The coast and Circeo
Dunes, headlands and a mountain that rises on its own out of a flat plain.
The best stretch of the Lazio shore lies south of Rome and begins where the plain ends. The Circeo headland rises five hundred and forty-one metres from a coast that has been flat for fifty kilometres: it is visible from a very long way off, and it is why the Greeks put a sorceress on top of it.
Between Sabaudia and San Felice run twenty-two kilometres of unbroken dune, one of the few such stretches left in Italy, with four coastal lakes behind them. The national park protects these together with the lowland forest, the last piece of the wood that covered the plain before the drainage.
The headlands and the towns
Further south the coast changes again: Terracina has a Roman temple on its hilltop, Sperlonga is a white village on a spur with the grotto of Tiberius below it, Gaeta has a gulf, a mountain split in two and a beach inside the town. Ferries to Ponza and Ventotene leave from here.
The campsites are numerous and nearly all under pines, between Sabaudia and Baia Domizia. In August you book far ahead; in June and September the water is the same and the beach is empty.