of Arcinazzo Romano called

Narzini. The demonym derives from the tradition of Narcio, the patrician of Subiaco who supposedly donated the arx to Pope Damasus I in the 4th century.

What is the difference between Arcinazzo Romano and the Altipiani di Arcinazzo

Arcinazzo Romano is the town, at 850 meters, with the medieval historic center and the parish church. The Altipiani are the hamlet, 6 kilometers higher up, on the plateau shared with Trevi nel Lazio, Fiuggi and Piglio, where the imperial villa and the second homes are found. They are two different places and both should be visited.

Is Arcinazzo Romano part of the Monti Simbruini Park

No. The municipality is not inside the perimeter of the protected area, but it looks onto it closely, and the park's trails can be reached in a few minutes by car.

How many inhabitants does Arcinazzo Romano have

A little over 1,200 residents in the municipality, of which about 200 are permanent at the Altipiani, which in summer more than triple.

What do you eat in Arcinazzo Romano

Marroni, truffle polenta with sheep ragù, goat and sheep cheeses, mushrooms. To drink, Cesanese, and in particular Cesanese del Piglio, the first guaranteed denomination of Lazio.

When is the Marrone Festival of Arcinazzo Romano held

At the end of October. It's the main food event of the year and fills the town. It's best to arrive early and park far away.

When is the patron saint of Arcinazzo Romano celebrated

San Giorgio Martire is celebrated twice, on April 23 and August 23. The August one is the big festival, the April one is the town's festival.

Does the museum of Arcinazzo Romano have only one site

No, it has two: the Antiquarium inside the archaeological area at the Altipiani and an exhibition section in the historic center, in Via San Nicola, with restored frescoes and stuccoes from the excavations. Ask the museum if the second site is open.

Is it worth visiting Arcinazzo Romano in a single day from Rome

Yes, but devoting the whole day to it and without adding Subiaco to the same program. With two days, and sleeping in the area, you'll enjoy the territory much more.

What is there to see near Arcinazzo Romano

Subiaco with the Benedictine monasteries and the co-cathedral of Sant'Andrea, Trevi nel Lazio with the Caetani castle and the waterfall, Fiuggi, Piglio, Filettino, Guarcino, Vallepietra with the sanctuary of the Santissima Trinità, the ruins of Camerata Vecchia, Lake San Benedetto, Monte Livata and Cervara di Roma.

Can you bring a dog to Arcinazzo Romano

On the Altipiani yes, and it's one of the best places in Lazio for a walk with a dog. On a leash, though. In these mountains the wolf is present and the flock-guarding dogs don't allow anyone to approach.

Why Come Back to Arcinazzo Romano

It's a place you gladly return to, and here is why. Arcinazzo Romano is one of the very few places an hour from Rome where you can stand in front of an imperial residence with nobody around, paying three euros, with the smell of beeches and the sound of the wind in place of audio guides. It doesn't have the spectacle of Hadrian's Villa and never will. But it has one thing Hadrian's Villa can't have: silence, and the chance to understand at your leisure how a Roman villa worked, looking at the terraces from above without anyone pushing you to get past.

The final advice is to take the town seriously. Don't treat it as a stop between two more famous destinations. Go up in the morning, enter the parish church, put your hand on the ancient capitals of the holy water fonts, then go to the Altipiani knowing what you're looking for. And if you go on an evening at the end of June, ask if they still light the fires of San Giovanni. It's a fire that this town has kept longer than almost any other.

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

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