Latina

Where to stay in Latina

Latina was built from nothing: the foundation stone was laid on 30 June 1932 at a place called Cancello del Quadrato, and barely six months later, on 18 December, the town was inaugurated under the name Littoria. It was the administrative centre planned for the newly drained Pontine plain, settled mainly by colonists from Veneto, Friuli and Emilia. The present name dates from 1945, after the end of the war. The same plan produced other new towns across the Pontine plain, such as Sabaudia and Pontinia, along with dozens of rural hamlets built for the settlers.

The planned city

The urban design is the work of the architect Oriolo Frezzotti, who laid out a radial plan: from Piazza del Popolo, the heart of an octagonal core, straight streets fan out towards the seven ring boulevards. The square is overlooked by the Civic Tower of the town hall and by the Monumento all’Acqua, a fountain with a large travertine sphere. Not far away, the Post Office building is the work of Angiolo Mazzoni, who also designed the railway station, while the Prefecture houses Duilio Cambellotti’s painted cycle on the reclamation of the Pontine plain.

A detail that tells the city’s story

The cathedral is dedicated to San Marco: the choice of the evangelist who is Venice’s patron saint is explained by the Venetian origin of many of the first inhabitants. It is the kind of detail that makes legible the history of a city built in a few years by people who came from far away, and it recurs in the street names, dedicated to the ancient Italic peoples: Aurunci, Etruscans, Volsci. Every 18 December the city marks the anniversary of its inauguration with a ceremony in Piazza del Quadrato, before the monument to the reclamation workers.

The coast and the Circeo National Park

The municipal coastline runs for some twenty kilometres and its eastern part falls within the Circeo National Park, which protects coastal dunes, brackish lakes and a strip of lowland forest now rare in Italy. Lake Fogliano is the largest brackish body of water in the area, with its eighteenth-century hamlet and the botanical garden created by the Caetani family. Southwards the coast continues to Sperlonga and Gaeta, while ferries for Ponza leave from the nearby ports.

Where to stay

Accommodation divides between the centre, convenient for business travellers or for anyone visiting the planned city, and the seafront area, more oriented towards summer. Rome is a little over an hour away, which makes Latina an alternative base during the capital’s busiest periods. For travel around the region there is our guide on getting around Rome and Lazio; a full overview is in where to stay in Lazio.