The Caetani castle
On a hill at the foot of the Lepini mountains, overlooking the Pontine plain and, in the distance, the sea and the Circeo, Sermoneta is one of the best preserved medieval villages in Lazio, one of the "Borghi più belli d'Italia", with stone houses, lanes, arches, steps, small squares and churches, enclosed by walls. It is dominated by the imposing Castello Caetani, a fortress of the thirteenth century which belonged, from 1297, to the Caetani family, the noble family of Pope Boniface VIII, who made it the centre of their power in the area. At the end of the fifteenth century, Pope Alexander VI Borgia confiscated it from the Caetani and gave it to his daughter Lucrezia Borgia, and then his son Cesare Borgia had it fortified with modern bastions; after the death of the Borgia pope, the castle returned to the Caetani.
The castle, still owned by the Caetani foundation, can be visited with guided tours: you cross the drawbridge and the walls and visit the courtyards, the keep, the "Maschio", the halls with Renaissance frescoes, the so-called rooms of the Borgia and the prisons, with views over the plain from the battlements. In the village, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Romanesque, preserves a beautiful bell tower and a painting by Benozzo Gozzoli, the "Madonna degli Angeli". Near Sermoneta, at the foot of the hill, stands the Cistercian Abbey of Valvisciolo, of the thirteenth century, with a beautiful cloister and a mysterious "magic square" carved in the stone, and a short distance away are the Gardens of Ninfa.
Tip: book the guided tour of the castle; combine Sermoneta with the Gardens of Ninfa and the abbey of Valvisciolo.
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