What to see · Marino

More places of interest

• Mitreo di Marino

  The Mithraeum of Marino is one of the best-preserved Mithraic places of worship. It was discovered by chance in 1962, during the digging of a cave in a cellar at the foot of the old town, on the steps leading to the railway station. At first the news was kept hidden; then the authorities took charge, and today the mithraeum belongs to the municipality.

  What to see

  The sanctuary was made in a Roman cistern with a barrel vault cut into the peperino rock, 29 metres long, a little over three wide and three high: this is shown by the cocciopesto plaster on the walls and the mouldings at the corners between walls and floor. Along the gallery were the benches for the initiates, probably of wood, of which a faint trace remains on the floor; on the walls are the marks of shelves and partitions and the small niches for lamps. At the start of the gallery the two torch-bearers are painted, Cautes with the torch raised and Cautopates with the torch lowered.

  At the far end is the painting, of the second century: Mithras, dressed in Eastern fashion with Phrygian cap, tunic and red trousers, cuts the throat of the white bull inside a cave, while a dog and a snake drink its blood and a scorpion bites it; ears of wheat sprout from the animal's tail. In the god's cloak the vault of heaven appears, blue and dotted with stars. At the sides, eight panels tell the deeds of Mithras. In front of the painting is a small pillar with the dedication of Cresces, steward of Alfius Severus, «to the unconquered god».

  Visiting

  The mithraeum is an underground space: openings, booking and visiting arrangements should be checked with Marino town council.

  Our editors' tip

  In Italy there are only three mithraea in which the mystery scene is painted: the Barberini Mithraeum in Rome, the one at Santa Maria Capua Vetere and this one. Marino's also stands out for its technique: the painting was done in encaustic directly on the plaster of the cistern.

• Palazzo Colonna

  Palazzo Colonna is the historic palace in the centre of Marino and the seat of the town council. It was built between the fifteen-thirties and the sixteen-twenties at the wish of the Colonna, who had bought the fief in 1417, on the structures of the fortress the Orsini had raised between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The design was entrusted to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who planned a four-sided layout with four towers at the corners, in essence a fortress; the present appearance, left unfinished on two fronts, is however due to later designers, among them Girolamo Rainaldi.

  What to see

  The palace should be read together with the town: around 1532 Ascanio I Colonna, Vittoria's brother, began the urban renewal of the fief and had the straight line of today's via Roma opened, leading directly to the residence. In 1566 the palace was only a quarter finished, but the broad peperino staircase rising from the level of today's piazza della Repubblica to the atrium already existed. On the south-west front there remains a stretch of battered wall in small peperino blocks: popular tradition attributes it to Bramante, but more probably it is a remnant of the fourteenth-century Orsini fortress.

  The Colonna kept it until 1916, when they granted it in perpetual lease to the town council. The air raid of 2 February 1944 destroyed it almost completely, and it was rebuilt by 1958.

  Visiting

  It is a public building in use: the areas open to visitors and the opening times should be checked with Marino town council.

  Our editors' tip

  In the fortress that preceded the palace the poet Vittoria Colonna was born, and in 1495 King Charles VIII of France and Cesare Borgia stayed there. In 1423 Pope Martin V, a Colonna, had come here to the bedside of his brother Giordano.

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