Description

Anzio Lavinio
Terraced apartment with sea view, totally renovated. The property is located on the third floor and comprises living room, kitchenette, 2 bedrooms, bathroom, balcony and sunroof. Great location.

In Rome, there is really only one place to go - Anzio.

It's the perfect place to escape the city, explore some history - and top up your tan .

Anzio is a medium-sized fishing port on the coast of Lazio, south of Rome. It was an important Roman port, but now is best-known for its military significance as a landing-spot for the Allies in the Second World War.

Founded by the Volsci way back in the ancient times, Anzio is just 35 miles south of Rome on the coast (if you hit Nettuno, you've gone too far!). Not content to leave such a pretty piece of real estate in the hands of these longtime rivals, the Romans eventually conquered the strategic harbour, and Emperor Nero chose to build one of his beach shacks down there, presumably to have a quiet place to read, think, and be completely normal. By the Middle Ages, the place was pretty much deserted, although some sources claim that during some Renaissance excavations, the Apollo Belvedere - long considered one of the greatest classical statues from antiquity - was discovered among the ruins.

Not much of note happened in Anzio for the following 600 years or so, until 1944 when the Allied forces mounted an amphibious landing at Anzio and Nettuno, leading to several months of rather bloody battle until they finally broke through and marched on Rome, liberating it on 4 June, 1944.
Awesomely, many remains from every element of this rather intense and extended history are still visible in Anzio. Walls and caves that made up Nero's villa line the cliffs that rise up along the beach - the very same beach where the Allies landed, and where you can now lay out and catch some rays. Wade into the water and swim by some giant chains left over from docking the Allied ships, and then breaststroke your way over to a series of tunnels and caves that formed the nefarious underworld of Nero's party house.

A number of restaurants line the road above the beach, offering fresh seafood, cold wine, and air-conditioned views of all that cool stuff you just read about. Baia di Ponente on Riviera Vittorio Mallozzi is a favourite, offering perfectly crisp fried fish, an excellent crudo plate, and reasonable prices.

How to get there from Rome:
Trains run from Termini to Anzio every hour on the :07, return on the :37 (until 8:37pm) and costs €7.20 for the round trip. To get to the beach, it's about a 15-minute walk from the train station, or you could probably catch a bus. To walk, exit the station onto Viale Claudio Paolini, and just keep heading downhill until you see water.

History

Battle of Anzio, (22 January-5 June 1944), World War II event on the coast of Italy, south of Rome. Intended as a daring outflanking move that would open up the way to the capture of Rome, the Anzio landings degenerated into World War II deadlock: the Allies unable to drive forward from their bridgehead and the Germans without the means to push the invaders back into the sea.
Having failed to break through the German Gustav Line, the Allies proposed to land an amphibious force on the (western) Italian coast behind German lines. A combined U.S.-British operation, under the command of Major General John Lucas's U.S. VI Corps, it lacked the resources to be effective. The landings on 22 January did, however, achieve complete surprise and were virtually uncontested. Lucas then made the much-criticized decision not to exploit this opportunity; instead of pushing forward, he decided to consolidate his beachhead, leading Winston Churchill to famously quip, "I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat into the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale."
Responding with their customary alacrity, the Germans soon had the Allied troops corralled within a tight perimeter. The geography favoured the Germans, too; they held a ring of high ground above the Allied position and poured down a massive volume of artillery fire on the soldiers holding the marshy ground below. Both sides reinforced their positions, which further encouraged a tactical stalemate, conditions reminiscent of World War I.
Lucas was made a scapegoat and replaced by Major General Lucien Truscott, but he too could do little to break the deadlock. It was only the slow, relentless pressure applied on land and in the air throughout Italy that forced the Germans to give way. On 25 May, with the Germans in retreat, the men from the Anzio bridgehead met up with Allied troops fighting their way up from the south. On 5 June, the Allies marched into Rome unopposed.
Losses: Allied, 7,000 dead, 36,000 wounded, missing, or captured by 150,000 troops; German, 5,000 dead, 4,500 captured, 30,000 wounded or missing of I35,000 troops.