Fondi - Medieval Quarter

Located in the immediate hinterland of the Tyrrhenian coast of the extreme south of Lazio, at the foot of the Aurunci Mountains, the city extends over the very fertile plain of the same name (so-called Piana di Fondi).

The aquifers of Monte delle Fate and Monte Calvilli constituted, in the past, a problem of swamping but today, in addition to giving rise to the picturesque small Coastal Lake (Natural Monument), they are at the service of one of the most productive agricultural areas in Italy. Europe feeds a large fruit and vegetable market (and a large part of the capital’s daily consumption).

The first city (Fundi, founded by the Aurunci) became of the Volsci and then passed to the Romans in the 4th century. to. C., later receiving (in 188 BC) full ‘citizenship’. Already in ancient times, in a strategic position halfway between Rome and Naples (near the Garigliano, the historic natural border with Campania), it was found, in Roman times, on the route of the Via Appia; in this area the famous Cecubo wine was produced, much loved by the Romans. According to Suetonius, Livia Drusilla, wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius, was born in Fondi.

After a period of occupation by the Lombards, from 846 it was the Saracens who held it for thirty years until their defeat (by Pope John VIII) in the battle of Circeo (in 877). In these thirty years the coastal towns of lower Lazio had been sacked and razed to the ground by the Muslims, who actually had various complicities in the Italian principalities of the nearby South (something that had greatly worried Pope John VIII, a very particular combative character. al century Alessio Brugnoli).

Fondi, released, was then first assigned to the Byzantine Hypates of Gaeta, then passed to the Norman Kingdom which assigned it to the Dell’Aquila who assumed the title of Counts of Fondi. At the time of the Kingdom of Naples, in 1299 the last descendant of the Dell’Aquila marries Loffredo, nephew of Pope Boniface VIII of the Caetani family and this (who held the County of Fondi until 1494) will be the fundamental family for the subsequent civil history and urban planning of Fondi which in the meantime had become the capital of a vast territory. It was in Fondi that Onorato I Caetani reunited a Conclave in 1378 (Avignonese period) which elected the antipope Clement VII in opposition to the legitimate Pope (Urban VI) causing the Western Schism. At the end of the fourteenth century, with the arrival of Charles VIII, the County was granted to Prospero Colonna; the city, despite having lost importance on a political level, underwent further urban improvements.

A court of artists and writers settled here with Giulia Gonzaga (beautiful and young widow of Vespasiano Colonna, whom he married in 1526) (Fondi was nicknamed ‘Little Athens’). It was precisely as a result of a failed attempt to kidnap Giulia by the Saracen Barbarossa (who wanted to donate it to Suleiman the Magnificent) that Fondi suffered a devastating sack in 1534. After a second looting (at the end of the 1500s) and a sudden swamping of the plain, in 1636, there was a strong depopulation, accompanied by the transfer of ownership to families not always committed to the good of the city.

Thus began a strong decline for Fondi until the early 1800s when reclamation and mercantile initiatives allowed it to rise again.

Until the twenties of the 1900s, Fondi practically remained within the ancient city walls that today contain the Medieval Quarter; then the city expanded into new settlements (the new center of gravity of the town today is located south of the old village).

The medieval quarter has a Plan with Orthogonal streets (pivoted along the Via Appio Claudio) of about 400 meters in length, a clear legacy of Roman urban planning. The walls (Roman ‘polygonal’ walls on which the medieval walls were built) are still well recognizable even if partially reused to support houses. The Castle with adjoining Baronale Palace stands as a bulwark of the main entrance of the ancient cylindrical towers) of the walls. The Castle was built by the Caetani in the fourteenth century and numerous large and small historic buildings have been preserved (miraculously, save from rash ‘modernizations’) in this area. Among them: the beautiful Cathedral (thirteenth century) of San Pietro (with valuable works of medieval art), the Collegiata (fifteenth century) of S. Maria (rich in works of sixteenth-century art) and the former Convent – Church of S. Domenico (Tommaso d’Aquino stayed there, with a beautiful cloister).

Just outside the Medieval Quarter is the 14th-century Church of San Francesco which, despite having suffered damage and restorations over the centuries, retains a beautiful portico, well-recovered cloister and bell tower. From the Roman era until the abandonment of the 1600s, Fondi was the seat of a thriving Jewish community, to which the Rione della Giudea is named. Also from the Middle Ages, in addition to many rural churches, outside the perimeter of the medieval city, in Fondi there is the ancient Abbey of San Magno , recently restored, derived from an ancient Cenobio, which knew a large splendor in the 1500s.