Every design for Cisterna Di Latina

Did you know Saint Paul stopped here on his way to Rome? In his day the place was Tres Tabernae, the "Three Taverns", a post station on the Appian Way where the Christians of Rome came out to meet him. Its three taverns are still on the town's coat of arms.

Palazzo Caetani crowns the small hill where the people of Tres Tabernae resettled once the marshes and the Saracens had driven them out. Beneath it lies an ancient cistern, the "Nero's Cistern" of tradition, which gave Cisterna its name. The Frangipani walled the borough, a pope once fled here from Frederick Barbarossa, and the Caetani later turned the castle into the palace that stands today. The Appia Antica still runs through the countryside, and within the municipality lies the Garden of Ninfa. In January 1944 the Battle of Cisterna was fought around the town.

If Cisterna is where you belong — the palace on the hill, the Fontana Biondi, the flat green edge of the Agro Pontino — this map is a way to keep it close wherever you go.