page_title: Lavinium
section_title: Archaeology
hierarchical_section_title: Lavinium / Archaeology
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Ex voto dal Santuario di Minerva di Lavinium (Pratica di Mare - Pomezia. Museo archeologico)
context_page_description: Lavinium was a port city of Latium, 53 km to the south of Rome, midway between the Tiber river at Ostia and Anzio. The coastline then, as now, was a long strip of beach. Lavinium was on a hill at the southernmost edge of the Silva Laurentina, a dense laurel forest, and the northernmost edge of the Pontine Marshes, a vast malarial tract of wetlands. The basis for the port, the only one between Ostia and Anzio, was evidently the mouth of the Numicus river.
  The location of Lavinium has never been lost to historians nor does there appear to have been any significant break in its habitation. Today's settlement remains a walled village of medieval design, Pratica di Mare, in the comune of Pomezia. The latter is a city constructed in 1939 and settled according to a plan of Benito Mussolini, whose engineers completed the millennia-long task of draining and filling the marsh, now the Pontine fields. A brief strip of field separates the large and flourishing city from the village. One Roman gate allows entry into the narrow streets of the village past the Castello Borghese, originally a fortification, purchased along with the village in 1617 by Marcantonio Borghese.
context_section_description: Pratica di Mare is observably smaller than ancient Lavinium, whose remains crop out in the surrounding fields. Recent archaeological excavations performed to the south date Lavinium to well before the legendary foundation of Rome. It was already fortified in the 7th century BC and flourishing in the 6th. Lavinium was assimilated by Republican Rome. It was connected to Rome in the north and Ardea to the south by the Via Laurentina. Under the empire it was combined with the mysterious Laurentum, where many wealthy Romans maintained a winter villa, to become Laurolavinium. The nature of the union remains ambiguous.
  A number of kilns have been identified within the perimeter of the city walls. Outside the city was a sanctuary dedicated to Sol Indiges and a vast sanctuary with numerous altars, where the bronze inscribed plaque records that the Dioscuri were being venerated at one of numerous altars.
caption: Ex voto statues in the museum at Lavinium
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