What to see in Civitavecchia, one-day itinerary including the main monuments and places of interest, including Forte Michelangelo, Terme Taurine and Madonna delle Lacrime Sanctuary.
Tourist information
Located about 70 kilometers from Rome, Civitavecchia is a city and a major port on the Tyrrhenian coast.
It was founded by Trajan around 106 AD, as a port of southern Etruria which was given the name of Centumcellae.
In the ninth century, following the destruction caused by the Saracens, the surviving population took refuge in the woods of Tolfa creating a small village, and only decades later returned to its place of origin, rebuilding the city with the name of Civitas vetula, the current Civitavecchia, rich in historical evidence.
The archaeological areas of the Terme Taurine, or Terme di Traiano, located on a hill that is located about 5 km from the center of Civitavecchia, testify to the Roman era.
The remains in the archaeological park testify to the ancient splendor of the thermal complex, whose water today flows to the Terme della Ficoncella located a few kilometers away.
A majestic work of the Renaissance is Forte Michelangelo, built to protect the port.
What see
The fortress was started by Bramante, continued by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and completed by Michelangelo, during the sixteenth century, when under the Papal States, the city was fortified and enriched with valuable buildings, the port was strengthened and works were built that unfortunately, in part, they were destroyed during the bombing of the Second World War.
The fort has the shape of a quadrilateral, with four angular cylindrical towers and the Male of octagonal shape, while in the inner courtyard there is the beautiful fountain in white travertine, the work of Vanvitelli and called the mask.
The bombings of 1943 almost completely destroyed the medieval fortress built on the ruins of the Roman port, which was considerably transformed in the mid-fifteenth century.
Today the ruins of the structure, the first nucleus of the medieval city, remain.
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In the Church of Sant'Agostino, or Santuario Madonnina delle Lacrime, located in Pantano in Civitavecchia, there is a statuette of the Madonna who on 2 February 1995 began to cry blood in the garden of a family in the parish.
The image, coming from Medjugorje, cried fourteen times from February 2 to March 15, the last of which while the Bishop of the diocese Monsignor Girolamo Grillo was holding it in his hands, who, once all the necessary investigations had been carried out and established that the tears were of human blood, had it placed in a display case in the Church of Sant'Agostino, so that it could be exposed to the veneration of the faithful.
