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Frosinone

The Province of Frosinone was established by Royal Decree on 6 December 1926 with territories belonging to Lazio and Campania.

At the same time the Province of Latina (originary called Littoria) was also established.

The Campania areas were the left valley of the Liri-Garigliano river, the district of Sora, the Comino valley, the district of Cassino, the Gulf of Formia and Gaeta, the Pontine isles, which until then had been for centuries included in the Province called Terra di Lavoro, of the Kingdom of Naples (or of the Two Sicilies).

Today, this province has a mixed economy with four large industrial sites, ample plain lands with a prosperous agriculture and a developing tourism industry. So a visit to Ciociaria can largely meet various needs with its archaeo­logical parks showing the different phases of the Ernici, Volscian and Roman civilizations; with its medieval boroughs enclosed within tow­ered surrounding walls; with its majestic churches and abbeys, a mark of the strong spiritual links that stretch back to the beginning of Christianity, as well as the works of contemporary civilization.

The peculiar feature of pre-Roman Ciociaria is the towns surrounded by polygonal walls, traditionally known as the Cyclops' towns, known to having been built by the god Saturn. These lively villages are mainly perched on hilltops and their urban structures have been marked by the different civiliza­tions   (pre-Roman, Roman, medieval, Renaissance and baroque) that have left valuable traces of their culture.

Latina

The Province of Latina was established in 1935 after the recovery of the marshy lands of the Agro pontino, with municipalities previously mainly belonging to the Province of Rome.

At the same time, also the Circeo National Park was established, which includes today the Terracina Forest (the only plain forest left in Italy), the Circeo Promontory - which takes its name from the mythical sorceress that kept Ulysses and his companions prisoners, the lakes Paola, Caprolace, Monaci and Fogliano, the coastline Dunes, the island of Zannone with the ruins of a Benediscine monastery.

The province of Latina was created in 1934, with 33 municipalities, belonging to the region of Lazio, of which it occupies the southeastern part. It covers a total area of 2.250 square kilometers made up of 3 mountain chains – Monti Lepini, Monti Ausoni and Monti Aurunci and the coastal plains – Pontina, Fondi-Monte San Biagio and Garigliano with more than 100 kilometers of shore washed by the Tyrrhenian Sea.

It is a province that offers everything: sea, mountains, islands, spas, national and regional parks, archaeological and medieval monuments and an economy based on tourism, agriculture and industry.

The province has excellent communications: by air with the airports of Fiumicino and Ciampino (Rome) and Capodicchino (Naples); by road with the Autostrada del Sole; by train with the Roma – Napoli Direttissima.

The Pontine cuisine is very varied as a result of the different environments that make up the province. There is the typical mari­ne cuisine, with dense fish soups, risottos with shellfish, gilthead, bass, prawns and so much imagination in preparing them.

Then there are the typical hillside dishes, with pasta made of flour and eggs, the homemade sauces, soups, pasta and beans, and all kinds of local produce (excellent artichokes, olives, broccoli and chicory). There are also the plain land dishes which are sometimes a combination of the Ciociaria, the Campania, the Veneto, the Emilia Romagna and obviously Lazio cuisines, drawing on a wide range of products from the buffalo and the dairy cattle (mozzarella, fiordilatte, caciotta and provola cheeses, butter), the superb local produce from the fields (courgettes, salads of all kinds, water melon, kiwi). On the islands there is a marked preference for the dishes typical of the Campania region, with lobster, "granseola", moray eels and less distinguished fish species such as rotondo, pessonia and octopus. Ventotene is proud of its tiny lentils. The dishes are still more delicious if you savor the local wine; whose famous ancestors are the Coecubum and the Falernum, or the D.O.C. wines Aprilia (Trebbiano, Sangiovese, Merlot), Cori, and Circeo, produced in the Pontine area. The dry and sweet full-bodied "Moscato" of Terracina still survives at present times.

 

Rieta

A very ancient tradition maintains that Rieti is the center of Italy. It was the writer, Marco Terenzio Varrone (116-27 B.C.) who mentioned that the Rieti Valley was the center of the peninsular. Rieti is situated at the foot of Mount Terminillo, along the valley marked by the Velino River. Rieti had been first a Roman possession, later, Papal residence, and its historic center has an impressive and monumental 12th century city wall enclosing it.

Walking through Rieti’s streets and squares means to place oneself in history and art. City Hall building, in Vittorio Emanuele II Square, was originally built in the XIII century and rebuilt in the XVII century. The Cathedral, with its Romanesque bell tower and portico from 1458, has admirable works of art. Noble palaces make the city center even more precious, as does the Vecchiarelli Palace, done by Carlo Maderno, and the Prefettura Palace, decorated with a splendid loggia from the Vignola school, overlooking the lower part of the historic city center.

One of the cultural symbols of the city is the Flavio Vespasian Theatre, a little acoustical jewel, the dome of which is fully painted depicting the triumphal entry of Vespasian and Tito after having conquered Jerusalem. The streets of the center also host the remains of the Roman bridge, lying on the bed of the Velino River. Symbol of the townspeople’s history and life, this river’s limpid waters and balanced ecosystem represent a true natural jewel in the heart of the city’s residential area. The city still continues today to be enriched with monuments and treasures such as the Monument to the Lira unveiled in 2003 and already become a tourist site.

All of the territory of Rieti offers an extraordinary experience of pure and wild nature that you can see while following along the roads and paths from solitary peaks to fresh valleys, from gentle hills furrowed with olive trees and secular woods. The intense greens of the slopes and the golden colors of the wheat are broken up between thousands of courses of pure water. As many as eleven lakes dot the territory. The Nuria massif is where the Peschiera Springs begin and, with its limpid waters, supplies Rome’s aqueduct.

Rome

Founded upon the Palatine as a rustic village of huts like so many other villages scattered across the range of hills separating the Apennines from the Tyrrhenian Sea, Rome was forced from the very beginning to engage in a bloody struggle for survival with the neighboring towns of Veii, Gabii, and Fidenae.

Ten centuries later, it had become the largest metropolis in the ancient world; during the middle Ages, Rome shrank to the size of a large country village once again, and from the sixteenth century onward it grew steadily. Despite itself, it has since become the capital of Italy and a modern metropolis; a bureaucratic inferno and a single, mammoth traffic jam for its two-and-a-half million inhabitants, a paradise and a spectacle for the nearly-as-many visitors, pilgrims and tourists, who come here each year. In literature, poetry, and film, Rome has been enshrined as a myt

 Still, whether one knows the city by heart, on film, or via the printed word, Rome succeeds in amazing and astonishing whoever arrives. Whether one is coming from Provence or Hokkaido, from Illinois or from the Veneto, the Eternal City welcomes every visitor with its ancient stones and its relaxed style, with the gentle evening breezes that waft in cool air and the tangy smells of the sea, the crystalline light of sunsets that seem to set the Roman ruins aflame, along with the ruddy sky and the Renaissance palazzi of the centre of the city. 

Ancient stones and mysteries, monuments and legends.

A city of warriors and the rude founder of an Empire, builder of roads and author of a body of laws that is still studied and used around the world, Rome is also a cradle and wet-nurse to mysteries. If the Imperial age saw the arrival in the Eternal City of cults and religions from the East — most popular among them being that of the god Mithras, which left in the city many splendid underground temples — countless other corners of the ancient city preserve a fascinating and mysterious aura. Particularly popular with tourists is the "Bocca della Verita," or "mouth of truth," sheltered beneath the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin; the relic takes its name from an ancient tradition. It was believed that a perjurer who placed his hand in the mouth of the river god carved in stone — actually a very old drain cover — would instantly die.

Just a short walk from the Forum, the Temple of Vesta was where the Vestal Virgins guarded the sacred flame, a relic of one of the oldest cults in the city, along with that of the lapis niger, or "black stone," the mysterious monolithic altar that, tradition has it, marks the tomb of Romulus.  

Viterbo

Typical medieval city, Viterbo rises where once was the ancient Etruscan suburb of Surena that in archaic time was abandoned on the hill where currently is the Romanesque Cattedrale di San Lorenzo of the XII century. The suburb became then a modest Roman colony, maybe called, Vicus Elbii or Vetus Urbs, denomina­tion from which seems to derive the actual name of Viterbo; it is quot­ed in the documents as Castrum Viterbii from mid VIII century.

 In the 4th century Viterbo was donated to the Church by the emper­or Carlo Magno, and it owes to the Papacy its period of great shine, above all, when it became Papal Siege in the XIII and XIV centuries. Viterbo, is therefore rich in Etruscan and Romans testimonies, but is characterized nevertheless by a medieval artistic and urban style of an ancient and monumental charm that involves every district. Towered boundaries and dark houses in peperino are alternated by mullioned windows and little windows, to austere buildings and to Romanesque churches, in a magic game of lights and shades that run between narrow lanes and piazzette, up and down the typical profferlis (external staircases), among many foun­tains.

 Viterbo is undoubtedly rich of monuments of extreme historical-artistic interest: the Palazzo Comunale, the thirteenth century Palazzo del Podesta, the Palazzo della Prefettura, the fif­teenth century Palazzo Chigi, the picturesque Palazzo Farnese and die adjacent Ponte del Duomo partly Etruscan, the Palazzo Papale with its beautiful Loggia, the picturesque Casa Poscia, the Renaissance Palazzo Santoro, the fifteenth century Rocca Albomoz and the aus­tere Palazzo degli Alessandri that towers in the characteristic Quartiere medievale di San Pellegrino, a suggestive area almost entirely preserved... And then the Romanesque Churches of Sant'Angelo in Spata, that of del Gesu, that of Santa Maria Nuova and that of San Giovanni in Zoccoli, the fourteenth century Chiesetta of Santa Maria della Salute, the Church of San Sisto, the Church of Santa Maria della Verita, the Church of San Francesco, the small Church of San Marco founded by cistercenses Monks and the famous Santuario di SantaRosa in which the mummified body of Santa Rosa da Viterbo, patron of the city is guarded...