The community leaves a powerful impression of being self-contained and a little isolated. Now as then, this is a provincial place, which seems farther from the capital city than it really is. Gaius would recognize the lay of the land, the rise and fall of streets and alleys, perhaps the layout, certainly the views. This is Gaius Octavius, Rome’s future ruler Augustus: for Velitrae was his hometown and Velletri is proud to celebrate his memory. Here, on a stone platform, the modern life-size statue in bronze of a man in his late teens gazes blankly from empty eye sockets into the far distance, contemplating the life that has yet to unfold. At the town’s highest point, where the citadel must have been, a sixteenth-century palazzo communale, which combines the functions of town hall and museum, was built on the foundations of a Roman building. The streets leading off the piazza are roughly parallel and are gridded, echoing the original pattern of the old Roman vici. In the main square stands an old fountain with battered lions spouting water. Little remains of ancient Velitrae, but signs of the Renaissance are to be found everywhere. The walk from the railway station to the center is a steep, hot climb. It lies at the southern edge of the Alban Hills, overlooking a wide plain and distant mountains. Velletri is a compact hill town about twenty-five miles southeast of Rome.
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