Frascati attractions

Frascati's sights are villas, a cathedral, a dead city and a wine culture.

The villa landscape is the main one: the Castelli Romani were where the papal court and the Roman aristocracy built their summer houses, and Frascati is the centre of that.

The cathedral dedicated to St Peter was begun in 1598, and the church now called Capocroce commemorates the day in May 1527 when a Landsknecht company that had just sacked Rome turned aside at a roadside shrine and spared the town.

Above the town is Tusculum, the ancient Latin city destroyed in 1191, whose site occupies the hill of Monte Tuscolo.

Below the surface, the archaeology is Roman: the most significant finds belong to a patrician villa associated with Lucullus and later with the Flavian imperial dynasty.