The regional capital of Latium isRome.
Everybody knows it: the pull of the
Eternal City is great and irresistible, the capital of the Christian world, the
seat of the Papacy, the incomparable home of architectural and artistic
masterpieces of the ancient world. Is it possible to resist the fascination of
Rome? It may be difficult, but why not try to spend a few days "exploring" Latium?
In this way you would discover a region of fascinating nature and environment, with an extraordinary variety of landscape: wide beaches, great
pinewoods, mountains like Terminillo (an excellent ski resort), gentle
hills and expansive plains, a region rich in artistic monuments that bring to
mind
the long and extraordinary history of this region in the most immediate
fashion. At Tarquinia, Cerveteri and Tuscania, necropolises and
museums bear evidence of ancient and mysterious Etruscan people (seventh to
sixth centuries B.C.) who ruled central Italy before the rise of Rome.
There are
countless testimonies of the Roman and later historical eras outside Rome, in
the other provinces of Latium and in the local centers: Rieti, Viterbo,
Latina and Frosinone. It is enough to think of the splendid and
grandiose Villa Adriana in Tivoli (where the renaissance Villa
d'Este can also be found), the seventeenth-century Palazzo Barberini in Palestrina, and the Cathedral in Anagni. The same grandiose
style of the Roman religion seems to be projected and duplicated outside Rome:
in the abbeys of Montecassino, Casamari, and Fossanova and in the
monasteries of Subiaco, places dear to Saint Benedict of Norcia.
Latium, therefore, is not just Rome. And Rome is also Latium.
In this way you would discover a region of fascinating nature and environment, with an extraordinary variety of landscape: wide beaches, great
pinewoods, mountains like Terminillo (an excellent ski resort), gentle
hills and expansive plains, a region rich in artistic monuments that bring to
mind
the long and extraordinary history of this region in the most immediate
fashion. At Tarquinia, Cerveteri and Tuscania, necropolises and
museums bear evidence of ancient and mysterious Etruscan people (seventh to
sixth centuries B.C.) who ruled central Italy before the rise of Rome. 