Minturnae
Description
Ancient Minturnae was one of the three towns of the Ausones which made war against Rome in 314 BC, in the Second Samnite War. It became a Roman settlement as a fort (Castrum Minturnae) in about 296 BC. The early town grew around the square fort with polygonal stone walls on the side of the river and on the contemporary via Appia as a military road. In the 3rd century BC, the town expanded with new tufa walls with towers.
The city was radically transformed when it became a colonia under Augustus when the urban tract of the via Appia was enhanced with porticos, temples to Augustus and Julius Caesar were built and the theatre was rebuilt. The city was further expanded under Hadrian with thermal baths, the macellum, nymphaeum and aqueduct. It was destroyed by the Langobards in 590.
Architecture
Many of the city’s major monuments remain visible outside the modern settlement. Most Roman structures date to the Hadrianic period, built over earlier phases. These include the theatre and the aqueduct in opus reticulatum, notable for its patterned, multicoloured quoins and for having its distribution basin integrated into the central pier of the city gate; the aqueduct stretched more than 11 km from the Capodacqua springs. The site also preserves the large thermal baths with a swimming pool, the Republican and Imperial fora—the latter built under Augustus and later flanked by the curia and basilica—and the Appian Way, serving as the decumanus maximus with a monumental central colonnade. Other key structures are the macellum, the Italic-style Capitolium (built after 191 BC beside the Appian Way as a statement of Roman identity), and the amphitheatre, now largely lost but better preserved in the eighteenth century.