Road station
Casinum
Cassino
Listen to the story
Casinum, below the hill of Monte Cassino, was an old town of the Liris valley on the Via Latina; its citadel stood where Saint Benedict founded his famous monastery in 529. The scholar Varro had a villa in the well-watered plain below, and Cicero accused Mark Antony of turning it into a scene of drunken revels after he seized it. Among the ruins stands the amphitheatre, paid for by a wealthy woman of the town, Ummidia Quadratilla.