Often Civitavecchia is overlooked as most people head to Rome for the day. As Brian and I had already visited Rome several years back and took in many of the sites, we chose to stay in Civitavecchia and explore what it had to offer. Though there was not a lot in this port city, we were pleased to see that like many European coastal cities, Civitavecchia has a beautiful promenade following the coast and the 17th century defence wall.

We strolled along this promenade and saw a few of the cities monuments.

Fort Michelangelo was one of the first that we saw. It was built in the 16th century on the site of a former Roman building to defend the port of Civitavecchia from the constant raiding by pirates. The fortress today is located between the city area and water front and is the Headquarters of the Port Authorities.

The Unconditional Surrender was the next site. This statue is hard to miss as it sits in the middle of the promenade and is very colourful and large. The statue is one of many of its kind adapted from the Eisenstadt photo taken in Times Square at the end of WWII.

Next stop was the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi . It is a baroque church constructed in 1610. on top of the ruins of an earlier existing Franciscan church. In the second half of the 18th century, the Duomo was reconstructed and again in 1950 after the church had been damaged during the war. Inside there were beautiful domed ceilings and several stain glass windows in the many side chapels.

Continuing to stroll along the promenade we took an interesting causeway out to a terrace area that gave some nice view of the ocean and rock. I bet this gets pretty busy in the summer months as there were some beautiful protected swimming areas.