Minturno

Minturno is a city and comune in southern Lazio, Italy, situated on the north west bank of the Garigliano (known in antiquity as the Liris). It has a station on the Rome-Naples main railway line. The nearby sanctuary of Marica with an Italic tuff temple was built about 500 BC. Ancient Minturnae was one of the three towns of the Ausones which made war against Rome in 314 BC, in the Second Samnite War, the other two being Ausona (modern Sessa Aurunca) and Vescia. It became a Roman settlement as a fort (Castrum Minturnae) in about 296 BC. The early town grew around the square fort with polygonal stone walls on the side of the river and on the contemporary via Appia as a military road. In the 3rd c. BC the town expanded with new tufa walls with towers. In 88 BC Gaius Marius hid himself in the marshes of Minturnae in his flight from Sulla. The city was radically transformed when it became a colonia under Augustus when the urban tract of the via Appia was enhanced with porticos, temples to Augustus and Julius Caesar were built and the theatre was rebuilt. The city was further expanded under Hadrian with thermal baths, the macellum, nymphaeum and aqueduct. It was destroyed by the Langobards in 590. The city was probably also destroyed in 883 by the Saracens, who in the following years held the surrounding plain. Its low site was increasingly abandoned by the population in favour of that of the modern town of Minturno (known as Traetto or Traietto, from Latin Traiectum, until the 19th century), above sea-level. The Saracens were ousted by the Catholic league after the Battle of Garigliano (915), and Minturnae passed to Gaeta. Two years later, however, it was again ravaged, this time by the Magyars. In 1058 it was partly acquired by the Abbey of Montecassino, but soon after was conquered by the Normans. In the 13th century it went to Richard V dell'Aquila, duke of Gaeta. Subsequently, it was a Caetani possession, and later assigned by Charles VIII of France to his general Prospero Colonna.