Lanuvio (RM)

Lanuvio is 33 kilometers southeast of Rome, on the southern slope of the Alban Hills, inside the boundaries of the Castelli Romani Regional Park. The town hall is at Via Roma 20, 00075 Lanuvio, switchboard 06 937891. The historic center can be visited on foot in one afternoon: the Museo Civico e Diffuso Lanuvino has its main site at Piazza della Maddalena 16, the Torre Medievale is at Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini 1, the Sala della Stipe dei Pantanacci at Via Roma 1a, and the Cantinone is in the dungeons of Palazzo Colonna in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore. The combined ticket for the three museum sites costs €5, the Torre Medievale alone €2, and the reduced rate for teachers with ID €2.50. Admission is free for residents, anyone under 18, people with disabilities with a companion, journalists, and students of archaeology and humanities subjects. Museum hours are Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00, with a summer schedule that moves the afternoon to 16:00-19:00. The archaeological area of the sanctuary of Juno Sospita, on Via Roma, can be visited for free and has accessible routes. For information and to book guided visits, contact the Museum, Culture and Library Office: 06 93789237, cultura@comune.lanuvio.rm.it.

From Rome you get there by train on the FL4 Rome-Velletri line, which stops at Lanuvio station, or by car along Via Appia as far as Albano and then on the Strada Regionale Nettunense. The intercity bus lines are Cotral's. The rest of the guide goes into detail on each site, the wine, the festivals and the history of this piece of ancient Lazio.

Where Lanuvio (RM) is and why the name changes twice

The town sits on the last hump of the Alban Hills before the ground slides down toward the Pontine plain and the sea of Anzio. From here the view runs in two opposite directions: behind you the cone of the Lazio volcano, ahead the countryside sloping toward the coast. It's a position that explains almost everything about Lanuvio, from the fortune of its ancient sanctuary to the bombings of 1944.

The municipality has about 12,800 inhabitants and includes the hamlet of Campoleone, toward the Nettunense. The climate is temperate Mediterranean, with mild winters, breezy summers and rainfall between 1,000 and 1,100 millimeters a year: an agronomic figure before it is a meteorological one, because it's the reason the vine does well here.

The name has a curious story. The ancient settlement was called Lanuvium. In the 14th century the place name changed to Civita Lavinia, through a scholarly confusion with Aeneas's Lavinium, and the town kept that name until 1914, when the Roman name was restored. Anyone looking for documents, engravings or postcards from before the Great War therefore has to search for Civita Lavinia, not Lanuvio: it's the first piece of advice I give to anyone who sets out to study this place seriously.

The town's coat of arms bears the image of Juno Sospita and the initials I.S.M.R., Iuno Sospita Mater Regina. A town hall that in the 21st century keeps a pagan goddess with a goatskin on her head on its banner is not something you see every day.

How to get to Lanuvio (RM) from Rome

By train to Lanuvio station

Lanuvio station is on the Rome-Velletri railway line, opened in 1862 with the activation of the Ciampino-Velletri stretch and electrified on December 15, 1948. Today it is served by the FL4 metropolitan service, which runs the whole line. The facility is managed by RFI and classified silver category, with a passenger building, a waiting room, two platforms and two shelters. Since January 14, 2000 it has been a full station again, remotely controlled by the central dispatcher at Ciampino.

A warning worth more than a thousand timetables: the station serves the municipal territory, not the village square. The historic center is at the top of the hill, the railway runs below. Anyone who steps off the train expecting to find themselves in front of the Torre Medievale gets it wrong and ends up climbing a hill. Better to plan on a bus connection or a short taxi ride, or to arrange for a car.

By car and where to park in Lanuvio

From Rome the natural route is the Grande Raccordo Anulare to the exit for Via Appia, then Via Appia as far as Albano Laziale and from there Strada Regionale 207 Nettunense, the axis that connects Rome to Aprilia, Anzio and Nettuno and along which the municipality's productive activities are concentrated. Alternatively you take Via Ardeatina and come up to Lanuvio from the west. With ordinary traffic the trip takes around an hour.

The historic center is small and partly pedestrian: it's best to leave the car in the wide spots along the ring road and walk up. It's a walk of a few minutes and gives you the only right way to enter a walled village, that is, through the gate.

By bus and the memory of the tram

The municipality is served by Cotral's network of intercity bus lines, which connects Lanuvio to the other towns of the Castelli and to the interchange stations with Rome. It's worth remembering that until the war the connection was by rail: from 1916 to 1943 a branch of the Castelli Romani tramways came all the way up here. Anyone strolling through town today is walking on a route that once heard the tram go by.

The Museo Civico e Diffuso Lanuvino: tickets, hours and sites

There isn't one museum here, there are five places that make up a museum. The distributed-museum formula, which elsewhere is a device to justify thin collections, works in Lanuvio because the finds are many and the containers are themselves monuments: a tower from the year 1000, the cellars of a Colonna palace, an Art Nouveau villa built on top of a temple.

The collection has more than 2,000 finds and covers the prehistoric, pre-Roman, Roman and medieval periods, all coming from ancient Lanuvium and medieval Civita Lavinia. The main site, with the epigraphic section, is at Piazza della Maddalena 16. The single number for information, bookings and guided visits is 06 93789237. The email address is cultura@comune.lanuvio.rm.it. Guided visits are held on Sunday mornings and by appointment.

The museum's winter hours are Monday and Tuesday 10:00-13:00, Wednesday to Sunday 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00. In summer the afternoon shifts to 16:00-19:00. The three paid sites of the circuit follow the Tuesday-Sunday schedule of 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00. A phone call before you go is a good idea: in a municipality of 12,000 inhabitants the hours adapt to the staff available.

The epigraphic section of the Museo Civico Lanuvino

The inscriptions on display span the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD and tell, better than any panel, what a Latin city inside the Roman orbit was like: magistracies, dedications, freedmen, guilds. But the piece worth the trip is older and smaller than all of them. It's a fragment of a bucchero kylix with a Latin alphabet incised under the foot, from the 6th century BC: the oldest known Latin alphabet. An object you look at for 20 seconds that concerns the invention of writing in this language. If you stop in Lanuvio and look at only one thing, look at that one.

The Sala delle Colonne at Villa Sforza Cesarini

The section housed inside Villa Sforza Cesarini, on Via Sforza Cesarini, is the most scenic. The room takes its name from the ancient marbles that decorate it, datable to the 2nd century AD and coming from the sacred area on which the villa was built. In the same building is the municipal library, open Tuesday to Friday from 9:00 to 13:00 and on weekends in the afternoon too.

The Sala della Stipe dei Pantanacci

At Via Roma 1a is displayed the material recovered at Pantanacci, where a natural cave served as a votive deposit between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC. The assemblage recovered comes to more than a thousand pieces: terracotta ex votos, life-size statues, anatomical reproductions of parts of the human body, black-glaze pottery, food remains. The anatomical ex votos point to a healing cult: a sick person left the goddess a model of the organ that hurt.

The recent history of the deposit is less devout. In 2012 the Guardia di Finanza arrested four people caught digging illicitly at the site. That this material is today in a municipal hall, visible for €2, rather than in a collector's living room, is the result of that operation. It's worth knowing while you look at the display cases.

Il Cantinone, the dungeons of Palazzo Colonna

Under Palazzo Colonna, with the entrance from Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, the municipality has recovered the cellars and uses them as an exhibition venue and for cultural initiatives. On display are finds from the excavations carried out by Lord Savile Lumley and a Museo dell'Acconciatura born in collaboration with the Associazione Acconciatori di Roma. The pairing of 19th-century archaeology and the history of the barber's trade is bizarre, and for exactly that reason the Cantinone is the site visitors remember most.

The Torre Medievale, museum site and symbol of Lanuvio

The fifth site is the tower, at Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini 1, and it deserves a section of its own.

The sanctuary of Juno Sospita, the ancient heart of Lanuvio (RM)

The sanctuary of Juno Sospita occupied the southwest slope of San Lorenzo hill, which from the end of the 7th century BC became the acropolis of Lanuvium. Cicero writes that Lanuvio was very rich in temples and shrines, and that the one of Juno was by far the most famous of all. It was not a figure of speech: for 10 centuries this temple was the economic and political engine of the city.

Archaeological investigations began in 1884 and have identified a sequence that starts in the Iron Age, in the 9th century BC, and reaches the imperial age. A small shrine in the 7th century BC, a large Tuscanic temple at the end of the 6th century BC, the later transformations after the Roman conquest of 338 BC, and finally the restorations promoted in the Hadrianic age, between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

The temple of Juno Sospita at Lanuvio

The place of worship measured roughly 22 meters by 16, with three cellae side by side and a double row of columns in the front portico. Three cellae mean three deities worshiped together, according to a scheme we know well in Rome from the Capitoline. The architectural terracottas of the 6th and 5th centuries BC recovered here, together with the ex votos, the marble sculptures and the bucchero, are kept in the Museo Civico Lanuvino.

One of the finest pieces to come out of this temple did not stay in town, though: the polychrome antefix with a female head and a pierced nimbus, from the late Archaic temple and datable to around 500 BC, is on display in Rome, at Villa Poniatowski. Anyone who visits Lanuvio and then stops by the Etruscan Museum does well to look for it: it is the face of this sanctuary.

The portico and the nymphaeum

In the middle of the 1st century BC the sacred area was given monumental form with a two-story portico in opus reticulatum, 120 meters long. The number alone tells the rank of the place: a colonnade of that length, on a provincial hill, is built only if the sanctuary brings in money and pilgrims.

Part of the structure is also a concrete nymphaeum with a facade eight meters high, decorated with polychrome mosaics and pumice. It's the part visitors underrate most and the one that actually conveys best the idea of the place: water, reflected light, glittering surfaces right on top of the pilgrim climbing up.

The serpent's cave

At the end of the portico a door opened into a system of underground galleries with side rooms. The current reading connects those tunnels to the rite of the sacred serpent. It is the element that makes Lanuvio different from any other sanctuary in Lazio, and I talk about it at length further on.

The archaeological area has free access and accessible routes for people with disabilities are guaranteed. Don't expect a monumental archaeological park with a ticket office and bookshop: here you walk among structures in opus reticulatum and substructures, with the Art Nouveau villa planted on top. Bring closed-toe shoes.

Juno Sospita: who the goddess of Lanuvio was

Juno Sospita, that is Juno the Savior, doesn't look like the matronly Juno of the statues of the imperial age. You recognize her by her attributes: a goatskin worn on the head like a helmet, a spear in her fist, a serpent at her side. She appears this way in statuary and on Roman coins, and anyone who has in mind the images of the goddess at the Vatican or the Capitoline Museums will immediately recognize the goat silhouette.

The temple, built on the acropolis in the Tuscanic style, was closed off by a two-story portico with vaults covered in precious mosaics. The ancient sources treat it as a sanctuary of federal rank, not a municipal one.

The serpent rite

Every spring an agricultural propitiatory rite was celebrated, which the sources recount like this: some maidens went down into the cave carrying flatbreads to a serpent kept down there. If the serpent accepted the offering the year would be good. If it refused, the refusal was interpreted as proof of the bearer's impurity, with the consequences the sources describe. The fullest account is in Propertius. Aelian and Plutarch also mention it.

It has to be said with historiographical honesty: it's a rite we know through authors of the Augustan age and later, that is through eyes already far from the practice they describe, and it should be read as reported tradition, not as a record of the ceremony. The fact remains that the galleries under the portico exist, and that no other sanctuary in Lazio has anything like them.

The statue that wept

Livy, in book 40, records among the prodigies of the year 189 BC that the statue of Juno Sospita at Lanuvio had shed tears. For the Roman religious mentality a prodigy like that obliged the senate to take expiatory action. It's a detail that says how seriously Rome took this temple: it wasn't provincial folklore, it was a matter of state.

The pact of 338 BC

After the defeat of the Latin League, Rome granted Lanuvio favorable terms at a specific price: co-ownership of the sanctuary. The Lanuvians kept the cult and obtained citizenship, the Romans entered into the administration of the sacred grove and half of the revenues. It was a religious fusion used as a diplomatic instrument, and it worked for six centuries.

The medieval village of Lanuvio and its walls

Anyone who arrives expecting an entirely medieval village will be thrown: in Lanuvio the Middle Ages is set inside modern construction, and has to be looked for. The walls, towers and remains of the castle are absorbed into the houses. The street fabric of the center follows the orthogonal grid of the Roman city. It's a palimpsest, not a stage set.

The Torre Medievale of Lanuvio

The Torre Medievale is the core of the castle of Civita Lavinia and the most photographed monument in town. The fortified settlement probably began as a castrum in the 9th century AD, for lookout and defense against Saracen raids, reusing Roman spolia, peperino blocks included, quarried from the ruins of Lanuvium. The major development came in the 11th century under the impulse of the Benedictine monks, to whom four of the five towers still preserved are owed.

The main tower, called the Torre di Porta Romana, is a massive cylindrical body with an external crenellated walkway and bears the coat of arms of Pope Victor III, whose pontificate fell between 1086 and 1087. In the 17th century the structure was used as a prison. Then came the earthquake of 1892 and the bombings of the Second World War, then the restorations of the 1980s that also recovered stretches of the walls. Today the tower is one of the sites of the Museo Diffuso: the ticket for the tower alone is €2, open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00.

The municipality also records the monument under the name of Stendhal's prison, a memory of the 18th- and 19th-century use of the building and of the French writer's passage through these hills.

The walls and towers of Civita Lavinia

The city wall preserves the four-tower layout of the medieval core. In the 9th century, during the Saracen raids, the fortified settlement was refounded under the name Civita Novia and the Roman walls were restored with tuff blocks: you can still read the difference in materials if you look carefully at the base of the wall facings.

The 15th and 16th centuries added important pieces. Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville had the cylindrical bastion at the entrance to the town built in 1480. Pope Alexander VI Borgia, between 1501 and 1503, commissioned the round 16th-century towers. In 1507 leading architects worked here, among them Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. A town of 12,000 inhabitants with a building site signed Sangallo is no small detail.

Palazzo Colonna in Lanuvio

Palazzo Colonna, at Via Marcantonio Colonna 19, is among the oldest buildings in the center: it dates to the late 15th century and was built by the Colonna in a language of Veneto-Lombard ancestry, a small palazzo in bare stone with large windows in relief. It remained unfinished, because the Colonna never completed it, and the modest look it has today is the consequence of that interrupted construction.

Marcantonio Colonna was born here, the commander who led the papal fleet at Lepanto. During the struggles between the baronage and the papacy the palazzo was seized from the Colonna and entrusted to the Carafa. In 1564 it passed to the Cesarini of Genzano.

The Roman sarcophagus of Palazzo Colonna

On the main facade of the palazzo is a Roman marble sarcophagus built into the wall, datable between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century AD, in Greek Proconnesian marble, donated by Duke Filippo Cesarini in 1675 and used as a public fountain. Reuse is the signature of this town: an imperial burial chest that for three and a half centuries has given the Lanuvians something to drink.

The Fontana degli Scogli, Roman Baroque in Lanuvio

The Fontana degli Scogli, at Via Sforza Cesarini 4, was built in 1675 by the architect Carlo Fontana on commission from Filippo Cesarini. Fontana had been a collaborator of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and the formal kinship with the Fountain of the Rivers in Piazza Navona is visible to the naked eye: the rustic cliff, the play between boulder and water, the idea of sculpted nature.

The detail that makes this fountain one of a kind is not Berninian, though. Originally two large serpents were carved at the sides of the cliff, and the structure most probably reproduced the serpent's cave of the cult of Juno Sospita, the deity cited by Aelian, by Propertius and by Pseudo-Prosper of Aquitaine. An architect of the mid-1600s citing a local pagan rite at his patrons' front door: it is archaeology dressed up as a fountain.

The fountain can be seen for free, on the street, at any hour. Our opinion is that it should be looked at twice, on the way out and on the way back: the first time for the form, the second knowing about the serpent. It changes completely.

Not far away, the street naming has paid the debt: one of the town's squares bears the name of Carlo Fontana.

The churches of Lanuvio (RM)

The Collegiata di Santa Maria Maggiore

The Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, at Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore 1, is the town's mother church. On the facade an inscription records the 1675 restoration commissioned by Duke Filippo Cesarini, the same year and the same patron as the fountain: 1675 was a year of general remaking for Lanuvio.

The building keeps the memory of the Romanesque church of 1240, though the marble details of that phase were lost in the 17th-century remodeling. The medieval church rose on top of a Roman villa, and some scholars have hypothesized that in its original phase it was a domus ecclesiae, that is a house adapted for the gatherings of the first Christians. It's a hypothesis, not an established fact. Two early medieval phases are documented instead, one of the 6th century and one of the 8th-9th century, when the church was enriched with marble screens and a ciborium. From the Romanesque phase there remain sculptural elements of the 13th century, among them a marble sphinx with long braids that can no longer be found today.

During postwar repairs the remains of a Roman dwelling came to light with fragments of a polychrome mosaic of the 4th century AD, now displayed in the church itself. Among the paintings: three large anonymous canvases of the 17th century behind the altar, a deposition from the cross attributed to Domenichino, an Assumption of the Virgin in oil on canvas indicated as a work by Girolamo Troppa dated 1764, a Calvary by Giovan Battista Gaulli from the years 1675-76 and, in the bell tower, a painting attributed to Giulio Romano. The attributions to Domenichino and Giulio Romano should be taken as local tradition, not as established critical attributions. Gaulli, on the other hand, is consistent with the Cesarini building site of those years.

Opening hours 8:00-13:00 and 16:30-18:30, free admission, phone 06 9375021.

The church of Sant'Andrea and its apse

Of the other medieval church, Sant'Andrea, you can see today the apse in opus listatum with reused Roman bricks, datable to the 5th-6th century AD. It resurfaced in dramatic circumstances, during the bombings of 1944, and since then the Lanuvians call it capocroce, which in the local dialect means apse. The dedication to Sant'Andrea, a saint particularly venerated by the Goths in the period of the Greek-Gothic war of the 6th century AD, suggests a link with a Gothic military settlement.

The Santuario della Madonna delle Grazie

Outside the center, at Via delle Grazie 73, is the sanctuary dearest to the Lanuvians. The church was built in the 14th century, in the lower part of town, with the facade facing south. It preserves a triumphal arch in peperino of remarkable elegance and a 16th-century cloister. The restoration of 1523 enlarged its interior space while keeping original elements, among them an ogival window and an ancient portal.

In 1826 a serious fire damaged the building, which stayed closed for years and was reopened for worship in 1844 after restoration. The 17th-century painting of the Madonna delle Grazie escaped the flames, and that is why local devotion considers it miraculous. On May 1, 1986 the church was elevated to a minor diocesan sanctuary. Phone 06 9375023. Mass times are published on the parish channels.

Outside the center: the archaeology of the ager Lanuvinus

The territory of Lanuvio is strewn with ancient remains, and this is the part that hurried visitors systematically miss. You need a car, a couple of hours and a willingness to arrive at structures with no facilities.

Ponte Loreto and Via Astura

Ponte Loreto, at Via Astura 95, is a Roman bridge with a single round arch, in opus quadratum with blocks of different sizes and a humpbacked parapet. The current dating places it between the 2nd and 1st century BC. Via Astura, which already existed in the 8th century BC, was one of the main arteries of ancient Lanuvium and led to the coast: Cicero traveled it in the 1st century BC to reach his estates near Astura.

The technical curiosity of the bridge is that its axis is not orthogonal to that of the road that crosses it. Scholars debate whether this is two distinct building phases or a single choice made to guarantee stability to the arch. Go and see it: it's one of those anomalies that are understood better standing on the spot than on a plan.

The temple of Hercules and the Roman theater

In the town and its immediate surroundings there are remains attributed to the temple of Hercules and those of the Roman theater, which are part of the archaeological heritage catalogued by the municipality. They are structures to read with the museum's guidance: without an explanation, what you see is masonry. With the explanation, you see a city.

The villas of the ager Lanuvinus

The territory preserves the memory of the suburban villas of the ager Lanuvinus, of the so-called villas ad bivium, of the villa at the Crocette locality and of the Roman-era residential complex found on Via Gramsci, inside the town. It's the landscape the sources describe when they say that the late Republican nobility came to holiday here: not an isolated villa, a system.

Via Ardeatino-Lanuvina, the griffin and the Dionysian fresco

A short paved stretch survives of the road that connected Lanuvio to Ardea, and among the known sculptural pieces of the territory is a winged griffin. On display at the museum is also a fresco of the Augustan age with scenes of Dionysian initiation, coming from the buildings investigated in the area: a rare document, because Dionysian scenes of this kind can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the most famous is in Pompeii.

Monte Giove

The Monte Giove ridge closes the municipal territory to the north and carries in its name the memory of a summit cult. Anyone walking in the Castelli Romani Park finds here one of the best viewpoints on the southern side of the volcano.

The origins of Lanuvio between Diomedes and Lanoios

On the origins of Lanuvio the ancient sources contradict each other, as happens with almost all the cities of Latium Vetus. Two strands, both heroic, both to be handled with caution.

The first is Greek-Argive and is handed down by Appian, an Alexandrian author of the imperial age: the foundation would be attributable to Diomedes son of Tydeus, lord of Argos, the Homeric hero who according to a long tradition landed in Italy after Troy.

The second is Trojan and emerged through archaeology. In 1969, at Taormina, fragments of plaster belonging to the gymnasium of ancient Tauromenion were found, with a text that cites Fabius Pictor, the first Roman annalist, and attributes to him the account of the arrival in Italy, after the Trojan War, of a certain Lanoios, founder in Latium of a city that would take its name from him.

The developments of archaeological research have given these traditions a margin of credibility greater than 19th-century criticism granted, but they remain traditions. The material fact is another and should be stated clearly: the sources place the foundation in the years immediately after the Trojan War, around 1180-1170 BC, while the oldest finds recovered on San Lorenzo hill date at the earliest to the beginning of the 9th century BC. Three centuries float between myth and stratigraphy. Anyone who tells the story of Lanuvio without saying so tells it badly.

The history of Lanuvio (RM), from the Latin League to the 1900s

Latin Lanuvio and the wars against Rome

The first reliable reports date to the end of the 6th century BC, when Lanuvium appears among the 30 populi of the Latin League, which met in the lucus of Diana Nemorensis, the sacred grove on Lake Nemi. Lanuvio fought against Rome together with the other Latin cities: near Aricia in 504 BC, at Lake Regillus in 496 BC, then in 383 and 341 BC, almost always with negative outcomes.

The definitive defeat came in 338 BC and cost Lanuvio, like all of Latium Vetus, its independence. But already in 332 BC the city obtained the civitas cum suffragio, that is full Roman citizenship with the right to vote, in exchange for admitting the Roman people to the administration of half of the revenues of the sanctuary of Juno Sospita. It was a privileged treatment paid for with the most precious currency Lanuvio had: its goddess.

From Republican prosperity to Marius's colony

From 332 BC to the outbreak of the first civil war, between 87 and 86 BC, Lanuvio maintained a high level of well-being. In the conflict between Marius and Sulla the city sided with Sulla and was reduced by Marius to a military colony. The politics of those years changed direction quickly: with the fall of the Marian party, Lanuvio soon returned among the leading centers of Lazio.

From the late Republican age onward it became a destination for the most prominent figures of Roman politics. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus Junius Brutus, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius had homes there. It was the birthplace of Lucius Licinius Murena, consul in 62 BC, and of two emperors, Antoninus Pius and Commodus.

The end of the sanctuary and the Middle Ages

The edict of Theodosius of 391 AD, which established Christianity as the sole religion of the empire, brought the closure of pagan temples. The sanctuary of Juno Sospita, in operation since the 6th century BC and the driving element of the city for 10 centuries, died out with it, and with it began the decline of ancient Lanuvium.

The site wasn't abandoned entirely, but certain news returns only from the 11th century, when the settlement was reborn, according to Galieti's reconstruction, thanks to the work of the Benedictine monks under the name Civita Lanuvina. In the 9th century, as stated, castle building had already produced Civita Novia against the Saracen raids.

Colonna, Cesarini, Sforza Cesarini

From the beginning of the 15th century the town passed to the Colonna, who held it until 1564, the year it was sold together with Ardea to Giuliano Sforza Cesarini for 105,000 scudi. The centuries between the 11th and the second half of the 16th were turbulent: plunderings, sieges, donations, and in 1347 an attack by the Frangipane. With the Cesarini first and the Sforza Cesarini later came a period of relative calm, of which the 1675 of Carlo Fontana and the restored Collegiata is the most visible result.

1798, 1892 and the war

At the end of the 1700s Lanuvio risked being razed to the ground by French troops, who wanted to avenge the deaths of some comrades killed in town while the Sanfedist counter-revolution was flaring up. In 1892 an earthquake damaged the Torre Medievale. In the Second World War the strategic position of the hill cost very dearly: the town was bombarded from the sea and subjected to air raids by the Allied armies landed at Anzio, as part of the battle of Campoleone, which takes its name from the Lanuvio hamlet.

The town came out of the war destroyed and was rebuilt by its population. Anyone strolling today among the houses leaning against the towers looks at a historic center that is both very ancient and recent: the stones are from the year 1000, many walls are from the 1950s.

The Colli Lanuvini wine and the countryside of Lanuvio (RM)

The town's main activity is agriculture, and within agriculture, viticulture. Lanuvio falls within the production area of the Colli Lanuvini controlled designation of origin, which also provides for the superior type. Alongside the vine, olive growing, flower growing, fruit growing and vegetable growing carry weight. Industrial and commercial activities, on the other hand, have been set along the Nettunense.

Wine here is not a recent oenological discovery: in Roman times the rites in honor of Dionysus were celebrated with the wine of these hills, and the fresco of the Augustan age with scenes of Dionysian initiation kept at the museum is its figurative reflection. Between the vine shoot and the temple, in Lanuvio, there is no break in continuity.

The practical advice: the designation gives whites to drink young and fresh, and the right way to get to know them is not to buy a bottle at a supermarket in Rome but to sit down in a local cellar in September, when the grapes come in. For the detail on yields, permitted grape varieties and minimum alcohol strengths the reference is the production specification published by the Ministry: it's the only document that counts, and it changes over time.

Festivals and traditions in Lanuvio (RM)

The Festa della Madonna delle Grazie

In May the 17th-century painting of the Madonna delle Grazie leaves its sanctuary and is carried in procession through the streets of town to the Collegiata di Santa Maria Maggiore, where it stays for a week. These are days of fireworks, bells ringing full peal, concerts, shows, tombola games and lotteries. For the Lanuvians it's the week of the year: anyone who happens to be here in those days sees the town in its most authentic version and finds everything full.

The Festa della Musica in Lanuvio

In June the village hosts a music festival that over the years has become part of the town's habits: street artists and emerging bands, rock, blues, jazz, world music, pop, punk, country, ska. Music is played in the village lit by torches, with the not small advantage of a historic center small enough to walk all of it, going from one stage to another.

The Festa dell'Uva, del Vino e Medievale

It's the big festival, the September one, dedicated to the two elements the Lanuvio economy has always rested on. For edition number 44 the municipal calendar places it on September 12 and 13, 2026. The traditional program, which includes the barrel race, is joined by concerts, performances and talks, with the medieval part grafted on, using the village as a natural stage set.

The professional's advice: if you come for the festival, arrive early and park down below. In the evening the hill clogs up and the walk down on tired legs is less fun than the walk up on an empty stomach.

The neighborhood festivals

The local calendar also includes smaller and deeply felt events: the June festival in the Malcavallo locality, with activities and food stands, and the Festa Quartiere Montegiove in the Montegiove Vecchio locality. They are occasions for town gathering, not events built for tourism, and for that very reason they're worth the detour.

A curiosity about Lanuvio (RM)

The most precious curiosity concerns a tiny object kept in the Museo Civico Lanuvino: a fragment of a bucchero kylix, that is of an Etruscan-Italic wine cup, with a Latin alphabet incised under the foot and datable to the 6th century BC. It is the oldest known Latin alphabet. Not just any inscription: the sequence of the letters, incised as an exercise or as a ritual act, that is the alphabet as such.

The value of the thing is understood only by putting it in perspective. In the 6th century BC Latin was a local language among the many of Lazio, and writing arrived through Etruscan mediation from the Greek world. Someone, in Lanuvio, traced under the foot of a cup the complete series of signs that would become the alphabet of the West. That this gesture took place in a town now known for white wine and for the barrel race is one of those ironies history hands out without warning.

There is a second layer of curiosity, and it is geographic. The object comes from a sacred context connected to the sanctuary of Juno Sospita: writing, in the Archaic age, travels together with cult and votive gift, not with trade or bureaucracy. Anyone looking at the fragment in the display case in Piazza della Maddalena is therefore looking at two things together, the birth of a technology and the religious reason why that technology was used.

Our clear opinion: this piece would deserve a room of its own and a display case lit as it should be. It sits in a municipal museum that is free in the best sense of the term, that is accessible, and in a display that does not do it justice. Go looking for it and ask the staff to point it out: it's the kind of request that pleases people in Lanuvio.

Something nobody tells you about Lanuvio (RM)

That the train station isn't in town. It sounds like a logistical detail and yet it's the first cause of visits gone wrong. The Rome-Velletri line runs down below, the village is at the top of the hill, and the name of the stop doesn't let you guess. Anyone who plans the day with the train timetable and nothing else ends up climbing a hill they hadn't counted on, or waiting for a bus connection that is infrequent on holidays. If you come by train, check the Cotral connections beforehand or budget for a taxi for the last stretch.

The second thing nobody says concerns the museum. In Lanuvio the museum isn't a building: it's five different places, and three of them are visited with a single €5 ticket. Many visitors pay, go into the Torre Medievale, come out and leave, convinced they've seen the museum. They've seen a fifth. The combined ticket also includes the Cantinone under Palazzo Colonna and the Sala della Stipe dei Pantanacci, while the Sala delle Colonne at Villa Sforza Cesarini and the epigraphic section have their own access and the sanctuary area is free. Ask the ticket office for the map of the sites before you start, not after.

The third is about method. The hours of a municipal museum in a town of 12,000 inhabitants depend on the staff on duty, and over the year they adapt between the winter and summer schedules. A phone call to 06 93789237 the day before is worth more than any web page, this one included. It isn't informational laziness: it's how the civic museums of Lazio really work, and it's always worth calling.

The advice I give you for visiting Lanuvio (RM)

My advice is to reverse the order that would come naturally. Almost everyone arrives, parks, enters the village, wanders among the towers and then, if there's time left, goes down to the archaeological area. Do the opposite: start with the sanctuary of Juno Sospita, which is free and open, in the morning light, when the opus reticulatum walls still have long shadows and you can read the stratigraphy. Then go up to the museum, where the finds you've just seen come out of the ground take on meaning. Then, only at the end, the medieval village and the tower.

There's a precise reason for this order. Lanuvio isn't a medieval town with a few Roman ruins: it's an ancient city over which a castle grew. If you start from the battlements, the sanctuary looks like an appendix. If you start from the sanctuary, the tower becomes what it really is, that is a reuse of the peperino blocks quarried from the temple.

Second tip, on duration. Half a day is enough for the center, the tower and the museum. The whole day is needed if you want to leave town and see Ponte Loreto on Via Astura, the sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie and one of the viewpoints toward Monte Giove. Count three hours for the core and two for the territory, without lunch.

Third, and here I give an opinion that won't please everyone: Lanuvio is not a place to visit in August at noon. The hill is exposed, the shade is scarce and the town at those hours is closed. The right months are April, May, September and October. September, with the grape harvest underway, is the moment when the farmland around the village tells the same story the museum's display cases tell.

Fourth: book the guided visit. The museum organizes them on Sunday mornings and by appointment, and with a heritage this fragmented the difference between a guided visit and a free visit is not one of comfort, it's one of understanding.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

That Lanuvio is the homeland of two Roman emperors can be read in every fact sheet. What it means, almost never. Antoninus Pius and Commodus were both born here, and it isn't a statistical accident: it's the direct consequence of that system of suburban villas that occupied the ager Lanuvinus between the late Republic and the empire.

Antoninus Pius reigned from 138 to 161 and historiography attributes to him the quietest period of the entire imperial history. Commodus, his grandson through his daughter and son of Marcus Aurelius, reigned from 180 to 192 and was, by the almost unanimous judgment of the ancient sources, the exact opposite. Two opposite characters, the same hill of birth, 80 years apart. The fact that Marcus Aurelius himself had a home in these parts closes the circle: Lanuvio, in the 2nd century, was an address of the imperial family.

The rarely cited corollary is archaeological. If the court frequented this territory, the Hadrianic-age restorations at the sanctuary of Juno Sospita are not ordinary maintenance: they are a political investment. Hadrian restores the goddess's temple at a moment when the hill is full of properties tied to the imperial entourage. The walls you see today in the archaeological area bear the mark of that season.

Then there is a detail almost nobody connects: the name of the hamlet Campoleone, which in 1944 gave its name to one of the hardest battles of the Italian campaign after the Anzio landing. The same strip of territory that in the 2nd century hosted the villas of the princes was, in the 20th century, the ground of a pitched battle. It isn't rhetoric: it's the consequence of the same thing, namely the position between the hills and the sea.

The right photo to take in Lanuvio (RM)

The photograph that takes Lanuvio home is not the close-up of the Torre Medievale. It's the shot from below, from the road that climbs to the town on the south side, with the front of the houses climbing up and the round towers poking out over the roofs. It's the photo that explains the nature of this place in one stroke: a castle that keeps being an inhabited town, with laundry hung next to the battlements.

The moment is late afternoon. The hill faces south and west, so the light of the last two hours lights up the peperino facing and pulls it toward orange, while behind it the sky over the Pontine plain serves as a backdrop. In summer sunset is late, around 20:30. In winter the same light arrives at 16:00. Anyone who wants the wide panorama over the Alban Hills, with the town in the foreground and the volcanic cone behind, has to climb toward Monte Giove instead and shoot in the morning, when the sun is behind you.

The second photo, the one nobody takes, is inside the sanctuary area: the facade of the nymphaeum, eight meters of concrete that keep traces of polychrome mosaic and pumice. It should be photographed with the wide-angle from below, accepting the distortion, because it's the only way to convey the height. In a frontal photograph it looks like any wall.

The third is the Fontana degli Scogli on Via Sforza Cesarini. Photograph it with a long exposure, if you have a support, to render the veil of water on the cliff. And photograph the sides too, where the original sculptural apparatus included the two serpents: it's the only image that visually connects Carlo Fontana's Baroque to the ancient cult of Juno.

A practical warning that holds for the whole village: the streets are narrow and the facades tall, so the wide-angle here is not a whim, it's a necessity. With a 50 millimeter lens you go home with details and no overview.

Some important events that happened here in history

The first is the pact of 338 BC. Once the Latin League was defeated, Rome imposed on Lanuvio a condition it imposed on almost no one else: co-ownership of the sanctuary of Juno Sospita. In exchange, from 332 BC, came the civitas cum suffragio. It was an act of political-religious engineering: instead of destroying the cult of a defeated city, Rome went inside it and shared its revenues. The model would be replicated elsewhere for centuries.

The second is the prodigy of 189 BC. Livy, in book 40, records that the statue of Juno Sospita at Lanuvio had shed tears. In the Roman religious system a prodigy of this kind set the machinery of the state in motion: consultation, procuratio, expiatory rites. Lanuvio thus ended up in the official records of Rome for a statue that wept.

The third is the edict of Theodosius of 391 AD, which by closing the pagan temples extinguished a sanctuary in operation since the 6th century BC. It wasn't an episode, it was the end of an economy: 10 centuries of pilgrimages, offerings and shared administration came to a stop in one year, and with them the reason for the ancient city's existence.

The fourth is the cycle of Saracen raids of the 9th century, which produced the castle building and the refounding of the settlement under the name Civita Novia, with the Roman walls repaired with tuff blocks. From there comes the town you visit today.

The fifth is 1347, the year of the Frangipane attack on the castle, within the long conflict among the great families of the Roman baronage that made the Castelli a permanent battlefield.

The sixth is the sale of 1564: the Colonna cede Lanuvio and Ardea to Giuliano Sforza Cesarini for 105,000 scudi. A town and its territory change hands with a notarial deed, and with that transfer begins the season that will lead to the Baroque remaking of 1675.

The seventh is 1798, when French troops threatened to raze the town to the ground in reprisal, during the Sanfedist counter-revolution. Lanuvio got off by a narrow margin.

The eighth is the earthquake of 1892, which damaged the Torre Medievale.

The ninth, and the hardest, is 1944. After the Allied landing at Anzio, the front dug in right on this strip of territory: the battle of Campoleone takes its name from the hamlet of Lanuvio. The town was bombarded from the sea and from the air and came out of the conflict almost entirely destroyed. The reconstruction was the work of the population, and in those years, digging to repair the Collegiata, the polychrome mosaic of the 4th century and the apse of Sant'Andrea resurfaced.

The tenth is recent and serves as a warning: in 2012 the Guardia di Finanza detained four people who were digging illegally in the Pantanacci votive deposit. The material saved on that occasion is now on display at Via Roma 1a. The history of Lanuvio didn't end in antiquity: it keeps being played out, today, between those who protect and those who plunder.

Who has passed through Lanuvio (RM)

The list begins with the Romans and isn't a list of extras. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the triumvir, had a home here. Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's killer, too. Augustus and Marcus Aurelius frequented the territory. Lucius Licinius Murena, consul in 62 BC and defended by Cicero in an oration still read in high schools, was Lanuvian by birth. Cicero himself traveled Via Astura to reach his estates on the coast, and the humpbacked bridge you see at Via Astura 95 is, in all likelihood, one of the structures he crossed.

Then the two emperors born here, Antoninus Pius and Commodus, and Hadrian, who had restoration work carried out at the sanctuary of Juno Sospita between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

In the Middle Ages the Benedictines pass through, to whom are owed the building impulse of the 11th century and four of the five surviving towers, and so does Pope Victor III, whose coat of arms is on the Torre di Porta Romana. In the 15th century comes Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, who in 1480 has the cylindrical bastion at the entrance built. At the beginning of the 16th century it is Alexander VI Borgia who commissions the round towers, and in 1507 among the technicians at work appears Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.

The most famous figure born within these walls is however Marcantonio Colonna, brought into the world in Palazzo Colonna and destined to command the papal fleet at Lepanto. A hill town that gives Europe the commander of one of the best-known naval battles of modern history: in front of the facade on Via Marcantonio Colonna it's hard to believe at first go.

In the 17th century a first-rank architect passes through, Carlo Fontana, pupil and collaborator of Bernini, who leaves the Fontana degli Scogli here. And Giovan Battista Gaulli passes through, at least with his canvases, the Baciccio of the vault of the Gesù, author of the Calvary in the Collegiata. The patronage is that of the Cesarini dukes, in particular Filippo Cesarini, the name that recurs in the church's inscription, in the donation of the sarcophagus and in the commission for the fountain.

In the 19th century foreign archaeology arrives: the excavations of Lord Savile Lumley, a British diplomat, yielded materials now displayed in the Cantinone of Palazzo Colonna. And literature arrives: the municipality records the Torre Medievale also under the name of Stendhal's prison, a memory of the French writer's passage, who in the years of his consulate at Civitavecchia covered these hills extensively.

Closing the list, without names, is the generation that in the postwar period put the town back on its feet stone by stone. It has no monument, but it has left its signature on half the houses of the center.

Lanuvio (RM) with kids

It works better than you'd expect, on two conditions. The first is to focus on the tower and the underground spaces: the Torre di Porta Romana with the crenellated walkway and the Cantinone in the dungeons of Palazzo Colonna are settings children immediately read as castle and secret cellar, with no need for explanations. The second is to tell the story of the serpent before entering the archaeological area. The galleries under the portico, with the tale of the flatbreads and the sacred serpent, hold the attention of an eight-year-old far more than any panel on architectural terracottas.

Children under 18 enter the Museo Diffuso sites free, so the expense for a family comes down to the adults' tickets. The Sala della Stipe dei Pantanacci, with the anatomical terracotta ex votos, is the place where the questions pour in: they're models of ears, eyes, legs, internal organs, left by those who asked for healing. A child gets it at once, and also understands why that cave interested the tomb robbers so much.

The historic center is uphill and has uneven cobblestone paving: with a stroller it's a struggle. With small children the short formula works best, that is tower and museum, and then the Parco della Rimembranza or the town's green spaces to let off steam. The municipality also has sports facilities, from the municipal stadium to the sports hall, but they are structures for local activity, not attractions for visitors.

Accessibility, services and practical information in Lanuvio

The archaeological area of the sanctuary of Juno Sospita guarantees accessible routes for people with disabilities: it's the information the municipality states and the only site of the circuit for which accessibility is explicitly indicated. In the historic museum sites, the tower first, the situation is that of all the buildings of the year 1000 adapted as museums: stairs, narrow passages, level changes. It's best to call 06 93789237 and ask beforehand, indicating the specific need.

Admission is free for people with disabilities and one companion, for residents, for those under 18, for journalists and for students of archaeology and humanities subjects at institutions of the European Union. The reduced rate of €2.50 applies to teachers with ID.

In town there are four pharmacies, two of them municipal, distributed among the main town, the Pascolare area, the station and the Nettunense, and two post offices, one in Lanuvio and one in Campoleone. The municipal library is at Villa Sforza Cesarini. There is also a neighborhood library run by a cultural association in collaboration with the municipality, and a public coworking space with workstations and connection, intended for workers and associations. They are services that say little to a passing tourist, but that change the day for anyone who stays a few days in the Castelli.

What to see around Lanuvio (RM)

Lanuvio is the southern tip of the Castelli Romani Park and lends itself well to a combined day. A few kilometers away, Genzano di Roma with its infiorata and Via Sforza Cesarini that descends toward the lake. Nemi with the lake, the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, that is the sacred grove where the Latin League of which Lanuvio was part met, and the museum of the Roman ships. Toward the north Ariccia with Palazzo Chigi and the monumental bridge, Albano Laziale with the remains of the Castra Albana and Castel Gandolfo on the lake.

On the opposite side, toward the coast, Via Astura and the Nettunense lead to Anzio and Nettuno, and Via Ardeatina to Ardea, the town sold together with Lanuvio in 1564. To the southeast Velletri closes the Alban Hills. Going up, Rocca di Papa occupies the highest position of the Lazio volcano.

The recommended itinerary over two days, for those who have already seen Rome: Lanuvio and Nemi on the first day, with the common thread of the Latin sanctuaries of Juno and Diana. Ariccia and Albano on the second, with the Baroque and military archaeology. Anyone who wants just one day should build it on Lanuvio in the morning and Nemi in the afternoon: they are the two faces of the same ancient religious world and are a few minutes apart by car.

When to go to Lanuvio (RM) and how much time you need

Spring and early fall. April and May for the countryside and for the week of the Madonna delle Grazie, September for the grape harvest and the grape, wine and medieval festival, October for the light, which here is the best of the year. Full summer is bearable only in the evening. Winter is mild but rainy, with rainfall that on the Alban Hills reaches 1,000 millimeters a year and more.

Timing: two or three hours for the core, that is the tower, Cantinone, Pantanacci room, Collegiata and Fontana degli Scogli. An hour and a half for the area of the sanctuary of Juno Sospita if you really look at it. Another hour and a half to leave the center toward Ponte Loreto and the Madonna delle Grazie. On Monday and Tuesday the museum keeps reduced hours and the three paid sites are closed on Monday: plan for a day between Wednesday and Sunday.

One last piece of methodological advice, valid for all the Castelli: don't squeeze Lanuvio in as a 30-minute stop between two more famous towns. It's a center that gives back in proportion to the time you give it, and half an hour here is the same as not having passed through.

Quick questions about Lanuvio (RM)

How far is Lanuvio from Rome?

About 33 kilometers southeast of the capital, in the Alban Hills. By car the trip takes around an hour with ordinary traffic.

How do you get to Lanuvio by train?

On the FL4 Rome-Velletri line, which stops at Lanuvio station. Note: the station is not in the historic center, which is at the top of the hill.

How much does it cost to visit the museums of Lanuvio?

The combined ticket for the Torre Medievale, Cantinone and Sala della Stipe dei Pantanacci costs €5. The Torre Medievale alone €2. The reduced rate for teachers €2.50.

Who gets into the museums of Lanuvio free?

Residents of the municipality, anyone under 18, people with disabilities with a companion, journalists, and students of archaeology and humanities subjects.

What are the hours of the Museo Civico e Diffuso Lanuvino?

In winter Monday and Tuesday 10:00-13:00, Wednesday to Sunday 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00. In summer the afternoon is 16:00-19:00. The three paid sites are open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00.

Can you visit the sanctuary of Juno Sospita for free?

Yes, access to the archaeological area is free and accessible routes for people with disabilities are guaranteed.

Do you need to book to visit Lanuvio?

Not for a self-guided visit. Guided visits are held on Sunday mornings and by appointment, at 06 93789237 or by writing to cultura@comune.lanuvio.rm.it.

How much time do you need to visit Lanuvio?

Half a day for the village, the tower and the museum. A whole day if you add the sanctuary area, Ponte Loreto and the sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie.

Is Lanuvio suitable for children?

Yes, above all the tower, the dungeons of Palazzo Colonna and the story of the sacred serpent. Children under 18 don't pay the ticket. The uphill paving makes a stroller awkward.

Is Lanuvio wheelchair accessible?

The archaeological area of the sanctuary states that it has accessible routes. The historic sites have stairs and level changes: it's best to phone beforehand at 06 93789237 and explain the need.

What wine is produced in Lanuvio?

The territory falls within the production area of the Colli Lanuvini controlled designation of origin, which also provides for the superior type. Viticulture is the municipality's main agricultural activity.

When is the Festa dell'Uva e del Vino held in Lanuvio?

In September. The municipal calendar places the 44th edition, with the medieval part, on September 12 and 13, 2026.

What is the barrel race of Lanuvio?

It's the traditional contest that goes with the grape and wine festival, along with concerts, performances and talks.

Why was Lanuvio called Civita Lavinia?

The place name changed in the 14th century and stayed in use until 1914, when the Roman name Lanuvio was restored.

Who was born in Lanuvio?

The emperors Antoninus Pius and Commodus, the consul Lucius Licinius Murena and, in the modern age, Marcantonio Colonna, commander of the papal fleet at Lepanto.

What is the serpent rite of Juno Sospita?

A springtime propitiatory rite in which some maidens offered flatbreads to a serpent kept in a cave under the sanctuary. It's recounted by Propertius, Aelian and Plutarch.

What can be seen in the Sala della Stipe dei Pantanacci?

More than a thousand finds from a votive deposit in a cave of the 4th-2nd century BC: terracotta ex votos, life-size statues, anatomical reproductions, black-glaze pottery and food remains.

Who built the Fontana degli Scogli of Lanuvio?

Carlo Fontana, in 1675, on commission from Filippo Cesarini. It is at Via Sforza Cesarini 4 and can be seen freely from the street.

What does the Collegiata di Santa Maria Maggiore hold?

Fragments of a polychrome mosaic of the 4th century AD, three 17th-century canvases behind the altar, a Calvary by Giovan Battista Gaulli and other works. It is open 8:00-13:00 and 16:30-18:30.

Can you do a day trip from Rome to Lanuvio?

Yes, and it's the best way to visit. Those with a car can combine Nemi or Genzano di Roma in the afternoon.

Where do you eat and where do you sleep in Lanuvio?

The town and the surrounding countryside have trattorias, farms and small accommodation facilities. The competent municipal office and the Castelli Romani tourism portal publish updated lists.

What's the difference between Lanuvio and the other Castelli Romani?

Lanuvio has much less tourism than Frascati, Ariccia or Castel Gandolfo and much more archaeology in proportion to its inhabitants. Anyone looking for the crowded fraschetta goes elsewhere. Anyone looking for a Latin sanctuary and a serious civic museum comes here.

What are the closing days of the museums of Lanuvio?

The three paid sites are closed on Monday. On Monday and Tuesday the main site keeps morning hours only.

Frequently asked questions about Lanuvio (RM)

How do you get to Lanuvio by train?

Lanuvio can be reached with the FL4 metropolitan service on the Rome-Velletri line, which stops at Lanuvio station run by RFI. Note, though: the station is not in the historic center, which is at the top of the hill, so you have to count on a non-trivial climb or a bus connection.

How far is Lanuvio from Rome by car?

Lanuvio is about 33 kilometers southeast of Rome, in the Alban Hills, the last hump before the ground descends toward the Pontine plain. By car with ordinary traffic the trip takes around an hour.

Do you have to pay for the sanctuary of Juno Sospita at Lanuvio?

The sanctuary of Juno Sospita at Lanuvio is free and open, one of the few Latin sanctuaries that can be read this way in Lazio. It occupied the southwest slope of San Lorenzo hill, which from the end of the 7th century BC was the acropolis of Lanuvium.

Is Lanuvio accessible to people with disabilities?

The archaeological area of the sanctuary of Juno Sospita at Lanuvio guarantees accessible routes for people with disabilities, according to what the municipality states: it is the only site of the circuit for which accessibility is explicitly indicated. In the historic museum sites, adapted from buildings of the year 1000, stairs and narrow passages remain.

What to see in Lanuvio with children?

With children, the Torre di Porta Romana with the crenellated walkway and the Cantinone in the dungeons of Palazzo Colonna work well in Lanuvio, settings that are read right away as castle and secret cellar without too many explanations. Before entering the archaeological area it helps to tell them the story of the serpent tied to the goddess.

When to go to Lanuvio?

Spring and early fall are the recommended periods for Lanuvio: April and May for the countryside in bloom and the week of the Madonna delle Grazie, September for the grape harvest, October for the best light of the year. Full summer is bearable only in the evening, while winter stays mild but rainy.

What is the Museo Civico e Diffuso Lanuvino?

The Museo Civico e Diffuso Lanuvino is not a single building but five places that together make up the museum route of Lanuvio, including a tower from the year 1000, the cellars of a Colonna palace and an Art Nouveau villa built on top of a temple. The collection exceeds 2,000 finds, from prehistory onward.

The final verdict on Lanuvio (RM)

Among the Castelli Romani, Lanuvio is the right town for those who have already seen everything else. It doesn't have Lake Nemi, it doesn't have the urban Baroque of Ariccia, it doesn't have Frascati's porchetta and it will never have the tour buses. It has something the others don't: a Latin sanctuary that is readable, free and almost empty, and 200 meters away a museum that holds the oldest known Latin alphabet. Anyone who loves antiquity works in peace here.

The flaw is organizational and should be said without beating around the bush: the heritage is fragmented across five sites with hours that change between summer and winter, and an unprepared visitor sees one piece and leaves convinced they've seen everything. Call ahead, ask for the map of the distributed museum's sites, and give yourselves a whole day instead of half. Lanuvio repays those who take it seriously, and doesn't forgive those who treat it as a stop.

If you come in a group or want the guided visit, ask for a tour leader who knows the sanctuary: the difference between seeing masonry and understanding a Latin city is all there. On this, and on how to build a Castelli itinerary that isn't the usual round of viewpoints, our tour-leading service works in exactly this direction, with particular attention to the services on Rome and its territory and the tailor-made experiences for small groups. Anyone organizing the trip in English will find on ItalyPlanner the guides to the best things to do in Rome, a three-day Rome itinerary and a page dedicated to day trips from the big Italian cities, where the Castelli Romani naturally find a place. To build your own route, the page My Trip gathers the selected stops.

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

Planning a trip to Rome? The English guides to visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com.