Frascati discovery guide

Frascati is the best known of the Castelli Romani, twenty kilometres south-east of Rome on the Alban Hills, and it makes the white wine that carries its name. It is also, improbably, a physics town: a comune of twenty-three thousand people that holds several international scientific laboratories.

The friction is that it is a Roman weekend habit more than a destination. The crowd arrives on Saturday evening for the wine cellars, and the town is at its least interesting precisely when most people see it.

So come by train on a weekday and give the afternoon to the villas and the hill above. Walk up towards Tusculum, the ancient city destroyed in 1191 whose death created this town — Frascati was titled Tusculum Novum for it — and stay for dinner rather than for the evening crush.

April to June is the best stretch: the hills are green, the villas are at their best and the walk up to Tusculum is comfortable.

Summer is hot but milder than the city — 35 °C with rare peaks of 37, and never yet 40 — which is precisely why Rome has come up here for two thousand years.

Autumn is the wine season and the most characteristic time to visit, with the added advantage that rainfall here is modest at 700–800 mm a year.

Weekends in any season bring the Roman evening crowd for the cellars. Weekdays are a different town.

Winter is mild and rainy, with temperatures occasionally below zero and snow very rare — only in intense cold waves arriving from the Rhône valley, and then usually as sleet.

Drink the wine where it is made

Frascati produces the white wine that carries its name, and the cellars in the town are the point of most Roman visits.

Walk up to Tusculum

The Latin city destroyed in 1191, on the hill above — the reason Frascati exists and was titled Tusculum Novum.

See the villa landscape

The Castelli Romani were where the papal court and Roman aristocracy summered, and this is its centre.

Find Capocroce

The church commemorating 1 May 1527, when Landsknechts fresh from sacking Rome turned aside at a roadside shrine and spared the town.

Stand where free schooling began

On 15 September 1616 the first public and free school in Europe was established here, on the initiative of Saint Joseph Calasanz.

Look down at Rome

The town is in a commanding position relative to the city, twenty kilometres away and visible from it.

Frascati is a wine town that Rome treats as an extension of itself, and a research centre that most of its visitors never notice.

The Roman relationship is the dominant one. Twenty kilometres and a direct train mean the town's evenings belong to the capital, and the cellar trade is built around that.

The scientific presence runs in parallel and barely touches it. Several international scientific laboratories are located here, giving a comune of twenty-three thousand a professional population quite separate from the wine economy.

The historical identity is borrowed from a dead neighbour. Frascati took Tusculum's bishopric in 1191 and its name in 1538, and the 1515 statute called its people Populus antiquae civitas Tusculi — the people of the ancient city of Tusculum. A town that defines itself by the city above it that no longer exists.

And the real name is modest to the point of comedy: frasche, brushwood, from the business of collecting firewood.

Come by train, especially in the evening. Frascati's main attraction is wine and it is twenty kilometres from Rome with a direct rail link. There is no good reason to drive here and a very obvious reason not to.

The town is not only a cellar district. Twenty-three thousand people live here, and the weekend evening crowd lands on a small historic centre. Keep the noise down in the streets late.

Tusculum is an archaeological site on a wooded hill. It is the ancient city destroyed in 1191, on Monte Tuscolo above the town, within reach of the regional park. Stay on the paths and take nothing.

Part of the territory is protected. The Castelli Romani regional park covers part of the comune and is what keeps woodland continuous in one of Italy's most settled hill ranges.

Buy the wine where it is made. The point of coming to a wine town is to put money into its own producers rather than into a brand sold everywhere.

Spread across the Castelli. Grottaferrata and Monte Porzio Catone are immediately either side, and the ring of hill towns takes pressure off any one of them.

What each level of spending buys in Frascati

Frascati is cheap to visit and easy to spend money in, which is the usual shape of a wine town twenty kilometres from a capital. The cheapest version — a train, a cellar and the hill — is also one of the better ones.

Two EU rules govern what you are actually charged. You must be clearly informed of the total price, including all taxes and additional charges. And traders in the EU are not allowed to charge extra for paying by credit or debit card — the exceptions are American Express and Diners Club cards and corporate cards, where any fee may not exceed what processing actually costs the trader.

The tiers above describe what each level of spending buys here, not quoted rates. No published rate card covers a comune this size, and prices move sharply with the season.