Cassino attractions

Cassino's sights are stacked vertically and divided by two thousand years.

At the top is the abbey of Montecassino, on the 520-metre summit where the temple of Apollo once stood. Below it, the Rocca Janula — the castle built for defensive purposes when the abbey and town were rebuilt in 949 — still dominates the town.

In the plain lie the remains of ancient Casinum, the last city of the Latins, which the Romans took and where they established a fortified Latin colony in 312 BC. A villa here is presumed to have belonged to Marcus Terentius Varro, the scholar who explained the town's own name.

And across the valley floor are the war cemeteries and memorials of the 1944 battle, which are as much the reason people come as the abbey is.