Anagni discovery guide

Anagni is called la città dei papi, and it earned the name: in the thirteenth century this hill town gave the Church four popes and reached about fifty thousand people. On 7 September 1303 Boniface VIII was seized here, in the rooms beside the cathedral — the episode Italians call the schiaffo di Anagni, and one of the few turning points in medieval history you can stand inside.

The friction is the valley below. The plain is entirely occupied by a large industrial district, and the approach is not pretty; the town is also twenty thousand people now, not fifty.

So go up and stay up. The medieval hill town survives intact inside Roman walls, with twisting streets and steep lanes, and the cathedral — built over a temple of Ceres — is the reason to come. Give it a spring or autumn day from Rome.

April to June is the best window: the valley is green, the hill town is comfortable, and the Ernici above are walkable.

7 September carries the anniversary of the schiaffo di Anagni and is the date most attached to the town.

Summer is hot in the Sacco valley, although the town's 424 metres make it noticeably better than the plain — which is why Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Commodus and Caracalla summered here.

September and October are the other strong season, with clear light over the valley between the Ernici and the Lepini.

Winter is cool and quiet, with snow on the mountains above rather than in the town, and the medieval centre at its emptiest.

Stand where a pope was seized

The rooms adjoining the cathedral, where Boniface VIII was taken prisoner on 7 September 1303 — the schiaffo di Anagni.

See the cathedral on the temple

It was built on the temple of Ceres, so the sacred centre of this hill has not moved since before the Romans.

Walk the medieval town

Small twisting streets and steep lanes, still inside Roman boundary walls, on the Hernician acropolis.

Count the popes

Four from one hill town in a single century — Gregory IX, Alexander IV and Boniface VIII among them.

Remember the size it was

About fifty thousand people in the thirteenth century. Twenty thousand now.

Learn the two surviving words

Samentum, a strip of sacrificial skin, and Bututti, a funeral lament — the whole surviving vocabulary of the Hernici.

Anagni is a town whose greatest century ended abruptly and which has organised its identity around that fact.

In the thirteenth century it had about fifty thousand people, four popes and a papal court. Today it has twenty thousand and an industrial estate. The medieval town survived precisely because the growth stopped.

The schiaffo is central to how the place understands itself. That a pope was seized in his own episcopal rooms here on 7 September 1303 is not a footnote in Anagni; it is the event the town is known for across Italy.

The religious depth goes much further back than the papacy. This was the spiritual centre of the Hernici, and the cathedral stands on their temple of Ceres.

There is also an imperial memory: emperors came up here to escape Rome's summers, and Marcus Aurelius owned the villa at Villa Magna nearby.

And the present is unglamorous and honest. The plain is entirely industrial, the comune is one of the largest in its province, and the hill town above it is a historical and artistic centre that most Italians know for one bad day in 1303.

The cathedral is a working church and the site of a historical trauma. Boniface VIII was taken prisoner in the rooms beside it on 7 September 1303. Treat the building as a place of worship first and a monument second.

The medieval town is lived in. Anagni keeps the appearance of a small medieval hill town, with narrow twisting streets and steep lanes, and twenty thousand people use them daily. Don't block lanes, and keep groups small.

Do not drive into the centre. The streets inside the Roman walls were not built for it, and the gradient from the valley is substantial.

The Macchia di Anagni is doing a lot of work. A few hundred hectares of woodland is the only significant natural habitat left on a valley floor otherwise entirely occupied by the industrial district. Treat it accordingly.

Spend in the hill town. The comune's economy is in the plain; the historic centre depends on the visitors who actually stop, eat and stay rather than passing through for an hour.

Respect the archaeology. Fontana Ranuccio is one of the most important early human sites in Italy, and the acropolis walls in opus quasi-quadratum are pre-Roman.

What each level of spending buys in Anagni

Anagni is one of the cheapest serious cultural destinations in Lazio, because it is a working provincial town with an industrial economy rather than a tourist one. The town does not live on visitors, and its prices show it.

Two EU rules govern what you are actually charged. You must be clearly informed of the total price, including all taxes and additional charges. And traders in the EU are not allowed to charge extra for paying by credit or debit card — the exceptions are American Express and Diners Club cards and corporate cards, where any fee may not exceed what processing actually costs the trader.

The tiers above describe what each level of spending buys here, not quoted rates. No published rate card covers a comune this size, and prices move sharply with the season.