Terracina Culture

Terracina's culture is that of a real coastal city rather than a resort village, and it carries a deep layer underneath.

The religious identity is pre-Roman and still physically present. Anxur was the Volscian name for Jupiter as a youth and the tutelary god of the city, venerated on the Mons Neptunius; his temple still stands on what is now Monte Sant'Angelo, 226 metres over the historic centre.

The double naming runs through everything. Latin Tarracina and Volscian Anxur describe the same place from two directions, and the Latin name may itself be Etruscan — Tarchna or Tarchuna, the Tarquinii family name — which would make it older than the Volscian conquest.

There is an engineering identity too, which is unusual for an Italian coastal town. This is a place defined by the problem of getting past it: an embankment attempted in 184 BC, a cliff cut under Trajan, and a depth gauge carved into the rock.

And the modern city is a working one of forty-five thousand people, with beaches on both sides, a plain behind it and the Appia running through — a seaside economy layered onto a continuously inhabited ancient site.