Castelnuovo di Porto

Castelnuovo di Porto sits on a tufa spur between the Chiarano and Mola valleys, twenty-five kilometers north of Rome inside the Parco Regionale di Veio. The first fortification went up before the year 1000 under the senator Alberico; the medieval village grew around it in concentric loops. The Colonna family took the fief in the late Middle Ages and built the Rocca Colonna that still occupies the highest point of the ridge; its ducal palace inside the keep was used by Marcantonio Colonna after the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and later by Christina of Sweden on her way through to Rome.

The town's name preserves its administrative link to the river: this was the Castrum Novum of the bishop of Porto, the old diocesan seat at the Tiber mouth. The Borghi più belli d'Italia membership covers the centro storico and the rocca; Etruscan and Roman archaeology runs through the Veio park around it.