Castel San Pietro Romano

The hilltop sits three kilometers above Palestrina and forty east of Rome, and has been inhabited since the late Bronze Age. The acropolis of ancient Praeneste, the Latin city known for the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, occupied this same ground before the medieval village grew inside it, which is why cyclopean walls from that earlier phase still ring the upper settlement built centuries later.

In the twelfth century the Colonna raised a castrum here for defensive control over Palestrina below. It was destroyed in 1298 and rebuilt twice over the following two centuries, then restored again in 1482, after which it lost its military role entirely and served the community as a grain store. The village also saw the 1848 Battle of Palestrina, when Garibaldi's Roman Republic troops fought soldiers of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies on these slopes, and later lent its streets and terraces to Wyler's cameras before the Borghi più belli d'Italia membership followed.

What stands today is a single hill occupied twice over, once for a Latin acropolis and once for a Colonna stronghold, with the second built directly on the bones of the first.

From Rome (FCO), about 1h 29m by car.

Naples / Salerno (NAP) is about 2 hours away.

By car from the centre of Naples 2h 12m or Pescara 2h 26m.

Coming by train into Roma Termini? Castel San Pietro Romano is about 56 minutes away by road.

Every town within reach of Rome airport.