Cicero loved his villa at Formia, and here Antony's assassins caught and killed him in 43 BC: the monumental tomb on the Appian Way — a Roman tower twenty-four metres tall — is the farewell of Rome's greatest orator. The town between the Aurunci mountains and the gulf was aristocracy's resort: the Roman cisternone beneath the centre, a visitable hydraulic masterpiece, measures its standing.
Today Formia lives on the sea and on ferries for Ponza and Ventotene; the Mola and Castellone quarters keep their towers and lanes. Gulf seafood cooking, with Gaeta's tiella pie next door, does the rest.
Near Formia
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
