Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

View of Sezze in 1843 after a drawing by Edward Lear

Before the construction of the (new) Via Appia by Pope Pius VI (..) much trouble and delay were occasioned by the hills in the vicinity of Sezze, Cora, and other places on this road.
Sir William Gell - The topography of Rome and its vicinity - 1834
Since the VIIIth century the ancient Via Appia was no longer practicable and it was replaced by a winding road which followed the ridge of the hills overlooking the Pontine Marshes and favoured the development of Sezze and other medieval towns.
In returning to Velletri, a divergence should be made to Sezza, the Setia of the Volscians, which is beautifully situated on a hill above the marshes. Some ruins here are shown as those of a temple of Saturn. The women of Sezza have a very pretty and peculiar costume.
Augustus J. C. Hare - Days near Rome - 1873

Views of Sezze: (above) from the Volscian mountains; (below) from the railway station at the foot of the hill

Railroad Rome - Naples: 52 M. Sezze (124 ft.). A road (diligence) ascends to the E. to the (3 M) town (1047 ft.; Locanda Salvatore Valenti, unpretending), with 6941 inhab. (..) Considerable remains of its ancient walls have been preserved, built of blocks with rough rusticated work. A massive substructure in the same style, to the right below the entrance of the town, is arbitrarily named Tempio di Saturno.
Baedeker's Handbook - Central Italy and Rome - 1909
Sezze lies at the top of a hill: while the town has expanded outside the ancient walls on the eastern side, the development on the other side towards the plain is limited by a precipitous slope, similar to that of Norma.

Mount Semprevisa and the range of mountains (Volscian aka Lepini) which separates Sezze from Carpineto

How charming is this Volscian forest! Never had I beheld wild woods so filled with poetry! This is the land of the fays and the elves. In yonder thicket - that grey cave - sleeps old Saturn, with his long silvery beard. I could not but wonder when I beheld these trees in their full beauty. The beeches, their tops embra­cing the blue ether, looked the colour of the rocks, soft grey shoaling into green. It often seemed as if the giant stems were but the growth of the precipices themselves in which they had their roots. We dismounted in a beautiful nook, and flung ourselves down on the grass. Blackberry bushes, with their ripe clusters of fruit, invited us to make a sylvan meal. Not far off lay a green pond, reeds and grass waving round it dreamily. How beautiful it must be here when the moon rides high above the tops of the beeches, and the elves are dancing in fairy rings over their own flowery carpet!
Ferdinand Gregorovius - From the Volscian Mountains - 1860 - Translation by Dorothea Roberts.

View towards the former marshland and towards Sezze Scalo, the new development near the railway station. See a late XVIth century fresco depicting the Pontine Marshes and the towns covered in this section

Setia is characteristically described in the well known lines of Martial, which point out at once both its situation and principal advantage. "Quae paludes delicata Pomptinas Ex arce clivi spectat uva Setini." (The dainty Setine grape which from the hill's crest looks on the Pomptine marshes. - Epigram X 74). The town is still as anciently little, but it no longer possesses the delicate and wholesome wines which it anciently boasted; for although vineyards still cover the hills around and spread even over the plains below, yet the grape is supposed to have lost much of its flavor.
John Chetwode Eustace - A Classical Tour through Italy in 1802
In the summer of 1912, I began my study of Setia and vicinity, intending to describe and locate accurately the existing ancient remains. (..) There is no evidence that this was the site of an old Volscian settlement; our first certain information is that in 382 B.c. the Romans established a Latin colony, to which new colonists were added three years later. Its foundation, therefore, marked the farther advance of the Romans into Volscian territory. (..) We are told that Sulla captured Setia in 82 B.c., and that the triumvirs sent a military colony here. The number of inscriptions that date from the late Republic shows that the town was still flourishing; but under the Empire it was an "exigua urbs" and remembered only for its famous wine.
Henry H. Armstrong - Topographical Studies at Setia - 1915

Ancient walls at S. Parasceve (Porta Pascibella)

The principal remains consist of portions of the ancient town wall. They are very numerous on the southwestern side. On the northern and eastern sides they are scanty, but occur in the right places to prove that the line of the mediaeval and modern walls generally follows that of the ancient wall. Starting at the Porta Pascibella, we find our first piece of ancient wall adjoining the gate on two sides of the church of Parasceve. Inside the gate, it is built into the northern wall of the church for a length of 12.30 m. and a height of 2.70. Then, after a gap of 2.50 m., in which the old corner is concealed by a modern projection, it appears for about 4.10 m. on the outside of the gate, preserved to a height of about 3.75 m. The fragment, like all the others, is built of the local limestone. It is much battered, but is apparently not in the "polygonal" but in the "quasi-ashlar" style. Armstrong

Similar, but older and larger polygonal walls can be seen in nearby towns, e.g. Segni and Cori. The church is dedicated to a IInd century Greek martyr (Agia Paraskevi) and it was most likely founded by followers of St. Nilus, a Basilian monk from Calabria, in the early XIth century.

Photographs from "Henry H. Armstrong - Topographical Studies at Setia - 1915": (left) Fig. 3 Postern Gate; (right) Fragment 12 of the Town Wall

Of even greater interest is the next fragment, 29 m. beyond the last one (Fig 3). This has at its eastern end a postern gate, 1.19 m. in width, which is now filled up to within 1.40 m. of the top; its total length is about 7 m. It is built of ashlar masonry. (..) At the end we reach the finest piece of the wall now existing. This massive wall of the "third polygonal" style extends for nearly 40 m.; its greatest height is over 8 m. (..) It is probable that this great outwork protected the gate at which the road from the plain entered the town. Armstrong
Numerous traces of the city's polygonal walls (chiefly in the third and fourth style) are still preserved, and they are sufficient to give an idea of the exact perimeter of the walls. One of the postern gates, with a monolithic architrave, is perfectly preserved.
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites - 1976

(left) Via Cardinale Pier Marcellino Corradini, the main street of historical Sezze leading from Porta Pascibella to the Cathedral and Porta Romana; (right) evidence of ancient walls along its northern side

Within the area enclosed by this wall are remains of two other lines of wall, both in the southern part of the town. The principal fragment of the outer one of the two lines lies at some distance from the rest in the garden of Sig. Maselli. Five other battered fragments are preserved in the walls of houses on the northern side of the Via Corradini. Armstrong
Today the Comune di Sezze is made up of two very different towns because a large part of its population has moved from its historical location to near the railway station on the plain, from where it is very easy to commute to Rome.

Cathedral (XVIIth century façade)

The main monument of Sezze is its medieval Cathedral which was built having in mind the pattern set by the Cistercians at nearby Abbazia di Fossanova. Its external aspect was totally modified in the early XVIIth century when the orientation of the church was reversed and the apse was turned into the entrance with an end result which is rather unique. The massive square lantern tower which stands above the former apse was never completed.

(left) 1364 Inscription celebrating the consecration of the cathedral by the Bishop of Terracina and Sezze and its dedication to the Virgin Mary; (right) wooden canopy resembling that of S. Pietro

The diocese of Sezze has a complex history. Its first recorded bishop was Stefano who in 1036 attended a synod in Rome called by Pope Benedict IX in a very turbulent period. Other bishops are recorded in the next century, but in 1217 Pope Honorius III decreed that the dioceses of Sezze, Priverno and Terracina were united. The bishops usually resided at Terracina and did not care too much about the cathedral of Sezze. During the XVIth century however Terracina was frequently raided by Ottoman corsairs and the bishops chose to live at Sezze where they eventually promoted the redesign and embellishment of the cathedral.

Cathedral: (left) interior; (right) old entrance with a small rose window in a very narrow street

The Gothic aspect of the interior was only partially modified by the creation of a transept on the site of the former entrance. The long nave has been deprived of later additions/embellishments to highlight its medieval structure.

(left) Gothic arches with an unusual decoration; (centre) holy water basin similar to one at Gaeta; (right) Renaissance tabernacle containing the Chrism (holy anointing oil - see a similar one at S. Maria in Trastevere)

In the XVIIIth century there were frequent quarrels between Sezze and Terracina about which town should be the main episcopal see and how the parishes should be divided. These quarrels were eventually settled in 1725 by Pope Benedict XIII at the suggestion of Cardinal Pier Marcellino Corradini (1658-1743), of a bourgeois family of Sezze, to whom the town is still grateful. He was almost elected Pope in 1740 but King Felipe V of Spain vetoed his appointment and the locals still complain about it. Had he become a Pope, the history of Sezze would have greatly changed for the better.
With the total reclamation of the Pontine Marshes in the 1930s, the diocese was redesigned and in 1986 it was renamed as "Diocesi di Latina-Terracina-Sezze-Priverno", Latina being the main "new town" of the district.

Palazzo Normesini: (left) portal in Via Corradini; (right) side towards Porta Romana

The old gates of Sezze have been sacrificed to the needs of modern life (with the exception of Porta Paolina shown in the image used as a background for this page) so this interesting Gothic building near the lost Porta Romana, which was the main gate of Sezze, cannot be seen in the right context.

S. Pietro, a former Jesuit church: (left) façade; (right) painted ceiling with fake coffers and rosettes and the symbol of the Jesuit Order

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