Every design for Anzio

Early in the morning the fishing boats come back into Anzio's harbour while the ferries and hydrofoils load up for Ponza, Palmarola and Ventotene. This is a working port and a seaside resort at once, spread along a low stretch of Tyrrhenian coast south of Rome, with its old centre gathered on the promontory of Capo d'Anzio.

The Villa di Nerone, an imperial palace whose remains lie along the shore, recalls the ancient Antium that stood here, capital of the Volsci before Rome absorbed it; close by the Grotte di Nerone open onto the sea, and the Museo Civico Archeologico and the Teatro Romano fill in the picture. The modern town grew up around a harbour rebuilt by the popes and completed in 1700, became a resort in the late nineteenth century, and in 1925 sent the first telegraph cable straight to New York. Then came Operation Shingle, the Allied landing of the Second World War, remembered in the Museo dello sbarco di Anzio.

Pick out the Villa di Nerone on the map and you have the whole of Anzio in one spot: emperors, fishermen and the sea between them.