Ardea (RM)

Ardea (RM) is reached from Rome in about 40 minutes: from the Grande Raccordo Anulare you take via Laurentina (SP 95a) southbound and continue for about 30 kilometers, or you exit onto via Pontina (SS 148) at the Pomezia interchange and turn toward the sea onto via Laurentina. The old village occupies the tuff cliff above the Incastro ditch. The town hall and services are in the new part, along via Laurentina, while the coast stretches for about 10 kilometers between Marina di Ardea, Tor San Lorenzo and Lido dei Pini. By public transport the reference is the Cotral runs that leave from the Laurentina terminus of Metro Line B and serve the southern coast via Pomezia. Lines and hours change with the season and should be checked on the company's website before leaving. The Giacomo Manzù Museum, on via Laurentina at kilometer 32, opens Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 19:30 with last entry at 19:00, closes on Monday, December 25 and January 1, and costs €6 full, €2 reduced for citizens of the European Union between 18 and 25, free entry under 18 and for everyone on the first Sunday of the month. The Landriana Gardens, at via Campo di Carne 51 in Tor San Lorenzo, can be visited by appointment and on the opening days of spring and autumn, with a guided visit by reservation at the number given on the official website and a ticket of €12 for groups, free under 12. The archaeological areas have no continuous hours: the fortress and the ancient center can be walked freely on foot, while the Castrum Inui at the mouth of the Incastro is visited on the occasion of organized openings. Free street parking in the village and in the seafront car parks, paid in the summer months on some stretches of the coast. For a full day you need five or six hours: two for the museum, one for the village, two for the sea or the gardens.

If the Ardea museum fits into a wider tour, it is worth placing it in the network of the state museums of Rome: it is a national museum to all effects, with the same entry rules and the same first-Sunday free admissions.

Why Ardea (RM) Is Not Just Any Town on the Coast

The name appears in the Aeneid, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in the treaties between Rome and Carthage and in the papal bulls of the 11th century. Few places in the province of Rome can line up a similar series. And yet whoever arrives today from the Pontina sees first of all a belt of small villas, roundabouts and supermarkets, and becomes convinced that there is nothing here to look at. It is a misreading of the landscape, not of the place. Ardea is a city stratified vertically: under the modern houses run tunnels dug in the 5th century BC, under the parish church there are the blocks of a Hellenistic temple, inside the municipal cemetery there is a Romanesque church with column-bearing lions on the portal.

The ancient city occupied three tuff plateaus separated by deep gorges: the Acropolis, the Civitavecchia and Casalazzara. The name Civitavecchia, here, has nothing to do with the port of the northern Tyrrhenian: it is the place name with which the inhabitants have for centuries called the plateau of the old city, and confusing it with the Civitavecchia of northern Lazio is one of the most frequent mistakes in the texts circulating online. If you read of archaic temples at Civitavecchia, almost always they are talking about Ardea.

The verdict on this point: Ardea is the most underrated archaic site of Lazio. It doesn't have the staging of Ostia Antica or the educational apparatus of Lavinium, but it has something those don't, namely the agger of the 7th century BC still legible to the naked eye, in the middle of the countryside, without fences and without a ticket office.

How to Get to Ardea (RM) and How to Get Around Once You Arrive

By Car from Rome to Ardea (RM)

Two roads, two different characters. Via Laurentina descends from the southern quadrant of the city and crosses the countryside of the Agro Romano, with the last stretch narrow and busy at rush hour: it is the right road if you are aiming for the museum, which faces right onto the Laurentina at kilometer 32. Via Pontina is faster but must be left at Pomezia, then taking the provincial roads toward the sea. On weekends in July and August traffic on the coast between Torvaianica and Tor San Lorenzo jams up between 10 and noon: leave before 9 or put it off until the afternoon.

By Public Transport

Ardea has no railway station. The useful stations are those of the Rome-Nettuno line, Campoleone and Campo di Carne, from which bus runs continue toward the municipality. The direct link with Rome is handled by Cotral buses that terminate at Laurentina, the end of Metro Line B. Since the routes have been reorganized several times in recent years, the only reliable reference for hours and stops remains the transport company's website and the Comune's portal. Whoever travels without a car should keep in mind the low frequencies on Sunday: for the museum, the risk of being stranded on the way back is real.

Where to Park

In the old village you leave the car in the wide spots along the climb to the fortress, and in the square in front of the church of San Pietro Apostolo. At the museum there is an internal space reserved for visitors. On the coast, in the summer months, the free car parks fill up early and several stretches switch to blue lines: if you arrive after 10 in the morning in August, allow for a walk of 10 or 15 minutes.

What to See in Ardea (RM): the Village on the Cliff

The village is visited on foot in barely an hour, but it is a dense hour. The road climbs, turns around the tuff ridge and comes out on a natural belvedere that looks over the plain toward the sea. From up there you understand the logic of the settlement at once: the isolated cliff, the gorges that defend it on three sides, the ditch that descends to the Tyrrhenian and served as a waterway for the port.

The Fortress of the Rocca di Ardea (RM)

The baronial palace at the top of the cliff was built in the 15th century by the Colonna, who held the fief thanks to the support of Pope Martin V, that is, Oddone Colonna. In 1564 Marcantonio Colonna sold the feudal jurisdiction over the castle to Giuliano Cesarini, and from that moment the complex followed the fortunes of a family that had already bought half of the castle a century earlier. The local statutes tell of a precise and unromantic function: when the signal of Barbary sails arrived from the coastal towers, the population shut itself inside the fortress. It was not a literary fear. Between the 16th and 17th centuries raids on the Lazio coast were continuous, and the depopulation of this stretch of coast depended in large part on that.

Today the building preserves the wall structure and the relation with the sheer drop. A visit to the interiors depends on the initiatives of the administration and local associations. If you find the main door open during an event, go in: the view from the high windows is worth the detour more than many better-advertised panoramic terraces.

The Church of Santa Marina, Inside the Cemetery

It is the most moving building in Ardea, and it is found in the least touristy place imaginable: inside the municipal cemetery, set against the tuff rock. Legend has it that here opened the cave in which Marina lived as a hermit after the monks, discovering she was a woman, drove her out of the monastery. The inscription above the portal attributes the construction to Cencio Savelli, the future Pope Honorius III, and the date traditionally read is 1191. Some local sheets place the building instead in the 13th century. The discrepancy exists and should not be hidden: in front of the portal it is best to trust the inscription and keep the range open between the late 12th and the 13th century.

Of the facade little remains of the original portico. The entrance is framed by columns resting on column-bearing lions, the stylophore lions typical of Lazio Romanesque, and the lintel has a bas-relief with the saint, the father and an abbot: a rare narrative scene, which tells in images the story of the disguised hermit. The small bell gable is supported by two side connecting elements. Inside there is a single nave, originally entirely frescoed. The best-preserved frescoes are to the left of the altar: a Madonna and Child between San Rocco and Saint Anthony Abbot with the staff, the bell and the little pig, the attributes by which iconography distinguishes him from any other hermit.

Behind the altar open the remains of a nymphaeum of the 2nd century AD carved in the tuff, reused in late antiquity as a funerary space. It is the stratigraphy of Ardea in three square meters: Roman water, Christian worship, modern cemetery, all in the same hole in the rock. A clear opinion: if I had to save a single monument of Ardea, I would save this one, and I'd say so even to someone who has only half a day.

The Church of San Pietro Apostolo

The parish church of the village stands on the remains of a Hellenistic temple, in a position that local sources link to an ancient cult dedicated to Juno Regina. The Romanesque building is due to the Benedictine monks of the abbey of San Paolo fuori le mura, who held possession of Ardea for centuries. The sources waver between an early medieval foundation rebuilt by the Benedictines and a building site of the 12th century, and caution is a must. The bell tower did not begin as a bell tower: it was a watchtower against the Saracens, later absorbed into the church.

Ancient material is everywhere, reused without much ceremony. Marble friezes of the 2nd century serve as jambs of the portal, a reused capital holds up the presbytery, a Roman sepulchral altar has been adapted to liturgical uses. The interior has three aisles divided by arches. The furnishings have suffered serious losses in the last two centuries, among paintings, chandeliers and finds that disappeared, but there remain frescoes of the 15th century with Saint Onuphrius the hermit, Saint Christopher, Saint Leonard and Saint Ansanus, a wooden crucifix of the 16th century and a canvas in the circle of Caravaggio of the 17th century.

A detail that says a lot about the health history of the area: among the patron saints of the Ardiesi, the medieval inhabitants of the fortress, appear Saint Anthony Abbot, Saint Christopher, Saint Leonard, Saint Ansanus, Saint Eurosia, Saint Onuphrius and Saint Proculus. Saint Christopher is one of the 14 Auxiliary Saints, invoked against plague and sudden death. A patronage of this kind, in so small a village, reinforces the hypothesis that at the foot of the fortress there really was a lazaretto: and the place name Casalazzara, still in use today, preserves that memory.

In the 20th century the church was restored starting in 1940, after the visit of Benito Mussolini to Ardea of October 29, 1939, and took its present form. In the 1960s the bell tower and the right aisle were put back in order. In the same decade Giacomo Manzù, who lived a few hundred meters away, made for this church the baptismal font and the tabernacle, and had adapted as a lectern a marble capital recovered in località Blasi, where there stood a Roman villa that local tradition links to Livia, wife of Augustus. That capital was stolen during restoration work, and has never come back. The villa in question must not be confused with the villa of Livia at Prima Porta, which is another property and another site.

The Oratory of Sant'Angelo

You go down a stair that leads to a room carved in the tuff, below ground level. On the ceiling there is a yellow flower with stucco petals. On the back wall, a niche entirely frescoed with paintings of the 12th century. It is a tiny, gloomy space, the kind that distracted visitors cross in 30 seconds. It is worth instead a quarter of an hour, with a flashlight: rock oratories of this type, in Lazio, can be counted on the fingers of two hands, and almost none is visible without negotiating with the parish priest.

The Fontanile and Washhouse of Santa Marina

The community of Ardea had the fontanile built in 1615 as a public service: water for the animals, water for the houses, water for those passing through. The roofing with wooden trusses dates to the late 20th century. The original statuette with the figure of Santa Marina was stolen in 1996. In 1999 the cultural association Santa Marina had a copy made by the sculptor Pietro Negri and put it back in its place. The attached washhouse is from the 18th century and worked until the 1960s, that is, until yesterday, in terms of the town's history. Ask an elderly person in the village: someone still remembers who did the washing there.

Archaeological Ardea (RM): Agger, Walls, Temples

The Archaic Agger, the Oldest Defense

The first fortification of the city is one of the best-preserved examples of archaic agger in central Italy. The system is simple and formidable: a ditch is dug, the excavated earth is piled on the inner side forming an embankment with the slope steep toward the outside and gentle toward the inside, so the defenders climb quickly and the attackers do not. On top ran wooden palisades. The three plateaus, already defended by steep slopes, received aggers at the points accessible from the interior. The construction of these defenses is attributed to the 7th century BC.

Walking on it today is not a spectacular experience, and it is right to say so: you see a grassy rise, a hollow, a field. But if you have in mind the Rome of the kings, this is the type of defense the Romans themselves built before the stone walls. Whoever has seen the Servian agger on the Esquiline will find here its country relative, and it is older.

The Walls in Opera Quadrata of the 4th Century BC

In the 4th century the fortifications were rebuilt in opera quadrata, squared blocks of local tuff laid in courses, which encircled the Acropolis. The remains can be seen on the northeastern side, together with a bastion on a pentagonal plan added in modern times reusing the ancient blocks. The rebuilding is dated to the time of the second Roman-Carthaginian treaty, when Ardea still appears among the allies of Rome: the walls are the translation into stone of a political position.

The Civitavecchia Plateau and the Temple of Casarinaccio

On the plateau that the Ardeatini call Civitavecchia, in località Casarinaccio, the remains are preserved of a temple attributable to the 6th century BC, the period of the city's greatest splendor. The excavations of the 1930s brought to light the podium: three courses of tuff blocks resting directly on the rock, decorated on the outside with moldings. The dedication is not documented. By convention the temple is identified with that of Venus, but it remains a working hypothesis, not a fact. Ancient sources record in Ardea cults for Juno Regina, Castor and Pollux, Venus, Hercules, the deity Natio and the founder Pilumnus: seven possible recipients and four temples excavated, two on the Acropolis and two on the Civitavecchia, all without a foundation inscription.

The Early Christian Hypogeum

Near Casarinaccio opens an early Christian hypogeum of the 5th century, found in the 1960s, with sacred frescoes of considerable importance and in all likelihood set on an earlier pagan place of worship. It is a fragile space and not freely visitable: the openings, when there are any, go through local associations and the Superintendency.

Monte della Noce, the 5th-Century Temple and the Forum

A second archaic temple, dated to the 5th century BC, has been identified in località Monte della Noce, again on the Civitavecchia plateau. It remained in use until the 1st century BC, then was abandoned and its materials ended up in the Roman villas of the area, following a quarrying practice that in Ardea repeats for centuries. In the vicinity there must have been the city forum, with a basilica built around 100 BC of which fragments of signino floor remain, the pounded cocciopesto that the Romans used in service spaces and in public halls of middle importance.

Tunnels, Cisterns and Tanneries

Under Ardea runs a network of tunnels dug in the tuff in the 5th century BC: a remarkable hydraulic system, used to drain water and for sewage disposal. Other spaces carved in the rock served as warehouses or cisterns, in some cases divided into aisles by tuff pillars left standing during the excavation. On the slope of the Civitavecchia, facilities for tanning hides have been recognized, datable to the 1st century BC. Put these three elements together and you have the economic portrait of a city that drained, stored and processed: not a village, a productive center.

Castrum Inui, the Port at the Mouth of the Incastro

At the mouth of the Incastro river, along the coast road, the excavations started in 1998 under the direction of the archaeologist Francesco Di Mario, area head of the Archaeological Superintendency of Lazio, brought to light a fortified port center active from the 4th-3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, and an earlier sacred area frequented from the 6th century BC to the 2nd AD. The site has been identified with the Castrum Inui of the sources, from the name of the pastoral god Inuus, and with the international sanctuary known as the Aphrodisium, dedicated to Aphrodite of the sea.

What emerges from the excavations: large cisterns for the water reserve, a thermal installation, elaborate water drainage mechanisms, multi-story buildings with wall decorations and mosaics both with large tesserae and with fine ones. The oldest phases have imposing structures in large-format tuff blocks, later absorbed into the successive constructions that overlap and intersect. With the centuries the renovations become less refined and are made above all with salvaged material: the curve of decline can be read in the quality of the masonry, even before the written sources. The most recent campaigns have brought to light a very extensive sacred area, one of the access gates to the castrum and materials connected to the cult of the Dioscuri, of Venus, of Minerva and of Aesculapius.

The site has been the object of works for regular opening to the public and is shown during guided visits organized with the archaeologists: before showing up at the gate, check the calendar of openings with the Comune or the associations that handle them. A professional's opinion: when the Castrum Inui has a stable entrance, this will become the main reason to come to Ardea, more than the museum and more than the sea. A sanctuary port excavated on the shoreline, with the dune behind it, is not a common thing in Italy.

The Giacomo Manzù Museum in Ardea (RM)

In 1964 Giacomo Manzù, born in Bergamo in 1908, left Milan and came to live here, in the countryside, half an hour from the Vatican where he had just finished working on the Door of Death of Saint Peter's. The choice was not casual: he needed space for the foundry and for the large bronzes, and this stretch of the Agro Romano was then empty and cheap. The Giacomo Manzù Museum was born from there. The collection took shape in 1969 as the Amici di Manzù collection, on the initiative of the sculptor's wife, Inge Schabel. In 1979 Manzù donated it to the Italian State and in 1981 the museum opened to the public in a building constructed for the purpose along via Laurentina.

What You See at the Museum in Ardea (RM)

About 500 works in all, of which about a hundred sculptures and a large collection of graphic work, chosen by the artist himself and arranged by themes. The group that strikes most is that of the Cardinals: seated figures, cloaked, reduced to conical forms in which the body disappears under the vestment. Manzù worked on it all his life, from the 1930s on, and made it a subject at once religious and ironic, never devotional. Then there are the sketches for the Door of Death of the Vatican basilica, made between 1959 and 1964: seeing them here, in the state of study, explains that portal better than any hurried visit to Saint Peter's. Among the other works on display are the Lovers and the Little Girl on a Chair, as well as a David.

A practical tip: start with the graphic work and finish with the bronzes, not the other way around. The drawings and etchings show the thought before the matter, and when you then arrive in front of the bronze the reading is much richer. Whoever has seen the Depositions and Crucifixions of the 1940s also understands why Manzù, a Catholic and at the same time a man of the left, was one of the few Italian sculptors of the 20th century accepted as much by the Church as by the Party. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1966 and the Feltrinelli Prize in 1984.

Hours, Tickets and Rules of the Museum

Open Tuesday to Sunday, from 9:00 to 19:30, with last entry at 19:00. Closed on Monday, December 25 and January 1. Full ticket €6, reduced €2 for citizens of the European Union between 18 and 25, free admission under 18. On the first Sunday of the month entry is free for everyone, as in all state museums. Tickets are bought on site, at the digital kiosk, or through the channels indicated by the museum's official website. The management reports to the network of the state museums of Lazio, and the museum regularly hosts temporary exhibitions of contemporary art.

A clear opinion: two hours is the right time, and on the first Sunday of the month it is not as crowded here as in the museums of central Rome. If you have a group, early Tuesday morning is absolutely the best slot.

The Landriana Gardens at Tor San Lorenzo

At via Campo di Carne 51, in the hamlet of Tor San Lorenzo, stretch more than 10 hectares of gardens born from a failure. Lavinia Taverna bought the estate in 1956 and began planting without an overall design. After 15 years of botanical collecting she found herself with an extraordinary and chaotic collection. In 1967 she called Russell Page, the English landscape designer who had worked for half of Europe, and he imposed the structure that still holds everything: visual axes, green rooms, obligatory passages.

The result is about 30 themed gardens that you cross one after another like rooms of a house: the valley of old roses, the white avenue, the garden of oranges, the garden of heathers, the pond with water lilies, the hill of camellias, the hydrangeas. The game is all there: passing in three steps from a cold palette to a warm one, from a formal Italian layout to an apparently casual English lawn. Whoever knows the Orange Garden on the Aventine finds here a private and botanically much more ambitious version of the same idea.

The visit is by reservation and on opening days, concentrated in spring and autumn, with guided slots in the morning. The ticket for groups is €12, free under 12. Rates change during events. There are parking, food service and partial accessibility for those who use a wheelchair. The historic appointments are the two plant show-and-sales of rare plants, one in spring and one in autumn: they are the most beautiful days and also the most crowded. If you hate crowds, book a guided visit on a weekday in May and you will have the gardens almost to yourself.

Tor San Lorenzo, the Tower and the Coast of Ardea (RM)

The hamlet of Tor San Lorenzo takes its name from the coastal tower that stands not far from the beach. It is part of the system of watchtowers that from the 16th century watched over the Lazio coast against Barbary raids, the same network to which Torre Astura and the towers of the Anzio coast belong. Local tradition attributes the design of the tower to Michelangelo. It is a recurring rumor, repeated by many guides and by almost all the websites, and it should be taken for what it is, that is, a traditional attribution without certain documentation. It must be told as legend, never as fact.

The beach of Ardea stretches for several kilometers of dark sand, of volcanic origin, between Marina di Ardea, Tor San Lorenzo and Lido dei Pini. It is a shallow coast, with seabeds that slope slowly: convenient with children, not very interesting for those looking for a dive. Bathing establishments alternate with stretches of free beach, and the pine wood behind the dunes survives only in pieces. The dunes that once ran uninterrupted from Ostia to Circeo have here been largely leveled in the 20th century to make room for housing developments. Whoever wants to see what this coast looked like before the concrete must move to the Capocotta beach, where the dune system is protected.

Geology and Landscape: Why Ardea (RM) Is the Way It Is

The ground on which the town stands emerged from the sea in geologically recent times, and for a long time this stretch was a mosaic of lagoons and marshes. Then came the eruptions of the Alban Volcano, the apparatus that built the Castelli Romani, and the deposits of tuffs and pozzolanas covered everything with thick layers. As it cooled, the volcanic material cracked: from there are born the narrow and deep gorges that cut the territory to the north and that soften as you proceed south. The village of Ardea occupies exactly one of the blocks left isolated by those cracks, and that is why the cliff seems artificial though it is not.

The coastline has changed quite a few times. Variations in sea level and phenomena tied to the volcanic activity of the Tyrrhenian have moved the shoreline back and forth by hundreds of meters. Offshore, between 300 and 600 meters from the shore and on seabeds of 12 or 15 meters, fishermen have spoken for decades of columns and submerged structures. The report has circulated since the 1960s and is repeated continually, but a scientific publication that confirms it is missing: it should be taken as local seafaring tradition, not as archaeological data. If someone tells it to you as certainty, be wary.

The pozzolanas, meanwhile, have been the fortune and misfortune of the territory: fortune because they are the material that built Rome, misfortune because the quarries have devoured pieces of landscape. A similar phenomenon, with different outcomes, is seen at the Pomezia solfatara, a little to the north.

The History of Ardea (RM), from Myth to Today's City

The Mythical Origins on the Coast of Aeneas

Myth has produced more versions of the founding, all tied to the landing of Aeneas in Lazio and therefore to the literary prehistory of Rome. Dionysius of Halicarnassus traces the birth of the city to Ardeas, son of Odysseus and Circe. Another tradition, more successful, links it to Danae, daughter of the king of Argos Acrisius: arrived on the Lazio coasts after the birth of Perseus, she would have married the Rutulian Pilumnus and given rise to the line of Turnus. The couple chose the place by going up the Incastro river with a small boat, up to a sheer tuff cliff. Virgil, in the seventh book of the Aeneid, reports precisely the version according to which the city was founded by Danae.

Turnus, king of the Rutuli and lord of Ardea, is the antagonist of the Aeneid: betrothed to Lavinia, he sees the woman and the kingdom snatched away by the Trojan refugee. He dies in the 12th book, wounded on the ground and unarmed, when Aeneas finishes him on seeing the sword belt of Pallas on his shoulder. It is the last scene of the poem, and the city you visit here is the capital of the loser. It is worth keeping in mind: no other municipality in Lazio has a Homeric antagonist as founding father. Whoever wants the other side of the coin finds it at Lavinium, the city that Aeneas founded for Lavinia, a few kilometers from here.

Ovid, the Heron and the Name of the City

The origin of the name Ardea is told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses: after the fire and the destruction of the city by Aeneas, from the rubble a bird never seen before rose in flight, which, shaking the ashes off itself, took the name of the burned city. Ovid's text says that the cry, the ash-colored wings and the leanness of the animal recalled the destroyed city, and that of Ardea the name remains in the feathers of that bird. It is a metamorphosis of consolation: the city dies, the name survives in a living species.

The bird is the red heron, in scientific Latin Ardea purpurea, described by Linnaeus in 1766, belonging to the order Pelecaniformes and the family Ardeidae. It is one of the few herons of the Palearctic to be a long-range migrant. In 19th-century Italian it was also called ranocchiaia, a name now forgotten that alluded to what was believed to be its main food. Of red, in its plumage, it has in truth little: the common name is a direct translation of the scientific binomial, and purpurea comes from the Latin purpureus and earlier from the Greek porphyreos, purple-colored.

The parallel with the Arabian Phoenix is explicit and ancient. The motto of the Phoenix, post fata resurgo, I rise again after death, applies perfectly to the story of Ardea, and the Latin motto associated with the gray heron, altior adversis, above every adversity, says the same thing. In the Greek tradition the gray heron was considered a messenger of Athena, the Minerva of the Romans, and Pliny the Elder attributed to it the function of announcing the end of danger. The root ard, according to the linguistics that deals with Mediterranean substrata, points to something luminous and shining: if this etymology holds, the name of the city is worth double, the flame and the bird.

Prehistory and Protohistory of the Rutuli

The territory was frequented already in the Paleolithic. Tombs of the Copper Age have been found with burials in crouched position, referable to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, together with fossil finds and primitive tools that went into the collections of the civic museum of Albano Laziale. In the Iron Age the settlement was made up of three hut villages on the three plateaus: Civitavecchia, Acropolis and Casalazzara. Archaeologists have identified their postholes, and on the Civitavecchia plateau, in località Monte della Noce, they have excavated a necropolis with children's pit tombs and a princely female tomb of the 8th century BC, with a very rich burial assemblage.

Pliny lists the Rutuli among the oldest peoples of Latium vetus, together with the centers of Antium, Satricum and Lavinium. If you want to gauge how dense this network of cities was, the Satricum museum and the civic museum of Anzio keep the materials of the neighbors. The Rutuli cremated their dead and formed a confederation of tribes settled on the tuff heights around present-day Ardea. Power was in the hands of the priests and of the warrior caste, each village remained autonomous and they allied only in case of war.

Born as an agricultural cluster, Ardea grew above all thanks to trade, favored by its position astride the Latins, Volsci and Etruscans and by the canal port at the mouth of the Incastro. Tradition places around 1200 BC the marriage between King Pilumnus and Danae, read by local historians as the mythical memory of the fusion between the Rutuli and a Greek colony. Beyond legend, archaeology confirms the contacts: between the 8th and the 6th century BC Ardea was one of the most important centers of southern Lazio, with rich craftsmanship, a celebrated production of weapons and ornamental objects and objects imported from distant regions, in a network of exchanges that reached the Greek and Phocaean colonies. The people of shepherds and warriors also became a people of seafarers, and acquired technology from Phoenicians, Etruscans and Greeks.

Rutuli and Romans, from the Gallic Siege to Decline

Relations with Rome were alternating. A first attack under Tarquin the Proud, of which the annalistic tradition speaks, seems not to have succeeded. Shortly afterward, in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage of 509 BC, Ardea appears among the allies of the Romans. In the course of the 5th century city life was dominated by the conflict with the Volsci. In the 4th century the Gauls, after the sack of Rome, besieged Ardea without managing to take it: indeed it was the Ardeati, led by Furius Camillus who lived here in exile, who repelled the siege and then marched on Rome to free it from the Gallic occupation. It is an episode that Roman historiography certainly embellished, but which remains the city's highest moment in the sources.

In the second Roman-Carthaginian treaty of 348 BC Ardea is again among the allies. To this period dates the rebuilding of the walls in opera quadrata around the plateaus of the Acropolis and the Civitavecchia. During the Second Punic War, however, Ardea was one of the 12 Latin colonies that refused Rome the military contribution, and after the victory over the Carthaginians the Romans punished the rebels by depriving them of autonomy. Between the 3rd and the 2nd century BC the city declined, together with almost all the Lazio centers drained by the Punic and Samnite wars.

Around 100 BC the silting up of the port and the exhaustion of metallurgical activity completed the picture. What remained was the religious activity of the sanctuaries, which still attracted pilgrims and money. In the imperial age the settlement was almost entirely abandoned, even if remains of urban life survived until the 5th century AD, while along the road toward the sea large villas were being built. Hadrian, faced with the scarcity of inhabitants, saw to repopulating the territory with a colony of Laurentines and Lavinates, settled in the area that today corresponds to Tor San Lorenzo. The new inhabitants took the name of Ardeatini, and from them descends the modern demonym.

The Middle Ages: Popes, Lazarettos and Baronial Families

Surviving as a small fortified place, Ardea began to grow again from the 9th century, when the depopulation of the domus cultae, the agricultural centers founded by the popes to reclaim and cultivate the Agro, and the Saracen threat pushed the populations to concentrate in defensible sites. In the 9th century itself Ardea gave birth to a pope: Leo V, elected in July 903, who did not belong to the Roman clergy and was deposed and imprisoned after a few weeks by Cardinal Christopher of San Damaso, dying the same year. His pontificate is one of the shortest in the history of the Church, and it is a fact that no sign in the town recalls with the prominence it deserves.

In 1074 the civitas Ardeae appears in the bull of Gregory VII: half of the castle and territory goes to the abbey of San Paolo fuori le mura, while the other half already belonged to the monastery of Sant'Alessio on the Aventine. The bull speaks of a castrum, but within a short time the inhabitants obtained recognition as a civitas, a community of citizens. In 1118 the town hosted Pope Gelasius II fleeing from Rome to escape Emperor Henry V, who demanded confirmation of the privileges obtained in 1111 from his predecessor Paschal II and coronation in Saint Peter's. In the same period, at the foot of the fortress, a lazaretto operated for lepers and plague victims expelled from the City: the memory of that place has remained in the name of the area of Casalazzara.

In 1130 the antipope Anacletus II confirmed the city to the Benedictines of San Paolo fuori le mura, who still at the end of the 14th century were busy buying back the fief by ceding the estates of Vallerano and Trefusa. During the Western Schism Ardea passed to Raimondo Orsini. In 1421, by an agreement between Orsini, the abbey of San Paolo and Giordano Colonna, it ended up with the Colonna in exchange for other territories given to the abbey. Control had long been contested by the Roman baronial families, Savelli and Annibaldi first among them, who after 1423 were forced to give up every right to the Colonna with the support of Pope Martin V, together with the castra diruta of Verposa, Fusignano and San Lorenzo. In 1461 the Colonna of the Riofreddo branch, successors to that of Genazzano, by now kept only the feudal jurisdiction, having had to cede almost all the estates to the creditors Cesarini, Caffarelli and Rustici. Andrea Caffarelli, married to Ludovica Colonna, acquired from her uncle the right to buy half of the castle for 10,000 scudi, with a perpetual obligation to sell it back to the Colonna.

Modern and Contemporary Age: from Fief to Autonomous Municipality

The fief then passed to other families tied to the papacy: from the Borgia it returned to the Colonna, until in 1564 Marcantonio Colonna sold the jurisdiction to Giuliano Cesarini, whose family had already bought in 1454, with Gabriele, half of the castle together with the holding of Santa Procula and the whole coastal strip up to the border with Pratica di Mare. The Caffarelli remained owners of some estates, later ceded to the Del Drago: in the mid-16th century they were Casalazzara, Campo del Fico, Tufella, Valle Lata and Carroceto, lands later recorded in the land register of the Agro Romano. In these centuries Ardea lived as an agricultural village, following the fate of the families that governed it. The Colonna castle built in 1461 still stands in località Campo del Fico, while in località Castellaccio, at Fossignano, the ruins of the Frangipane castle remain, referred to the 10th century, a few kilometers from the fortress.

The parabola hits bottom in the 19th century. In 1816, because of the small number of inhabitants, Ardea became a hamlet of Genzano di Roma, and on the eve of the Pontine reclamation the village was practically uninhabited. In 1817, by the motu proprio of Pius VII, the territory passed together with that of Pomezia to the municipality of Rome. In 1837 the inhabitants were 176. From 1932 part of the rural territory was affected by the works of hydraulic reclamation, regulation of the waters and division into farms carried out by the Opera Nazionale Combattenti and by the reclamation consortia, with the controlled repopulation of the center and the countryside. The village was in effect refounded by restructuring its remains, and became part of the municipality of Pomezia from its very constitution. Only in 1970 did Ardea become an autonomous municipality, separating from Pomezia over a territory that corresponds only in part to the ancient one.

The rest is recent history and not very glorious from the urban planning point of view: decades of housing developments on the coast, houses scattered in the countryside, services chasing the growth of the population. Whoever arrives with a tourist's eye must know it in advance, otherwise they are disappointed. Whoever arrives knowing where to look, instead, finds material for a whole day.

The Coat of Arms of Ardea (RM) and the Silver Heron

The municipal coat of arms was granted by decree of the President of the Republic of October 30, 2008. The official blazon describes a shield party per fess. In the upper part, red, a silver heron flying bendwise with its wings in bend sinister. In the lower part, sky blue, an ancient gold ship trimmed with silver sailing on a blue sea waved with silver. The two elements say in heraldry what the Latin poets said in verse: the ship that brought Aeneas to the Lazio coast and the heron that was born from the ashes of the city. In 2008, that is, the Comune chose to put on its coat of arms its own founding myth and its own defeat. I find it one of the most elegant heraldic choices in the province of Rome.

A Curiosity About Ardea (RM)

The name of the municipality is also the scientific name of a genus of birds. Ardea, in taxonomy, is the genus that gathers the gray heron, the red heron, the great egret and about 20 other species spread over all continents except Antarctica. It means that when an Australian ornithologist writes Ardea pacifica in a scientific article, he is writing the name of a town on the Roman coast without knowing it. The chain is this: Ovid tells that from the ashes of the city burned by Aeneas a bird rose in flight and took its name. The Latin naturalists use ardea as the common term for heron. Linnaeus, in the 18th century, formalizes the genus Ardea in the Systema Naturae and describes Ardea purpurea in 1766. The passage from myth to scientific nomenclature is documented and verifiable, and that is not often the case.

There is a second layer, less known. The root ard in the oldest Mediterranean tongues points to the idea of bright, shining, and in Latin ardere means to burn. The name of the city, the fire of Ovid's story and the light color of the bird shaking the ash off itself end up in a single semantic knot, and it is not clear which comes first: whether the myth generated the etymology or the etymology suggested the myth. Scholars lean toward the second hypothesis, that is, a legend built after the fact to explain a place name already existing and no longer understandable. The phenomenon has a technical name, folk etymology, and it is the same mechanism that produced half of the founding stories of Italian cities. That said, in front of a red heron rising from a reed bed of the Incastro ditch, the technical explanation matters little: Ovid's story works, and it still works well after 2,000 years.

Something Nobody Tells You About Ardea (RM)

A pope was born in Ardea, and nobody says so. Leo V, elected in July 903, came from here and did not belong to the Roman clergy, a very rare thing for the time: the chair of Peter was the hunting ground of the aristocratic families of the City, and a country priest who reaches the papal throne is a historical anomaly. His pontificate lasted a few weeks. Cardinal Christopher of San Damaso had him imprisoned and took his place. Leo V died the same year, in circumstances never clarified, and historiography places the episode at the beginning of the period that historians of the Church call the saeculum obscurum, the dark century of the Roman papacy, dominated by city factions.

The second thing nobody tells concerns the sacred geography of the town. The church of Santa Marina is inside the municipal cemetery, set against the rock, and most visitors never get there because nobody thinks of entering a cemetery to see a Romanesque monument. Behind the altar, a Roman nymphaeum of the 2nd century carved in the tuff was reused as a funerary space and then absorbed into the church. In a few square meters you see three state religions superimposed: cult of the waters of the imperial age, medieval Christianity, civic cult of the dead of unified Italy. In Lazio I know few points where the religious stratigraphy is so evident and so little visited. A curious detail: the titular saint, according to the legend, lived disguised as a monk and was driven out of the convent when her sex was discovered. The church was dedicated to her precisely at the point where tradition places the cave of her hermitage.

My Advice for Visiting Ardea (RM)

Don't come to Ardea for the sea. The coast is convenient and family-friendly, but if you want a memorable beach day there are better places half an hour away by car, toward Nettuno or toward Circeo. Come instead for the sequence museum, village, archaeology, and organize it in this order: at 9:00 at the Giacomo Manzù Museum as soon as it opens, with two full hours inside. Around 11:30 the climb to the village, church of San Pietro Apostolo, fortress, belvedere. Lunch in town. Afternoon at the church of Santa Marina and the fontanile, then descent toward the mouth of the Incastro to see where the ancient port stood. If it is spring, replace the afternoon with the Landriana booked in advance.

The right day is Tuesday or Wednesday. On Monday the museum is closed and little remains. On summer weekends the road to the coast is clogged. Bring closed shoes, because the archaeological part is in the middle of grass and brambles, and in spring the tall grass hides everything. Always verify in advance, by phoning the parish, the possibility of entering the churches: opening hours are not continuous and at Santa Marina you depend on the cemetery keeper. If in doubt, call the Comune the day before.

Last piece of advice, the most important: get a licensed guide if you come as a group. Ardea is a place that without a story you do not see, because almost everything that counts is underground or reduced to a rise in the field. For a professional accompaniment on this stretch of coast it is best to turn to TourLeaderPro, which works with groups and tour operators throughout Lazio.

Another Well-Known Fact, Yet Rarely Cited

That Ardea is the city of Turnus is known to everyone who read the Aeneid at school. Almost nobody, however, takes the next step: this is the capital of the defeated enemy, and cities that celebrate their own antagonist are very few. Rome built its identity on the victory of Aeneas. Ardea, which was the victim of that victory, put on the municipal coat of arms the heron risen from its own ashes and the ship of the Trojans. In 2008, when the decree of the President of the Republic granted coat of arms and banner, the choice was deliberate and conscious. It is an operation of sophisticated civic memory, much more than you expect from a municipality on the coast with serious urban planning problems.

Then there is the chapter of Furius Camillus, another very well-known fact and always cited in passing. The general who freed Rome from the Gauls in 390 BC was in exile precisely in Ardea, and from here he organized the comeback. It was the Ardeati, according to the annalistic tradition, who repelled the Gallic siege and provided the army with which Camillus marched on Rome. That the episode is in good part a rhetorical construction of later Roman historiography is likely, as for almost the whole account of the republican origins. But the fact that the Romans chose precisely Ardea as the place of exile and rebirth of their savior says how much the city still counted in the 4th century BC. Nobody places a myth of comeback in a village of no importance.

The Right Photo to Take in Ardea (RM)

The photograph to take home is the cliff seen from below, from the road that goes up the Incastro ditch at the end of the afternoon. The tuff, which in the morning looks gray and flat, with the raking light of six turns orange and shows all the horizontal stratifications of the volcanic bank. Above, the profile of the fortress and the bell tower of San Pietro Apostolo closes the composition. You need a medium telephoto lens, around 70 or 100 millimeters, to compress the planes and make the cliff look taller than it is. It is an honest trick, because it conveys the impression that travelers arriving from the sea had.

The second framing I recommend is inside the church of Santa Marina, on the lintel of the portal, with the bas-relief of the saint between the father and the abbot. It should be photographed at an angle, with the light coming in from the door, to bring out the relief. No flash: it flattens the stone and ruins everything. At the Manzù museum filming follows the rules of the management, so ask the staff before shooting. If they authorize you, the best subject is an isolated Cardinal on a light background, shot at mid-height so that the cone of the vestment fills the frame. The photo that everybody takes and that I recommend skipping is the sunset on the Tor San Lorenzo seafront: it is beautiful, of course, but it is identical to that of any other stretch of the Lazio coast and tells nothing of this place.

Some Important Events That Happened Here in History

The first is the Gallic siege of the 4th century BC, repelled by the walls of Ardea while Rome was occupied. The second is the refusal made to Rome during the Second Punic War: Ardea was one of the 12 Latin colonies that denied men and means, and after the victory over Carthage it paid for that choice with the loss of autonomy. They are the two moments in which this city left a mark on Roman history, once positively and once negatively.

The third event is of 903 AD: the election to the papal throne of Leo V, a native of Ardea, and his deposition within a few weeks by Cardinal Christopher. The fourth is of 1118, when Pope Gelasius II took refuge here fleeing from Rome to escape Emperor Henry V, who demanded confirmation of the privileges obtained in 1111 by Paschal II. The fifth is of 1074, with the bull of Gregory VII that assigns half of the civitas Ardeae to the abbey of San Paolo fuori le mura: from that document begins the long season of monastic and baronial possessions, with Savelli, Annibaldi, Orsini, Colonna, Cesarini and Caffarelli contending for the castle for four centuries.

The sixth is the visit of Benito Mussolini of October 29, 1939, after which the restorations began that gave the church of San Pietro Apostolo its present form: an uncomfortable episode and for that reason often left unspoken, which however explains why the building today presents itself in 20th-century dress. The seventh, the most important for daily life, is the reclamation started in 1932, with the regulation of the waters, the division into farms and the repopulation of the village, managed by the Opera Nazionale Combattenti. The eighth is 1970, the year in which Ardea separates from Pomezia and becomes an autonomous municipality. In between, in 1998, the start of the excavations of the Castrum Inui, the last great archaeological discovery of this stretch of coast.

Who Has Passed Through Ardea (RM)

The first name is that of a general: Marcus Furius Camillus, exiled here and from here returned to Rome to free it from the Gauls, according to the account of the annalistic tradition. The second is that of a fleeing pope, Gelasius II, hosted in 1118 while Emperor Henry V pressed on him. The third is that of a pope born on the spot, Leo V, who from the Ardea countryside reached the chair of Peter in 903 only to lose it almost at once.

Then there are the lords: Marcantonio Colonna, who in 1564 sold the feudal jurisdiction to Giuliano Cesarini, and before him Giordano Colonna, who obtained the castle in 1421 with the support of Pope Martin V, that is, Oddone Colonna. Marcantonio is the same name as the family that would give the commander of the papal fleet at Lepanto, and the papers of these feudal passages can still be read in the Roman archives.

In the 20th century the artists arrive. Giacomo Manzù took house and studio in Ardea in 1964 and died here in 1991: he therefore spent here the last 27 years of his life, the years of the Door of Peace and War for the church of San Lorenzo in Rotterdam and of the last series of Cardinals. His wife Inge Schabel started in 1969 the Amici di Manzù collection from which the museum was born. Lavinia Taverna, owner of the Landriana estate, called Russell Page here in 1967, one of the most important European landscape designers of the 20th century, who designed the gardens of half the continental aristocracy and who at Tor San Lorenzo left one of his most successful Italian works. I add Benito Mussolini, present in Ardea on October 29, 1939, because history is also told when it is uncomfortable. And I add the archaeologist Francesco Di Mario, who since 1998 has directed the excavations of the Castrum Inui and has given back to the city its ancient port.

Ardea (RM) with Kids

The museum works well with kids from 10 years up, less with the youngest: the rooms are wide and silent, the bronzes are large and close, and the temptation to touch them is strong. The game I recommend is the cardinal hunt: counting how many there are, ranking them from the sternest to the most amused, choosing a favorite and explaining why. It always works. On the beach, the shallow seabeds and fine sand of Tor San Lorenzo are suitable even for the very little ones. The village, with the climb to the fortress and the belvedere, can be done with a stroller only in part, because the paving is uneven.

For a day that holds sea and culture together, an idea that has always worked with families: morning at the museum, picnic lunch in the green, afternoon on the beach. If the kids are fond of ancient history, the natural complement is the civic museum of Anzio or the landing museum, which tells the Second World War on this same coast.

Accessibility

The Giacomo Manzù Museum is the most accessible facility in the area: modern building, level routes, adequate services. At the Landriana accessibility is partial, as the operator indicates, because the paths are packed earth and there are differences in level. The old village presents the typical difficulties of a medieval center on a cliff: climbs, steps, uneven paving. The church of Santa Marina is reached through the municipal cemetery, so by a practicable route but not always easy. The hypogeal spaces, like the oratory of Sant'Angelo, are not accessible to those with mobility problems: you go down a narrow stair. On the coast several bathing establishments have walkways and dedicated services, but the situation changes from season to season and it is better to phone first.

When to Go to Ardea (RM) and When to Avoid It

The best period is spring, from mid-April to early June: the days are long, the countryside is green, the Landriana gardens open for events and the heat does not weigh. The second good period is autumn, between late September and October, with the low light that enhances the cliff and the second plant show-and-sale of the gardens. Winter is not to be excluded: the museum is open, the village is deserted, and on a clear day the view from the belvedere reaches far.

To avoid, without hesitation, the weekends of July and August. Traffic toward the southern coast becomes impossible, the parking disappears, the bathing establishments are full and the town loses any possibility of being visited calmly. If you must come in midsummer, arrive early and concentrate everything in the morning. One last note on the climate: here the sea wind tempers the heat, but on the archaeological plateaus, without shade, at noon in July you can't stand it.

What to Eat Around Here

The cooking of Ardea is that of the Roman coast, so blue fish, tellinacce and clams gathered at the waterline, spaghetti with telline, marinated anchovies. The tellina, in particular, is the identity product of this stretch of coast between Ostia and Anzio, and the good season is the warm one. Inland the cooking of the Agro takes over: artichokes in spring, abbacchio, coratella, and the sheep cheeses of the farms of the Pontine countryside. The production of vegetables of the reclaimed strip is substantial and the weekly markets are worth a stop.

On the places I name no names, for a simple reason: they open and close at a speed that makes any list old within a year. Ask in town, look at which trattoria has its tables occupied by residents at noon on a weekday, and you will have the best answer. On the seafront the choice is wide but the quality is uneven, and prices in August rise quite a bit.

What's Around Ardea (RM)

Within 20 minutes by car you get to Lavinium, with the sanctuary of the 13 altars and the museum that tells the saga of Aeneas from the point of view of the winners. To Pratica di Mare. To the Pomezia solfatara, a geological phenomenon tied to the same volcanism that built these tuffs. Toward the south you go down to Anzio and Nettuno, with the medieval village, the port and the sites of the Allied landing of 1944. A little farther on is Torre Astura, the tower on the sea where the flight of Conradin of Swabia ended. Toward the interior, in half an hour, you enter the Castelli Romani park, with Genzano, Ariccia and Albano Laziale, that is, the volcano that produced the pozzolanas on which Ardea is built.

If instead you want to stay on the thread of archaic archaeology, the right route touches the Satricum museum and continues toward the sites of Latium vetus. For those who organize these combinations for groups or companies, the tailor-made proposals for Lazio are gathered in the pages of TourLeaderPro dedicated to Rome and Lazio. Whoever travels in English finds the same area told in the guides of ItalyPlanner on Lazio and in the section dedicated to day trips, while for the coast there is the page on the best Italian beaches.

Quick Questions About Ardea (RM)

How far is Ardea (RM) from Rome?

About 35 kilometers from the Grande Raccordo Anulare along via Laurentina, covered in 30 or 40 minutes outside rush hours. From the historic center of Rome allow an hour.

How do you get to Ardea (RM) without a car?

With the Cotral runs that leave from the Laurentina terminus of Metro Line B and serve the southern coast. Alternatively, train on the Rome-Nettuno line to Campoleone or Campo di Carne and continuation by road. Schedules and routes must be checked on the transport company's website.

How much does the Giacomo Manzù Museum cost?

€6 for the full ticket, €2 reduced for citizens of the European Union between 18 and 25, free under 18.

When is the museum of Ardea (RM) free?

On the first Sunday of every month entry is free for everyone, as in all Italian state museums.

What day does the museum close?

Monday, besides December 25 and January 1. On other days it opens from 9:00 to 19:30, with last entry at 19:00.

How much time do you need to visit Ardea (RM)?

Five or six hours for a complete visit: two at the museum, one at the village and the churches, two between archaeology and sea. If you add the Landriana, you need the whole day.

Can you take photos at the museum?

Filming follows the provisions of the management: ask the staff at the entrance. In the churches, avoid flash on the frescoes.

Is Ardea (RM) suitable for those who use a wheelchair?

The museum yes, the old village only in part because of the climbs and the paving, the hypogeal spaces no. At the Landriana accessibility is partial.

Do you need to book for the Landriana Gardens?

Yes. The visits are guided and by reservation, on the opening days of spring and autumn and at events. The contact is given on the gardens' official website.

How much does it cost to enter the Landriana?

€12 per person for group visits, free under 12. During events the rates may vary.

Can you visit the Castrum Inui?

The archaeological site at the mouth of the Incastro has no continuous opening hours: it is visited during guided days organized with the archaeologists. Find out from the Comune before showing up.

Are the beaches of Ardea (RM) free or paid?

Both exist: free stretches alternate with bathing establishments between Marina di Ardea, Tor San Lorenzo and Lido dei Pini. The sand is dark and of volcanic origin, the seabeds shallow.

Where do you park in Ardea (RM)?

In the village you find a spot along the climb and in the church square. On the coast, in summer, free spots run out early and several stretches are paid.

What is the difference between Ardea (RM) and Lavinium?

Ardea was the capital of the Rutuli, the people of Turnus, that is, of the adversaries of Aeneas. Lavinium is the city that, according to myth, Aeneas founded and dedicated to Lavinia. They are the two opposite poles of the same saga, a few kilometers apart.

Is Ardea (RM) the same Civitavecchia as the port?

No. Civitavecchia, in Ardea, is the name of one of the three plateaus of the ancient settlement. The port of Civitavecchia is north of Rome and is another city.

Why is the city called Ardea?

The name coincides with the Latin term for heron. Ovid tells that from the ashes of the city burned by Aeneas a bird rose in flight and took its name. Linguistics prefers to explain the place name with a Mediterranean root that indicates something luminous.

Is Ardea (RM) suitable for children?

Yes, above all for the combination of shallow-water beach and museum. The museum rooms work better with kids from 10 years up.

What is the best period to visit Ardea (RM)?

Spring, between mid-April and early June, and autumn between late September and October. To avoid the weekends of July and August because of traffic.

Are there ancient churches that can be visited?

The parish church of San Pietro Apostolo, Romanesque in layout, and the church of Santa Marina inside the municipal cemetery. The hours are not continuous: it is best to phone the parish.

What do you eat in Ardea (RM)?

Blue fish and telline on the coast, cooking of the Agro Romano inland: artichokes, abbacchio, sheep cheeses. The weekly markets are the right place for local products.

Is it worth coming to Ardea (RM) for a single day?

Yes, if you know where to look. Museum, village and archaeology fill a full day. If you are looking only for the sea, there are more beautiful coasts at the same distance from Rome.

Let's close with our opinion: Ardea does not give itself at first glance and has to be approached with a minimum of preparation, but it gives back more than it promises. The day the Castrum Inui has a stable entrance and the village a decent marked route, this will become one of the most interesting archaeological places in the province of Rome. Meanwhile, it is worth coming before the others.

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

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