Anagni

Anagni sits on a hilltop in Ciociaria, fifty-five kilometers southeast of Rome, looking over the Sacco valley and the Hernici mountains. It is one of four communes called the Città dei Papi, the others being Segni, Ferentino, and Veroli; four medieval popes were born here, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Alexander IV, and a fourth who would later be attacked in his own palace. Agents of Philip IV of France, acting on his orders, stormed that palace on the hill and physically assaulted the reigning pope inside it.

The centralized medieval papacy died with him within the month, and within five years the papal court had moved to Avignon. The town's medieval fabric runs along Via Vittorio Emanuele, where the communal loggia, a frescoed church, and a house layered with nineteenth-century inscriptions sit within walking distance of each other on the same climb up from the lower town to the cathedral above. A single event inside a single palace on this hill is the reason the town's name outgrew its size: four popes were born here, but it is one pope's injury, not birth, that historians still date the end of an era to.

From Rome (FCO), about 1h 26m by car.

Naples / Salerno (NAP) is about 1h 42m away.

By car from the centre of Naples 1h 47m or Salerno 2h 11m.

There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive without a car.

Coming from Rome or Naples?

Coming by train into Roma Termini? Anagni is about 54 minutes away by road.

Every town within reach of Rome airport.