Laurentum

Listen for a moment. Out here, south of Rome, the city noise gives way to wind moving through umbrella pines and low, hard-leaved scrub. The air smells of resin and salt. The ground is sandy and pale, and somewhere beyond the trees the Tyrrhenian Sea is breaking on a long, flat shore. This is the Laurentine coast, and you are standing in the landscape of one of the oldest names in Roman memory: Laurentum.

I should be honest with you from the start. Laurentum is not a ruin with a ticket gate and a neat sign. It is a place that lives more in literature than in stone. Ancient writers spoke of it often. Modern scholars still debate where exactly its centre stood. So this guide is partly a walk through history, and partly a walk through a coastline that has kept its secrets well.

Start with the name. Most scholars connect Laurentum with the Latin word for laurel, the bay tree. The Romans themselves made this link. Laurel was a sacred plant for them. Victorious generals wore it, and poets were crowned with it. Imagine a stretch of coast so thick with these fragrant trees that a whole people took their name from them. The ancient inhabitants were called the Laurentes.

Now comes the part that matters most to Roman imagination. In Virgil's Aeneid, the great epic poem written under the emperor Augustus, this is the kingdom of Latinus. Latinus was the legendary king of the Latin people. According to the story, the Trojan hero Aeneas landed on this coast after fleeing the fall of Troy. Here he met Latinus, and here he was promised the king's daughter, Lavinia, in marriage.

That promise started a war. Lavinia had already been courted by Turnus, a local prince of the Rutulian people. Virgil fills the second half of his poem with that conflict. Remember, this is legend, not documented history. But for the Romans, it was a founding story. They believed that from the union of Trojans and Latins came the line that would one day lead to Romulus, and to Rome itself.

So what was the real Laurentum? Here the evidence becomes thin, and I will not pretend otherwise. It seems to have been a small Latin community on this coast, closely tied to the nearby town of Lavinium, a little further inland. In later centuries the two were linked in name and in ritual. Some Roman writers used the names almost as one. The precise site of the town has never been settled to everyone's satisfaction.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Much of the ancient Laurentine territory lies today inside the Castelporziano estate, a protected woodland that belongs to the Italian presidency. Because this land was kept as a royal and then presidential hunting reserve for centuries, it escaped the building boom that swallowed so much of the Roman countryside. Ironically, that protection is why the forest still looks so much like the one ancient poets described.

Inside that estate, archaeologists have studied the remains of a Roman village on the coast. It is often called the Vicus Augustanus Laurentium, meaning the village of the Laurentines named for Augustus. Excavations have uncovered houses, baths and traces of everyday life. Access is restricted, so most visitors will not walk among these remains. But it is worth knowing they are there, only a short distance from the road.

In imperial times, this coast became a retreat for wealthy Romans. The most famous visitor is Pliny the Younger, a senator and letter-writer of the late first century. In one long letter to a friend he described his villa on the Laurentine shore. He wrote about rooms facing the sea, the sound of the waves, and the pleasure of escaping the city. His description is so detailed that architects have tried to reconstruct the villa on paper for centuries.

The second surprise is stranger. Ancient writers record that the emperors kept elephants in this area. The Roman poet Juvenal mentions herds belonging to Caesar grazing in these coastal forests. Picture it — enormous grey animals moving between the pines and the laurels, a few hours from the Forum. Later, the historian Herodian tells us that the emperor Commodus withdrew to Laurentum during a plague. Doctors believed the scent of the laurel trees could protect against disease.

Take a breath now, and notice what is actually around you. The tall pines with their flat, spreading crowns. The cork oaks and holm oaks with dark, leathery leaves. The dense, scratchy undergrowth that Italians call macchia, a mix of shrubs like myrtle, rosemary and mastic. In spring this scrub smells sharp and green. In the heat of summer the cicadas take over completely, and the air seems to hum.

The modern road called the Via Laurentina still carries the old name south out of Rome. It is a small thread connecting today's city to that ancient coast. When you drive or ride along it, you are following a direction that Romans followed for many centuries. The landscape has changed, of course. Marshes were drained, towns grew, and beaches filled with summer crowds. Yet the name survived every change.

So stand here a little longer. Look at the light filtering through the pine needles, and listen for the sea beyond the trees. You may not see a temple or a royal palace. What you see instead is the setting Virgil chose for the meeting of two peoples. As you walk away, notice any laurel bush you pass. Crush one leaf between your fingers. That sharp, warm scent is the oldest thing about Laurentum.