Guidonia was born in 1937 as the «city of the air»: built beside the experimental airfield where the Italian air force set its records, it keeps the rationalist plan and the vocation — the military airport, named after Alfredo Barbieri, is still there. Montecelio, the perched medieval village that gives the second half of the name, looks down on it from its fortress: it was the original comune, and the new town was grafted onto it.
The third comune in Lazio by population, it is also a comune sparso, with no single centre that commands the others: the territory, almost entirely flat, lies between the Via Nomentana and the Via Tiburtina, just beyond Rome's ring road, and is divided into a dozen hamlets. This is travertine country: the quarries that clad Saint Peter's and the Colosseum are still working. Tivoli, with Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este, is ten minutes away: sleeping here and visiting them is a shrewd move.
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📅 The feast day falls on 10 December, but is celebrated on the third Sunday of September
Guidonia Montecelio celebrates Our Lady of Loreto on the third Sunday of September, in the hillside church built in 1938 together with the plan for the new town; Guidonia, merged with the old municipality of Montecelio in 1937, was born around the aeronautical hub willed by the Fascist regime.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
