Anxur, Tarracinae
city · Lazio, Italy
1 place to see, the best preserved and best known first.
Photo: Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Commons
temple · Lazio
The sanctuary as it survives is the rebuilding of Sulla's time, early in the 1st century BC (Pleiades), and it is laid out on three terraces (it.wikipedia).
The Roman town has two levels, and they are visited separately. Up on Monte Sant’Angelo, 227 m above the sea, stands the sanctuary. What survives is its rebuilding of Sulla’s time, early in the 1st century BC: a huge platform carried on twelve arches in opus incertum, on which stood a temple with six Corinthian columns across its front; a natural rock beside it, with hollows inside, served as the oracle; above it lies a military terrace that was walled with nine round towers, and to the west the vaulted rooms of the so-called small temple, painted in the 2nd century BC (it.wikipedia). The dedication is open: tradition gives the temple to Jupiter Anxur, the town’s protector, but an inscription and votive offerings naming Venus have put that in doubt (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). The views run over the coast and the Pontine Marshes (en.wikipedia), and bilingual information boards are set up across the site (OpenStreetMap).
Down in the old town, Piazza del Municipio is the forum itself, the Forum Aemilianum, and its Roman paving of large stone slabs, found under the later surface in 1846, is still the floor of the square (the operator; en.wikipedia). An inscription naming A. Aemilius, the magistrate who saw to the paving in the 1st century BC, is set in it in letters once filled with bronze (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). A four-sided arch that served as an entrance to the forum came to light after the bombing of the Second World War; two of its sides survive, and a well-preserved stretch of the Via Appia runs beneath it (en.wikipedia).
Around the square, the bombing of 4 September 1943 and the clearance after it exposed what the later buildings had hidden. The theatre of Sulla’s time, which held about 4,000 people (it.wikipedia), was rediscovered when the bombs brought down the houses facing the square; its excavation and restoration ran from 2000, above all between 2018 and 2023 (the operator). The so-called Capitolium, a three-cella temple of the mid-1st century BC on the Appia, keeps one of its four front columns, fluted travertine over 5 m tall, and the walls of its three cellae; the idea that it served Jupiter, Juno and Minerva is a hypothesis first put forward in 1926 (the operator). The cathedral of San Cesareo, consecrated in 1074, is built into the town’s main temple: en.wikipedia identifies it as a temple of Rome and Augustus, and part of its side wall with engaged columns can be seen (en.wikipedia). Two vaulted rooms in that temple’s podium, traditionally called “favisse”, a name the operator calls improper, now display mosaics from a nearby house (the operator).
At the foot of the promontory the Via Appia passes Pisco Montano, the cliff cut back so that the road no longer had to climb over the hill, probably early in Trajan’s reign. Marks on the rock face every 10 Roman feet record the depth of the cut; the lowest, CXX, stands for 36 m (en.wikipedia).
Yes. The sanctuary on Monte Sant’Angelo is one of the great Republican sanctuaries of Lazio, set high on terraces between the mid-2nd and mid-1st century BC (it.wikipedia), and its arcaded platform on the cliff top can be seen from the town below and from the sea; the walk round the terrace for the view alone justifies the trip up. The old town adds something rarer: a forum that is still the town’s square, with the theatre and a temple opening off it.
Plan around the timetable. The sanctuary opens every day for most of the year, but the forum and theatre can be visited only on an accompanied tour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, so on other days a visitor sees the square and the Capitolium from the street. The lower town by the harbour, where the amphitheatre, baths and port stood, has little to show (en.wikipedia).
Terracina lies on the coast 56 km south-east of Rome on the Via Appia (en.wikipedia). The branch railway into town has been suspended since a landslide in 2012; the nearest station is Monte San Biagio-Terracina Mare on the FL7 line, about 15 km away and linked to the centre by bus (it.wikipedia). A bus stop on Via Roma is about 100 m from the forum, and there is a paid car park about 55 m from it (OpenStreetMap). The sanctuary is a separate trip up the hill, about 900 m from the forum in a straight line; it has a paid car park and a bus stop each about 100 m from the temple (OpenStreetMap).
The sanctuary of Monte Sant’Angelo opens every day from 09.00 to 13.00 and again in the afternoon: 14.00–17.00 from November to February, when it is closed on Wednesdays; 14.00–18.00 in March and October; 15.00–19.00 in April and September; and 15.00–20.00 from May to August. For October 2026 the operator has posted continuous hours instead, 09.00–18.30 until the 24th and 09.00–17.00 from the 25th. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing, and the site is closed on 1 January and 25 December. A ticket is €10, or €15 with a guided tour; ages 13 to 18 and Terracina residents pay €5, groups of ten or more €7 each, and children under 13 with an adult go free.
The Foro Emiliano is shown only on an accompanied route, Friday to Sunday from 16.00 to 20.00, with tours at 16.30 and 18.30, preferably booked; it costs €12, €5 for ages 13 to 18 and residents, and nothing under 13. The operator’s pages for the theatre, the Capitolium and the favisse point to the same timetable and tariff (Fondazione Città di Terracina, read 18 October 2026; the municipality’s own page gives different figures). Check before travelling, since hours and prices change.
Before you go
Hours and prices checked 18 October 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.
The town appears under two names, Latin Tarracina and Volscian Anxur (en.wikipedia). It stood where the hills reach the sea and leave no way round, commanding the Pontine marshes, and it was under Roman control by 509 BC, when it appears in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage. The Volsci retook it; Rome recaptured it in 406, lost it in 402 and recovered it in 400, and in 329 BC secured it with a colony of Roman citizens (en.wikipedia; Pleiades). The Via Appia arrived in 312 BC, first climbing over the hill behind the promontory; the censor Lucius Valerius Flaccus tried to take it round the headland in 184 BC (en.wikipedia).
Sulla rewarded the town for its loyalty in the civil war with Marius: the theatre and the rebuilding of the sanctuary on Monte Sant’Angelo are credited to his time, early in the 1st century BC (it.wikipedia). The emperor Galba was born here in 3 BC, and in AD 69 the town was the scene of one of the last clashes of the Year of the Four Emperors (it.wikipedia). The harbour was built under Trajan and Antoninus Pius in the 2nd century (en.wikipedia), and in 198 Septimius Severus gave the town the Via Severiana, a coast road from Ostia (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). The last Roman work was a new circuit of walls in the 5th century (en.wikipedia).
Terracina was sacked in 409 and 595, and after the Lombard invasion it held out as a Byzantine stronghold (en.wikipedia). The sanctuary was destroyed after the Roman period; its ruins were known in the Middle Ages as the “palace of Theodoric”, and a Benedictine monastery of St Michael the Archangel, which gave the hill its present name, settled in the small temple, where traces of 9th-century frescoes remain. The local scholar Pio Capponi began excavating it in 1894, followed by Luigi Borsari in 1896 (it.wikipedia).
Photo: MM · Public domain · Commons
Photo: Kroelleboelle · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons
Photo: AlMare · Public domain · Commons
44 km · city · Lazio
The Via Appia crosses the park as the ancient town's main street, an original stretch paved in basalt blocks (it.wikipedia).
Straight-line distances.
Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.
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