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the castle from the beach at blue hour, with the spotlights lit under the base and reflected on the wet sand, and on the right the breakwater that closes the bay
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Italy · Lazio · Sea and coast

Santa Severa

a castle with its feet in the water, built on top of the Etruscan port of Pyrgi

1 stopwhere to park
8 sightsto see
2 eventsseasonal
On the map

The castle of Santa Severa stands with its feet in the water, on a beach of the coast north of Rome, and the reason it stands exactly there is underneath it: this was Pyrgi, the sea terminal of Caere, that is to say the port from which Etruscan Cerveteri looked out over the Mediterranean. From the sanctuary of Pyrgi came, in 1964, three gold tablets bearing the same text in Etruscan and in Phoenician, the dedication of a sacred place to the goddess Astarte by Thefarie Velianas king of Caere: they are the oldest direct historical source pre-Roman Italy has left us, and they were the key with which the reading of Etruscan began. The tablets, however, are not here: they are in Rome, at Villa Giulia. What is here is the castle, which the Region has opened to the public with the museums, the church, the little hamlet and a hostel inside it, and you walk in from the beach.

Sleeping

Stops and overnight stays

Only one, and it is not an equipped area but a car park: you come here for the day rather than for the night, and what follows comes from the sources.

Parcheggio di Via Cartagine

Via Cartagine 1, 00058 Santa Severa (RM)

the sources give it as free and open to motorhomes, but none of them says you may sleep there, and that is why overnight stays remain unknown. From the car park to the castle is six hundred metres on the flat, along the sea. There is also the castle's own car park, paid, which some sources give as allowing overnight stays but not camping: no reliable coordinates for it were found, so it has not gone in here. The castle's own website, though, says the thing that matters to anyone going in: its car park is paid, and anyone who buys a museum ticket gets three hours free. For a visit to the complex that is the right sum; to stay on the beach for longer the free car park is this one on via Cartagine, six hundred metres on foot and on the flat.

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42.020428, 11.957379
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Getting around

Getting around

  • From the car park on via Cartagine to the castle you go on foot, six hundred metres on the flat along the sea
  • The whole complex is walked inside the walls: from the main gate to the church, the baptistery, the museums and the hamlet you never step outside
  • Cerveteri is a quarter of an hour away: from the car park on via Cartagine to the Banditaccia necropolis is 14 kilometres and about 17 minutes, the Aurelia and then minor roads, without a metre of climb worth the name

Seeing

Sights

The castle complex is the day out, and the beach is the side dish. Be warned, though: three of the points below are closed to the public, the Antiquarium, the Pyrgi excavations and the Museum of the Territory, and the people who run the complex say so. What stays open is the castle with its museum, the Museum of the Sea, the church and the hamlet. Tap a marker on the map to open its entry below.

1

Castle of Santa Severa

Castle · paid entry · 42.01600, 11.95687

the complex belongs to the Lazio Region and is open all year, closed on Mondays. From 1 September to 31 October it opens 9:00-18:00 Tuesday to Friday and 10:00-19:00 on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Inside the walls are the museums, the church, the baptistery, the hamlet and a hostel. Guided tours of the hamlet run only at weekends and on public holidays, in two slots at 11:30 and 16:00: anyone arriving midweek goes round on their own. The ticket for the Castle Museum costs 4 euros, 3 reduced, and under-18s go in free if the adult pays the full price: with that you get into piazza della Rocca, the early Christian church, the Sala del Nostromo, the Sala Pyrgi and the museum. Two things stay outside it: the baptistery, which is only seen on the guided tour, and the Saracen Tower, which costs 2 euros more. The outdoor spaces and the courtyards are walked freely without a ticket.

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2

Museum of the Sea and Ancient Navigation

Museum · paid entry · 42.01656, 11.95839

it is one of the two museums in the complex that remain open, along with the castle's own. It tells the story of ancient navigation, which is the trade this place existed for, and it has been redone recently: seven rooms and over a hundred finds, on underwater archaeology and the port of Pyrgi. How much it costs the website does not say, nor whether it is included in the castle ticket: that is the question to ask at the ticket desk, along with the other one about the Antiquarium.

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3

Antiquarium of Pyrgi

Museum · paid entry · 42.01691, 11.95936

closed to the public, and the people who run the complex say so. It is the museum that would tell the story of the sanctuary and of the gold tablets, that is to say the archaeological reason for coming here: with it closed, that story is to be found at Villa Giulia, in Rome. The reason, though, is better than the formula: the complex's website gives it as unavailable for refurbishment, and a museum under restoration is a museum that reopens. It is worth asking at the ticket desk.

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4

Museum of the Territory

Museum · paid entry · 42.01629, 11.95888

closed to the public, like the Antiquarium.

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5

Archaeological area of Pyrgi

Monument · 42.01580, 11.96190

the Etruscan sanctuary, immediately south east of the castle, with temple A and temple B: B is the late sixth century BC one the gold tablets come from, A is later. The excavations are closed to the public, so from here you look at the enclosure from outside.

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6

Church of Santa Maria dell'Assunta

Church · free entry · 42.01620, 11.95767

the church inside the castle walls, on the little square of the hamlet.

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7

Baptistery of Santa Severa and Santa Lucia

Church · free entry · 42.01633, 11.95720

it stands next to the church and is part of the visit route of the complex, along with the castle museum and the keep.

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8

Roman castrum of Pyrgi

Monument · 42.01674, 11.95869

around the castle you can still read the walls and the gates of the Roman castrum the Romans built on the Etruscan port, after Caere lost the sea. Three gates survive: the Porta Aurelia at 42.017516, 11.959550, the Porta Alsium at 42.015928, 11.959810 and the one the maps call "Castrom Novum" at 42.016972, 11.957822, that is to say the one the road north set off from. Mind the name: that gate looks towards Castrum Novum, which is a different Roman colony and lies ten kilometres from here, at Santa Marinella. They are two different places.

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When

Events

In summer the lawn at the foot of the castle becomes a stage, and the thing to know is that almost all of it is free to get into.

Vivi il Castello di Santa Severa

from June to August

the Lazio Region's summer season, three months of concerts, theatre, cinema and talks on the lawn between the walls and the beach. Almost all of it is free to get into, and for the rest the tickets are on TicketOne: anyone passing through here in summer would do well to look at the programme before deciding which day to come, because the castle in the evening is a different thing from the castle at midday

Libri e Calici

Sundays in summer

within the season, the meetings with authors accompanied by tastings of Lazio wines run by the UNPLI. In 2026 it was in its fourth year, so it is a fixture that comes back

Remember

Useful tips

  • The complex closes on Mondays, and on Thursdays it opens 9:00-18:00: the day of the trip fits well, but it is the same Monday closing that applies to the Banditaccia and to half of Etruria
  • Two museums out of four are closed, plus the excavations: what stays open is the Castle Museum and the Museum of the Sea, which has been redone recently. The one whose closing costs most is the Antiquarium of Pyrgi: without it the castle is still a fine visit, but the Etruscan story you expect from here is not there. Half a day is enough, not a whole one
  • The gold tablets are not here: they are at Villa Giulia, in Rome. If you want to see them, the right place is the three days in Rome of this same trip, not this stop
  • The guided tour of the hamlet runs only on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, at 11:30 and 16:00: arriving on a Thursday you go round on your own
  • As a base for Cerveteri it works: the Banditaccia is fourteen kilometres and a quarter of an hour away, and they are the two halves of the same story, the port and the city that looked out at it from the sea. Anyone with only one day who has to choose should choose the Banditaccia; anyone with two should put them one after the other

Santa Severa · part two

and then?

What to do, what to taste, and where to go tomorrow.

Experiences from here

What we did starting from here, ordered by driving time.

the tumuli lined up along the sepulchral way, the drums of cut tufa and above them the domes of grassy earth, with the stone pines and a cypress behind

The Banditaccia necropolis at Cerveteri

Museum visits · half a day · 17 minutes away

the Tomb of the Leopards: in the pediment the two leopards face each other on either side of a plant, below the three klinai with the couples at the banquet, and above the chequered ceiling

The painted tombs of Tarquinia

Museum visits · half a day · 30 minutes away

Taste

The most typical dish, to cook again at home.

Civitavecchia fish soup · ingredients for 4 people
  • for the broth, 600 g of small rock fish, whole and scaled, plus the bones and heads of the larger fish
  • 1.2 kg of soup fish in pieces, from the firmest to the most delicate: scorpionfish, tub gurnard, weeverfish, smooth-hound
  • 500 g of cuttlefish and squid between them, cleaned and cut into strips
  • 500 g of mussels and 300 g of clams, purged of sand
  • 400 g of mantis shrimp and crabs between them, whole
  • 4 fillets of salted anchovy
  • 4 cloves of garlic, 1 fresh chilli
  • 1 glass of dry white wine
  • 400 g of peeled tomatoes crushed by hand, and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
  • a bunch of parsley, extra virgin olive oil, salt
  • 8 slices of stale country bread, and a clove of garlic to rub them with
Method
  1. pound two cloves of garlic, half the chilli and two fillets of salted anchovy in a mortar until you have a paste: this is the marinara civitavecchiese, and it is made by hand because a blender heats it
  2. for the broth, let half the marinara take a little colour in a pan with the oil, drop in the small fish whole along with the bones and heads, add two crushed peeled tomatoes and a few parsley stalks
  3. deglaze with half a glass of wine, cover with cold water by three fingers and cook over a low heat for forty minutes, skimming: then push it all through a fine sieve, pressing hard, and keep the broth warm. This step is not to be skipped, because it is the soup
  4. open the mussels and clams in a covered pan over a high heat, and take them off as soon as they open: strain and keep their liquor, which is already salty and decides the salt of everything else
  5. in a wide shallow pan heat the oil with the rest of the marinara, add the mantis shrimp and crabs and let them take on flavour for two minutes, then the cuttlefish and squid, which are the slowest to cook
  6. deglaze with the remaining wine, let it evaporate, add the peeled tomatoes and the paste dissolved in a ladle of broth, and cook for twenty minutes over a medium low heat
  7. now the fish goes in, from the largest to the smallest and a few minutes apart, never stirring: you move the pan, not the spoon, or the pieces fall apart
  8. moisten with the hot broth and the mussel liquor until barely covered, and bring it to the end of cooking in ten minutes: adjust the salt only now, and only if it needs it
  9. add the opened shellfish last, turn the heat off, cover and let it rest for five minutes
  10. toast the bread, rub it with the garlic, put it in the bottom of the bowls and pour the soup over it with its broth, finishing with raw chopped parsley
60 more local recipes, region by region

Looking

Santa Severa in photographs

3 shots from our visit. Tap one to see it large.

the castle from the beach at blue hour, with the spotlights lit under the base and reflected on the wet sand, and on the right the breakwater that closes the bay
the castle from the corner that faces the sea, taken from below: the sloping base, the row of corbels under the crown, the square tower in the middle and the round one on the right, and in front the white blocks of the breakwater
the two round towers from underneath, joined at the top by an iron walkway: where the plaster has fallen away you can read the rubble masonry underneath