On 3 November 1867, Garibaldi's volunteers marching on Rome were stopped here by papal troops and French soldiers armed with the new chassepot rifles: the Battle of Mentana ended that bid to complete Italian unification and wrote the town into every history book. The memorial ossuary and a Garibaldian museum keep the day's memory.
The municipality of 20,772, twenty-nine kilometres from Rome, has far older roots: this was ancient Nomentum, the Latin city that named the Via Nomentana. The medieval quarter around the Borghese castle still keeps its old scale, half an hour from the capital's traffic.
Near Mentana
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
