San Felice Circeo

San Felice Circeo sits at about 100 meters on the inland flank of Monte Circeo, the 540-meter limestone promontory that closes the south end of the old Pontine Marshes. The Romans called the ancient city here Circeii; the treaty between Carthage and Rome in 509 BC mentions it by name. The promontory is the one Homer made the home of Circe, the sorceress who turned Odysseus's men into pigs, and the cape is still called Promontorio del Circeo.

The Grotta Guattari on the south face is one of the oldest Neanderthal sites in Italy, with remains of nine individuals found in 1939. The centro storico is small. The Torre dei Templari, built between 1239 and 1259 with Guelph crenellations, rises beside the Palazzo Baronale on Piazza Lanzuisi. Below the borgo, the coast runs into the Bandiera Blu beaches of the Parco Nazionale del Circeo, with views across the Gulf of Gaeta to the Pontine Islands.