Rocca Montis Dragonis
Mondragone
Hidden gemCastles
The story
On Monte Petrino, a ruined medieval stronghold with square and round towers, from which the eye runs from Ischia to the headland of Circeo.
Access
footpath
More gems in Mondragone
- History & archaeology
Museo del Cane — Foof
Mondragone (CE)
Europe's first museum devoted entirely to the dog: between collars, art and a shelter for strays, it tells the ancient bond between man and his best friend.
- In the water & diving
Terme di Sinuessa
Mondragone (CE)
At the foot of Monte Petrino flow the sulphurous waters the Romans called Aquae Sinuessanae, beside a city largely swallowed by the sea.
- Hiking
Cima del Monte Massico
Mondragone (CE)
From the ridge that divides the Campanian plain from the Gulf of Gaeta, the eye reaches as far as Ischia. On these slopes, legend says, Bacchus disguised as a wayfarer asked old Falernus for hospitality, and to thank him made the vines grow that would yield the wine of emperors.
MuseumsMuseo Archeologico Biagio Greco
Mondragone (CE)
A small provincial museum guarding the fragments of the ager Falernus: votive terracottas, grave goods, the remains brought back up from Sinuessa, the Roman city that today sleeps beneath the sand and the sea.
More gems: Castles
- Castles
Palazzo Sansevero
P.za San Domenico Maggiore
On the corner of piazza San Domenico the palace of the princes of Sangro still carries the echo of the night when Gesualdo surprised and killed Maria d'Avalos and her lover.
CastlesCastel Capuano
zona Garibaldi
An old Norman castle that for four centuries served as the courthouse of Naples: here justice held session in frescoed halls, in the shadow of nearby Porta Capuana.
CastlesPalazzo Donn'Anna
Posillipo
The unfinished seventeenth-century palace juts sheer over the water, dark and labyrinthine: through its empty rooms legend has the shadow of Donn'Anna still wandering.
CastlesCasina Vanvitelliana
Lago Fusaro, Bacoli
An octagonal pavilion that seems to float on Lago Fusaro, a Bourbon hunting lodge reached by a little bridge, among reflections and morning mists.
CastlesVilla Lysis (Fersen)
Capri
Built in 1905 by the poet Fersen and dedicated to love and to sorrow, an Art Nouveau villa among the pines, with a Latin inscription at the entrance and the opium room hidden below.
CastlesPalazzo d'Avalos (ex carcere)
Terra Murata
First the palace of the d'Avalos family, then a prison until the late twentieth century: the empty cells command Terra Murata, suspended between the memory of the inmates and the silence that lives there now.