Anzio

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Anzio

Anzio is a city and comune
Comune

In Italy, the comune, is the basic administrative division of both provinces and regions, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality....
on the coast of the Lazio region of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, about 57 km south of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
. Well known for its seaside harbor setting, it is a fishing port popular with tourists and a departure point for ferries and hydroplanes to the Pontine Islands

Pontine Islands

The Pontine Islands are an archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy. The islands were collectively named after the largest island in the group, Ponza....
of Ponza

Ponza

Ponza is the largest of the Italy Pontine Islands archipelago, located 33 km south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina in the Lazio region....
, Palmarola

Palmarola

Palmarola is a craggy, mostly uninhabited island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy. It is the second largest of the Pontine Islands and located about 10 kilometres west from Ponza....
and Ventotene

Ventotene

Ventotene is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Campania, Italy. It is the remains of an ancient volcano, and is part of the Pontine Islands....
. The city bears great historical significance as the site of a crucial Allied landing during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
.

ed Antium in ancient times, it was the capital of the Volsci

Volsci

The Volsci were an ancient Italic peoples, well known in the history of the first century of the Roman Republic. They then inhabited the partly hilly, partly marshy district of the south of Latium, bounded by the Aurunci and Samnites on the south, the Hernici on the east, and stretching roughly from Norba and Cora in the north to Anzio in t...
people until it was conquered by the Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
.

With the latter expansion of Rome it was just far enough away to be insulated from the riots and tumults of Rome.

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Encyclopedia

Italy

Rome

Pontine Islands

The Pontine Islands are an archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy. The islands were collectively named after the largest island in the group, Ponza....
of Ponza

Ponza

Palmarola

Ventotene

World War II

History

Ancient era

Called Antium in ancient times, it was the capital of the Volsci

Volsci

Ancient Rome

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
returned from exile, it was at Antium that he reassembled the battered remains of his libraries, where the scrolls would be secure. Leading Romans built magnificent seaside villas at Antium. The Julian and Claudian emperors frequently visited it: Gaius Maecenas

Gaius Maecenas

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas was a confidant and political advisor to Augustus as well as an important patron for the new generation of 'Augustan' poets....
had a villa at Antium; both Emperor Caligula

Caligula

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus , more commonly known by his nickname Caligula , was the third Roman Emperor, reigning from 16 March 37 until his assassination on 24 January 41....
and Nero

Nero

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus , born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, also called Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, was the fifth and final Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty....
were born in Antium; the latter founded a colony of veterans and built a new harbour, the projecting moles of which are still existing.

Remains of Roman villas are conspicuous all along the shore, both to the east and to the north-west of the town. Many works of art have been found: the Fanciulla d'Anzio, the Borghese Gladiator

Borghese Gladiator

The so-called Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic lifesize marble sculpture that is actually of a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BCE....
(Louvre Museum) and the Apollo Belvedere

Apollo Belvedere

The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere, also called the Pythian Apollo, is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity....
in the Vatican were all discovered in the ruins of villas at Antium.

Of the villas, the most famous was the Villa of Nero at Antium which cannot be certainly identified, but is generally placed at the so-called Arco Muto, where remains of a theatre (discovered in 1712 and covered up again) also exist. It extended along the coast of the Capo d'Anzio some 800 meters of seafront. Nero razed the former villa on the site, where Augustus had received a delegation from Rome to acclaim him Pater patriae ("Father of his Country") to rebuild on its foundations a villa on a more imperial scale, which was used by each Emperor in turn, up to the Severans. Of the famous temple of Fortune (Horace

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
, Od. i. 35) no remains are known.

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages Antium was deserted in favour of Nettuno: at the end of the 17th century Innocent XII

Pope Innocent XII

Pope Innocent XII , born Antonio Pignatelli was Pope from 1691 to 1700. He was the successor of Pope Alexander VIII ....
and Clement XI restored the harbour, not on the old site but to the east of it, with the opening to the east, a mistake which leads to its being frequently silted up; it has a depth of about 5 m. The sea is encroaching slightly at Anzio, but some miles farther north-west the old Roman coast-line now lies slightly inland (see Tiber

Tiber

The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 kilometres through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea....
). The Volscian city stood on higher ground and somewhat away from the shore, though it extended down to it. It was defended by a deep ditch, which can still be traced, and by walls, a portion of which, on the eastern side, constructed of rectangular blocks of tufa, was brought to light in 1897. The modern place is a summer resort and has several villas, among them the Villa Borghese.

World War II

Anzio and Nettuno

Nettuno

Nettuno is a town and comune of the province of Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy, 60 kilometers south of Rome. It is named in honour of the Roman god Poseidon....
are also notable as sites of an Allied forces landing (Operation Shingle

Operation Shingle

Operation Shingle , during the Italian Campaign of World War II, was an Allies of World War II amphibious landing against Axis powers forces in the area of Anzio, Italy and Nettuno, Italy....
) and ensuing four-month battle during World War II

World War II

Anzio War Cemetery

The Commonwealth Anzio War Cemetery is to be found about a kilometer from Anzio town in Italy. It is located 70 kilometers south of Rome. It should not be confused with the Beach Head Cemetery which is for Americans....
and Beach Head War Cemetery are located here.

American forces (5th Army) were surrounded by Germans in the caves of Pozzoli in February 1944. They were surrounded for a week and then suffered heavy casualties. There is a movie called Anzio

Anzio (film)

Anzio, also known as Lo Sbarco di Anzio or The Battle of Anzio, is a 1968 in film war film about Operation Shingle, the 1944 Allied seaborne assault on the Italian port of Anzio in World War II....
(1968, directed by Edward Dmytryk

Edward Dmytryk

Edward Dmytryk was an United States film director who was amongst the Hollywood blacklist#The Hollywood Ten and other 1947 blacklistees, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy era Second Red Scare....
) about the battle at Anzio starring Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an Academy Award-nominated United States film actor, author, composer and singer. Mitchum is largely remembered for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s....
, based on a book by Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

Lewis John Wynford Vaughan-Thomas Order of the British Empire was a Wales newspaper journalist and radio and television broadcaster with a lengthy career....
.

Main sights

In Anzio can be found the Anzio Beachhead British Military Cemetery and a Beachhead Museum. The American Military Cemetery is in Nettuno. About 8 km north of the town there is a WWF

World Wide Fund for Nature

The World Wide Fund for Nature is an Internationalism non-governmental organization for the Conservation biology, Environmental science and Restoration ecology of the environment , formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in the United States and Canada....
park with sulfur springs and a medieval tower, Tor Caldara. All along the coast a large number of beaches and sea resorts can be found, including hotels and the famous fish restaurants of the port of Anzio. The city once hosted a Casino

Casino

A casino is, in the modern sense of the word, a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships and other tourist attractions....
that is no longer active and now hosts cultural events. In the southern part of the town, close to the border with Nettuno, are many Italian art nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international Art movement and style of art, architecture and applied art?especially the decorative arts?that peaked in popularity at Fin de si?cle of the 20th century ....
style houses.

Transportation

Anzio is connected to Rome by the Via Nettunense (SS207), the Via Ardeatina (SS601) and by the Roma-Nettuno railroad that stops in the stations of Lavinio, Villa Claudia, Marechiaro, Anzio Colonia and Anzio.

External links

(in Italian; illustrated reconstruction of the villa)