Aquino

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the town in Italy. For other uses, see Aquino (disambiguation).

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since September 2006.

Statistics
Region:	Lazio/Latium
Province:	Frosinone
Location:	41°29′N 13°43′E
Area:	19.2 km²
Population:	5,337
Population density:	277.4/km²
Sections:
Elevation:
Postal code:	03031
Area/distance code:	0776
Car designation:	`FR`
ISTAT code:	060007
Fiscal code:

Aquino is a small town episcopal see in the south-central Italian province of Frosinone, in the Lazio region, 56 miles northwest by rail from the town of Caserta, and 7-½ miles northwest of Cassino.

1 History
2 Main sights
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

The ancient Aquinum was a municipium in the time of Cicero, and made a colony by the Triumviri. It was crossed yb the Via Latina.

Aquinum was the birthplace of the poet Juvenal and of the emperor Pescennius Niger.

Aquino's patron saint is San Costanzo, or St. Constantius, (of Aquino, not St. Constantius of Perugia). St Thomas Aquinas was born in the castle of Roccasecca, 8 kilometres northwards.

[edit] Main sights

One of the gates through which the Via Latina passed, now called Porta S. Lorenzo, is still well preserved, and there are remains within the walls (portions of which, built of large blocks of limestone, still remain) of two (so called) temples, a basilica and an amphitheatre.

Outside, on the south is a well-preserved triumphal arch with composite capitals, and close to it the 11th-century basilica of S. Maria Libera, a building in the Romanesque style, but now roofless. Several Roman inscriptions are built into it, and many others that have been found indicate the ancient importance of the place, which, though it does not appear in early history, is vouched for by Cicero and Strabo. According to H. Nissen, Ital. Landeskunde (Berlin, 1902), a road ran from here to Minturnae, but no traces of it are to be seen.