palestrina
 
PALESTRINA was built on the site of the ancient Praeneste, originally an Etruscan settlement and later a favoured resort for patrician Romans. "Cool Praeneste", as Horace called it, was the site of an enormous Roman Temple of Fortune, whose foundations more or less determine the extent of the modern town centre, which steps up the hillside in a series of terraces constructed on the different levels of the once vast edifice - the ruins of which you can see at every turn.

Buses run to Palestrina about every 45 minutes from Rome and take about 45 minutes, dropping you on Via degli Arcioni, from where you have to walk up the steep incline to the town centre. You can see this in no time. There's a much-changed Duomo with fragments of a Roman road at the top end of the right aisle and a copy of Michelangelo's Pietà di Palestrina - the original, is now in Florence. And the stepped streets of the place are appealing enough for some casual strolling. But you have to climb to the top of the town for the real attraction - the Palazzo Colonna-Barberini , which houses the Museo Nazionale Archeologico Prenestino (daily 9am-1hr before sunset; L4000/¬2.07). Originally built in the eleventh century and greatly modified by Taddeo Barberini in 1640, this occupies the uppermost level of the Temple of Fortune, now largely modernized inside and containing a slightly faded display of artefacts. Among a number of Roman pieces, there's a torso of a statue of Fortune in slate-grey marble, a recently found sculpture, Il Triade Capitolina , other bits from the temple, and funerary cistae much like those displayed at the Villa Giulia in Rome.

At the top, the museum's prize exhibit is the marvellous first-century BC Mosaic of the Nile , which depicts the flooding of the river with a number of Egyptian scenes of life along the waterway from the source to the delta. Look closely and you'll notice a wealth of detail: there's a banquet going on under the vines on the left, soldiers and priests are grouped in front of the Serepaeum on the right, while the source of the river among the mountains is pictured at the top of the mosaic, where hunters and wild animals, labelled with Greek lettering, congregate. Outside the museum, your ticket admits you to the top terrace of the temple, the ruins of which command fine views over the surrounding countryside.