Anagni Culture

Anagni's culture is built on a memory of being far more important than it is now, and it carries that without embarrassment.

The papal identity is the core of it. The town gave the Church four popes — Gregory IX, Alexander IV and Boniface VIII among them — and was long a papal residence and seat, which is what earned it the name città dei papi.

The defining event is a humiliation rather than a triumph, and the town does not hide it: Boniface VIII was seized in the rooms beside his own cathedral on 7 September 1303, and the schiaffo di Anagni is how most Italians first hear of the place.

Underneath the papal layer is a much older one. This was the capital and spiritual centre of the Hernici, a people of whose language exactly two words survive — Samentum and Bututti — and whose acropolis is the hill the cathedral stands on.

The religious continuity is physical: the cathedral was built on the temple of Ceres, so the sacred centre has not moved in two and a half thousand years.

And the modern reality is industrial. The plain below is entirely occupied by a large industrial district, which is where the comune's working population actually goes.