Civitavecchia

The name is a nickname: when the Saracens destroyed the city in 828, the survivors fled to the Tolfa hills and founded a new settlement, Cencelle; when they came back down to the sea, they called the old site Civitas Vetula, the old town, to tell the two apart. Before that it was Centum Cellae, and nobody knows the reason for that either: perhaps the hundred coves along the shore, perhaps the vaults of the harbour, perhaps the hundred rooms of the villa Trajan had built next door.

Trajan wanted it as the port of Rome — Pliny the Younger described the works in a letter of 107 — and nineteen centuries later it still does that job: Civitavecchia is Europe's leading port for cruise passengers, the capital's sea gate. Guarding the old dock stands Forte Michelangelo, begun by Bramante and finished, in its keep, to a design attributed to Michelangelo. Outside town the Terme Taurine, the Roman baths the emperors loved, are worth the detour, and at the Ficoncella you can still bathe in hot water in the open air as people did two thousand years ago. The legend of old Leander the sailor, who supposedly persuaded everyone to return to the coast, is instead a romantic invention of the nineteenth century. Rome is an hour away by train: many cruise passengers have no idea what they miss by staying aboard.