Gaeta: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern

Last Sunday, I decided to take advantage of my mobility and go for a drive for some sightseeing. I wound up settling on Gaeta, a fairly small town on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The place comes up often in the sources that I'm reading for my dissertation, but I'd never had the opportunity to visit before; the town doesn't have its own train station, and so visiting is fairly tricky. Even taking a combination of trains and buses would have meant over 3 hours of travel each way, while the drive was only about 1! It did mean braving some of Italy's state roads though, 1 lane going in each direction where it is apparently normal to tailgate someone until they move to the right of the lane, at which point you pass them--regardless of any oncoming traffic.

But, after a little white-knuckle driving, I arrived in the gorgeous seaside town. Though it's near the end of the summer, the weather is still hot enough that quite a few people were coming to enjoy the beaches and the breeze off the sea. And of course, the incredible views:

These are some shots of the modern town, but Gaeta has a very long history. It's one of the southernmost points in Lazio, the region of Italy where I'm living on this trip, and is closer to Naples than Rome. The city is also a part of the "Riviera d'Ulisse"--the Riviera of Ulysses--a stretch of coastline where the legendary Ulysses/Odysseus buried his friend Elpenor. Since the classical period at least, Gaeta has been an important military city. The above shots of the modern town are on one side of Monte Orlando--which I'll be getting to shortly--but the ancient and medieval city is located on a narrow peninsula jutting out into the sea, guarding the important Gulf of Gaeta. Since the 1960s there has been a NATO base here, and today is one of the bases of operation for the US Navy's 6th fleet.

USS Mount Whitney, the command ship of the 6th fleet

I didn't see any soldiers, but I definitely noticed the impact of the base: most of the locals spoke at least a bit of English, which was certainly helpful since my Italian is still quite poor at this point (I've mostly been saying "I'm sorry, I don't speak very much Italian"). I went mainly for the breath taking views, but there were also some interesting manmade sites to see. I started at the base of Monte Orlando, at a sanctuary that contains the incredible "montagna spaccata," the "split mountain."

Not a place for the claustrophobic

According to local tradition, the rock split at the moment of Christ's death on the cross. Accordingly, there is a small chapel, constructed in the 15th century, dedicated to the crucifixion. The chapel itself was quite plain, but the view from the roof was to die for:

It's hard to get a sense of the height here, but that water is a loooong way down

Though I didn't go down to the bottom, there is a small spot known as the "Grotto of the Turks," where Arab (I don't know why "Arab" became "Turk," but there you have it) pirates in the Middle Ages would hide until nightfall, at which point they would raid the coastal towns. Instead of heading towards the water, I began climbing up the mountain. I was treated to some more nice views on the way, as well as some interesting ancient ruins.

Montagna Spaccata from above

Another shot of the beach in the modern city

Some interesting ruins near the top of the mountain, that were unfortunately completely devoid of signs. Based on the construction I think that they were Roman, but beyond that I'm not really sure.

At the very top of the mountain was a much more impressive monument, the mausoleum of Lucius Munatius Plancus, a Roman general from the 1st century BC. He was an important figure of the numerous civil wars of the period, and was involved in the second triumvirate near the end of his life, eventually supporting the future emperor Octavian--as any astute Roman did. Plancus had a villa on the mountain, and so on his death he had a massive mausoleum constructed for himself and his family. Though a lot of the decorations were either plundered or destroyed over the centuries, it remains quite an impressive structure:

Not quite as impressive as the Mausoleum of Theodoric I visited a few years ago in Ravenna, but worth checking out nonetheless.

There were some interesting pieces on the inside as well:

A reconstruction of what the tomb looked like 2000 years ago. The mound on top was apparently an ancient Etruscan tradition

The man himself

Some pieces of the structure that were stripped off at some point and reused in the town

Once I was done touring the mausoleum, I began my descent down the other side of the mountain, to get to the medieval city. the signage wasn't great and so for while I was worried I was going in the wrong direction, but eventually I turned a corner only to see this:

I was still quite a ways off, but at least I knew that I was heading in the right direction. It's not known when the first castle was built on this site, but historians think that the original structure probably dates to the 6th or 7th century. Our first written record comes from the 13th century, and the current structure is from the 15th century. Until the 1980s parts of it were still in use as a prison! As I got closer to the bottom of the mountain I could see the foundations a bit better. This would have been quite a formidable military structure in its day.

This would have been quite the vantage point for control of sea

Once I finally got to the bottom, I could see how well the castle would have dominated the city:

Since it was a Sunday afternoon, along with the fact that I had just climbed and descended a small mountain, I didn't try to get into any of the sites in the old city. Besides, what I want to see most--a Byzantine church from the 10th century--is currently under renovations, and so inaccessible. I did find some interesting architecture at the city's cathedral though: a beautiful Romanesque bell tower.

From what I could find, the tower was built in the early 11th century, presumably while Gaeta was still a (semi)independent duchy.

Looking up from the bottom

By this point I was thoroughly exhausted, so I decided to call it a day and head back to Cassino. Given how close Gaeta is to where I'm staying, I may go back at some point and spend more time in the medieval part of town, now that I've seen what Monte Orlando has to offer. As an interesting aside, on the drive back home I rounded a corner and got a beautiful view of Montecassino, while I was still about 15 kilometers away (that's a little over 9 miles in freedom units). Really interesting to see just what a huge area could be observed and controlled from a point as high up as Montecassino.

That should do it for this update, thanks for reading!