San Gemini, Carsulae, Narni and Nemi

This is the fifth blog post describing a trip with my son Alex in Germany and Italy this past July. My last post recounted our stay in Gubbio. 

​After a vastly too-short stay in Gubbio, we regretfully drove back to the Autostrada and once again loosely paralleled the classical Via Flaminia heading south to Rome.

A sign at Carsulae Archeological Park maps the ancient Via Flaminia, the main imperial road from Rome to the north. (Photo  by Alex Mawyer)

We were looking for Carsulae, a Roman ghost town, and we chose a route through San Gemini. San Gemini is a medieval walled hilltop town built completely over its Roman past. San Gemini is off the tourist track but on the Via Flaminia itself. The businesses were mostly closed for the afternoon heat when we arrived, but the café was open.
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Gate of San Gemini. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)
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Alex and I spontaneously decided to shoot each other.

The arches help hold the streets up. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

San Gemini’s walls are in impressive condition.

The Autostrada seen from San Gemini. On the hillside opposite is Cesi, Roman Clusiolum, an Umbrian city with arches and walls dating to the 6th century BCE, reinforced in medieval times.

Roman roads were so well engineered that in some places they can be driven on today. The linear ideal suitable for flat terrain, however, could not be achieved in the craggy terrain of Umbria. The Via Flaminia did not cut through or tunnel under hills, nor did it cross water any more than strictly necessary. It wound along the most convenient local passage, which was likely to be along accessible ridgelines, the shoulders of hills and even the tops of hills. This seems counterintuitive until one reflects that every downhill requires an uphill. Local roads may conveniently follow streams but long-haul roads are well situated at ridgeline elevations and may follow the high ground rather than dipping up and down.

There are some mysteries. Where ancient towns of note already stood, stretches of preexisting superior local road must have existed, suitable for incorporation into the main Roman road. This seemed at first to explain why the Via Flaminia climbed the considerable hill of San Gemini. But upon closer examination, at San Gemini the Via Flaminia apparently bypassed a considerable Umbrian hill town and religious complex at Cesi, from which a fairly direct older road ran north—joining the Via Flaminia at Carsulae in fact. Meanwhile, as best I could learn, San Gemini in Roman times was a post stop on the road, not a major town.

The modern roadway from San Gemini to Carsulae—not too modern—scrambles cross-country from one farm to the next more or less along the old Via Flaminia route until it reaches a switchback a few hundred yards due south of Carsulae. There a modern farm sits athwart the ancient road. On Google Maps the route of the Via Flaminia into Carsulae is clearly visible from the air paralleling  SP 22.

Map data: Google, DigitalGlobe.

Carsulae, to me, was the climax of the "Roman ruins" aspect of our trip. Rome, of course, is well furnished with Roman ruins, many of which are massive. But I was hoping for something more weedy, scattered in the Piranesi style, with goats instead of tourists. I knew this would not be the case in Rome’s beautifully manicured ruins. I only dared hope Carsulae would be the real thing. To my delight, it was.

Goats on the Via Flaminia, Carsulae. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

We take a Via Flaminia selfie with goats. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Parking lot at the Carsulae archeological park. We had it to ourselves.

Carsulae has a small but indispensable and pleasantly staffed museum. Ancient Carsulae was an elite town that sprang up for the convenience of the great road in the days of imperial peace. Its main claim to fame was its waters; a number of powerful springs well up there (and at San Gemini, noted today for its mineral waters).  Carsulae had a large theater for plays and a large colosseum for gladiator and wild beast shows. There was also a big temple of Jupiter. It was the consummate Roman provincial town, with lots of marble and larger-than-life monuments to Augustus Caesar. 

Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter.

Remains of the theater.

Marble-strewn ruins of the coliseum. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

The streets of Carsulae. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Vehicle ruts on the stones of the Via Flaminia, Main Street, Carsulae.

South city gate, Carsulae.

Monumental Tomb at Carsulae.

The fate of Carsulae was most curious. After the fall of Milan and the retreat of the late Emperor Honorius to Ravenna, as mentioned in my Ravenna blog, the road to Rome was open. That road was the Via Flaminia, and Carsulae was literally on the road, in a swale surrounded by higher elevations and completely indefensible. As the Visigothic armies began their marches and countermarches, starting with Alaric, followed by the Ostrogothic armies of Theodoric, Witiges and Totila and the Byzantine armies of  Belisarius and Narses, Carsulae became uninhabitable. Every army needed its water. Alaric and his army first marched through in 408 C.E.  Abandonment at Carsulae probably did not begin until after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410 C.E. The archeological evidence is that first the buildings along the highway were abandoned, then the middle streets no longer afforded safety, and finally after some passage of time even the back streets became uninhabitable. By 554 C.E. the site was deserted and its villas razed. The surviving population moved into cruder quarters on the less tempting mountainsides.

Razed villas of Carsulae. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)
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Carsulae was a thrill. We then pushed on to Narni, the Roman Narnia.
 

Narni in the distance: deceptively flat-seeming, much steeper than it looks. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Medieval-Renaissance gate of Narni. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Narnia, or Narni, was directly on the Via Flaminia too, but did not suffer extinction like Carsulae. The site was already inhabited in the Paleolithic. In Umbrian times it was the important fortified town of Nequinum. In the third century B.C. it became known as Narnia.

C.S. Lewis borrowed the name for the fictional kingdom ruled by Aslan the lion in his famous Narnia series. 
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Early postclassical Narnia on its steep and massively fortified hilltops was not a place that Goths or others could simply charge up and seize. It was not vulnerable. Today, considerable Roman and medieval points of interest coexist peacefully in a living town, one of the larger if not the largest of the Umbrian hilltop towns. And once again the Via Flaminia is seen to climb a considerable small mountain, the best explanation being a well-engineered preexisting road convenient to the accommodations in a thriving city.

The only flat spot in Narnia. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Alex finds thousand-year-old lions guarding the church.

I would love to go back and stay longer. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

The Via Flaminia in Narni.

In Narni, exhausted and dehydrated, we said goodbye to the Via Flaminia, a route trodden by countless historical personages, and many who weren’t, and now by us. Back on the Autostrada, we headed south, bypassing Rome and Lake Albano. Our next destination was Nemi, ancestral home of the Latins, the local tribe that later founded Rome, whose religious magic was the first inspiration for Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

J.M.W. Turner, The Golden Bough (Wikipedia).

“In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary.”  –- Sir James George Frazer, Preface to The Golden Bough.

Nemi seemed hard to find, probably because our satellite navigator failed. My recollection of where Nemi should have been also failed us, abjectly. Alex was obliged to dust off his intuition and navigate the same way Cortez is said to have found the Pacific in Keats’ On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer—by “wild surmise.” Wild surmise got us to Nemi easily. Sometimes maps and directions just get in the way.

Fabled Nemi. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Nemi is a popular resort for contemporary Romans, famous for its crazily sweet strawberries, with many fine restaurants. At the end of the day the town on the crater rim is cool and breezy, a perfect relief from the sweltering heat and humidity of Rome in July. There are cats to look at and the ruins of a very early temple of Diana among the strawberry farms if you feel you absolutely must walk down the crater wall to the lake.

Nemi. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

View of the crater lake at Nemi from our restaurant table. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

I easily win the 'Who Looks Like a Satyr?' competition. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Nemi from our restaurant table. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

It was late night when we left Nemi for Rome about twenty miles to the north. Our satellite navigator was still confused, sending us on a twisting suburban route through glaring headlights to the Appian Gate and the Via Cilicia. We pantheistically thanked all the gods that the Hotel Cilicia next to the Appian Way was easy to find, replete with parking, brilliantly staffed, and had huge refrigerated American-style rooms with tons of running water. We were ready for an American-style room, as we gingerly unwrapped the moleskin bandages swathed around our feet and surveyed our compound blisters and stone bruises with pilgrim-like gratification, as many a tramp has done before us. The next day we would see the Caput Mundi, the Head of the World, as the ancient Romans used to call their capital.