Sperlonga

People lived around Sperlonga from the Middle Palaeolithic, and in Roman times the coast, under the jurisdiction of Fundi, was lined with villas. The most famous was a late-republican villa enlarged for the emperor Tiberius, built around a natural sea cave that served as a summer dining room. According to Tacitus and Suetonius, the roof of the grotto fell while the emperor was dining in 26 AD, and Sejanus' rescue of Tiberius helped launch his rise. The town's name probably comes from that cave, the Latin spelunca.

After the fall of the empire the ruins sheltered local people, but the settlement moved up to the promontory of San Magno to escape raids from the sea. A castle is recorded in the 10th century, and walls were built in the 11th; two gates bearing the arms of the Caetani family survive. In the summer of 1534 the Ottoman admiral Barbarossa sacked the village and carried many of its people, above all women, into slavery, and Barbary corsairs raided again in 1623.

Rebuilt between the 17th and 19th centuries, Sperlonga belonged for centuries to the Kingdom of Naples and the province of Terra di Lavoro. In 1927 it was moved into Lazio, and from 1934 it belonged to the new province of Littoria, now Latina. Its isolation ended only when the Via Flacca coast road from Terracina to Gaeta opened in the late 1950s; road builders found the fragments of the Tiberius sculptures in 1957, and tourism followed.

Sperlonga is a member of the association of the most beautiful villages of Italy, and its identity rests on its old town: white houses packed tightly on the rock, stepped alleys and lanes, and a skyline of watchtowers. Murals in the lanes recall the pirate raids that once carried off its people.

The local dialect is the last on the Lazio coast, going south, to be classed as a central Italian dialect, but it carries strong southern features from the centuries when the town was part of the Kingdom of Naples. Its vowels, altered inside words as well as at the end, make it sound in places closer to the dialects of Apulia and Molise — perhaps because fishermen came from Apulia, or because of the Di Sangro princes who once governed the town.

The main festival honours the patron, Pope Leo the Great, known locally as San Leone, and San Rocco, the co-patron, in the days around the first Sunday of September. The town has a single parish, so the processions cover both the old town and the beach town, and San Rocco's statue is carried down to the sea at night for fireworks before being taken back through the lanes.

About 3,000 people live in Sperlonga, a figure that multiplies in summer, when Romans and Neapolitans fill the hotels, apartments and campsites. Tourism is the economy, much of it in small businesses: in 2015 the town's 314 firms employed fewer than 900 people. Agriculture has never driven the economy, though the town is known for its own pear-shaped tomato, recognised as a traditional product of Lazio.

The town has two centres. The old town on the hill has the main square and much of the evening life, and its lanes are closed to traffic; the lower town along the beaches holds most of the hotels, beach clubs and restaurants. Children attend a nursery, a primary and a lower secondary school in the town, and the parish belongs to the Archdiocese of Gaeta.

Life swings with the seasons. From June to September the beaches are packed, nights run late in the square, and parking is the town's daily problem. In winter many places close and the residents have the town to themselves.

The kitchen of Sperlonga is that of the sea. Most restaurants serve seafood, and pizza is close to the Neapolitan style, a reminder of how near the town is to Naples. The restaurants are clustered in two places: around the main square of the old town and the road that leads up to it, and along the street behind the beach.

The farming plain around Fondi supplies fresh fruit and vegetables, and there is usually a farmers' market in the main square of the old town. Sperlonga's own pomodoro perino, a pear-shaped tomato, is listed among Lazio's traditional food products, and the area also grows white celery.

Buffalo mozzarella, mozzarella di bufala, is the local cheese to buy. Water buffalo have long been raised on the plains north of Terracina, in the former Pontine Marshes, and around Fondi, once also marshland, and shops along the Via Flacca sell the cheese fresh.