Gaeta's Split Mountain is a vertical cleft in the rock sheer above the sea, descended by a stairway between walls you can touch with both hands: at the bottom, the Turk's Grotto and a sanctuary that pilgrims and the curious have visited for centuries. Above, the medieval quarter of Sant'Erasmo and the Angevin-Aragonese castle recall the fortress it was — last refuge of Pius IX in 1848.
Seven beaches, Serapo first, make Gaeta a bathing capital of southern Lazio. The tiella, the fishermen's octopus-and-escarole pie, is the flavour to take home.
Near Gaeta
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
