Every design for Formia

Cicero met his end just outside Formia, on the Appian Way, and his monumental tomb can still be seen near the town where he kept a favourite villa. He was in good company: in Republican times this stretch of coast was a resort for wealthy Romans, and Horace called it the city of the Mamurrae after the family whose villa at Gianola still stands. Formia itself was founded by the Aurunci and became Roman early, its safe passage rewarded with citizenship.

What sets Formia apart is how much of that world survives. Remains of Roman villas stretch along the shore from the fishponds of the Nuovo Porto towards Gaeta, there are traces of an amphitheatre and the teatro romano, and the Cisternone Romano, dug deep underground, is one of the largest urban cisterns the Romans ever built. Legend adds its own layer, with Lamus, son of Poseidon and king of the Laestrygones, as founder. Later the town split into two hill burghs, Mola and Castellone; the Torre di Mola still marks the first.

If Formia is yours — the beach at Vindicio, the old seafront of Mola, the light across the Gulf of Gaeta — this map lets you take all of it with you.