What to See in Formia: Attractions & Sights

More places of interest

Museo archeologico nazionale di Formia

The Museo archeologico nazionale di Formia occupies the ground floor of the south wing of the Town Hall, in the nineteenth-century rooms known as the «Stalloni dei Borbone». It was set up in 1968; in 1997 it was enlarged and installed in its present rooms. The collection is made up mostly of sculptures, many found in the monumental area of the Forum and in the surrounding territory, and has grown with the finds from the seaside villa of Gianola. It is run by the Ministry of Culture, through the Direzione regionale Musei del Lazio.
What to see
In the entrance hall a panel offers a reconstruction of Formiae in the imperial age, beside a selection of amphorae, mostly of the Dressel 1 type, the container most used between the second and first centuries BC to carry the wine of central and southern Italy all over the Mediterranean. The first room is devoted to the portraiture of the early imperial age: male nudes inspired by Greek statuary, with highly individual portrait heads, and five male portraits from the villa of Gianola. In the second are the togate figures: two figures of «sacrificers» with veiled heads keep traces of colour on the togas and on the eyes, a reminder that ancient statues were finished with paint.
The third room brings together the female statuary, with two examples of the type known as the «Small Herculaneum Woman» and a portrait of a mature woman with an elaborate hairstyle, perhaps the empress Livia. In the inner gallery the group of Leda and the swan, of the first century AD, a copy of a Greek original attributed to Timotheos, stands before a fresco in the Fourth Style: both come from the cryptoporticoes of piazza della Vittoria. There are also a garden fresco and a double-faced herm of Apollo. The outer gallery gathers the funerary finds, among them the altars of two women, Iulia Faustilla and Victorina, and capitals.
Visiting
Opening times and tickets should be checked on the website of the Direzione regionale Musei del Lazio.
Our editors' tip
In the second room look closely at one of the togate figures: the red left on the toga and the ring on the left ring finger point to a person of high rank, perhaps a local magistrate. In the first, the statue that still has its head recalls in its features the official portraits of the family of Augustus, and according to some scholars is Gaius Caesar, the grandson and designated heir who died young.
Eremo di San Michele Arcangelo

The hermitage of San Michele Arcangelo is a small church set into the rock, on the slopes of Monte Altino, in the Aurunci mountains, at 1220 metres above sea level, in the territory of Maranola, a hamlet of Formia. It stands on a sheer ridge, along the path that leads from Sella Sola to the summit of the Redentore. The rock sanctuary goes back to 830, and is mentioned in the Codex diplomaticus cajetanus. Today's church comes from a decision of 1893: that year Archbishop Francesco Niola climbed the mountain on a pastoral visit and pointed to the inside of the cave as the right place for a new building, sheltered from the water, the falling rocks and the ice that had ruined the previous one. The design was by the engineer Silvio Forte of Trivio.
What to see
The stone façade, Neo-Gothic, closes a natural cavity and faces west: at its centre is a pointed-arch door, surmounted by a rose window that lights the interior. On the arch, beside the inscription «Angelorum Principi», two dates are carved: 830, the year the old monastery was founded, and 5 August 1895, the day of the inauguration. The stained glass that closed the rose window and the other openings has been lost.
Inside, the rock was squared off to obtain a space twelve metres long, ten wide and seven high. On the back wall a niche, also cut into the rock, holds the statue of St Michael. Spring water drips more or less everywhere from the vault: the walls themselves act as a spring, and the water, very cold, is collected in masonry basins.
Visiting
You arrive on foot. The path, about seven kilometres long, is reported to present no particular difficulties and to be suitable for families too, but it is not recommended in high summer because it is entirely exposed to the sun. Conditions and the opening of the hermitage should be checked with the Parco dei Monti Aurunci.
Our editors' tip
The statue of the saint, of peperino stone, is not here all year. On the Sunday after 13 June the men of Maranola carry it up in their arms along the mountain paths, and on the Sunday before 29 September another procession takes it back down, to the church of the Annunziata. The folk tale says that it chose the place itself: it stood in a cave on the shore at Gianola and, offended by the sailors' language, went off to the mountains. It was restored in 1888 by the sculptor Giuseppe Blasetti.