Every design for Ladispoli

Ladispoli takes its name from its founder, Prince Ladislao Odescalchi, who laid out the town in 1888 and joined his own name to polis, the Greek word for city. The ground beneath is far older: here stood Alsium, one of the ports of the Etruscan city of Cerveteri and later a seaside retreat for wealthy Romans, one that Cicero wrote about.

Ask anyone who has spent summers here and they talk about the dark, iron-rich sand, the wooden bridges over the Sanguinara and the fosso Vaccina near the seafront, and evenings around Piazza Ladislao Odescalchi. Some remember the years when thousands of emigrants from the Soviet Union rented flats here while they waited for visas to the United States, Canada or Australia, keeping the town busy even out of season. Others think of cycling out to the woods at Palo or watching birds at the Monumento naturale Palude di Torre Flavia.

Whoever comes back finds the same low coast between Cerveteri and Fiumicino, the Roman villa at Marina di Palo by the water, and the feeling of being back where the summers began.