A landscape with an age-old history, it was crossed by the Appian Way and it was the seaside residence of the patrician Romans who lived in Formia, like Cicero, the great orator. Jagged coasts where the Saracens suffered terrible defeats, like the one they were inflicted in the Battle of Garigliano in 915. A land where the Angevins and the Aragoneses competed for power and built many castles, like the fortress in Gaeta, which became the flagship of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the royal family of the Bourbons. It is the land of the Pontine Marshes' reclamation - faced by many Popes and finally solved by Mussolini - a huge undertaking whose memory is engraved for posterity in the foundation of Latina and Sabaudia. History and myth intertwine and chase each other in places where - according to legend - the enchantress Circe lived and Ulysses went ashore during his long wandering. With its strong popular tradition, this is a land of brigands, like the notorious Fra' Diavolo in Itri. Fascinated by this extraordinary scenery, the artists who came to Italy during the Grand Tour depicted it in many paintings and described it in many writings, as Goethe did. |
