Coastal Lazio and the Sea

Mare Nostrum, this sea of ours, the Mediterranean—it has been the protagonist of the economy and of the cultural development of the territory! By the second millennium B.C., it was already plowed by boats that practiced local coastal navigation in search of profitable trade. For one thing, the sea was safer than the land, and for another, numerous watercourses from the hills made it possible to penetrate the interior by boat. The daring sailors had to travel along the coast only by day, exploiting the moorages on the sandy shoreline because boats with shallow draft could easily moor in the mouths of the rivers. Scholars attribute the first profitable trading posts to the outlets into the Tyrrhenian Sea of the numerous rivers between Civitavecchia and Nettuno. The topography has changed since then, and the ancient river mouths were likely much farther back from the sea than they are today. Some archaeologists have even identified the first maritime moorings at the mouths of the Marta and the Fiora.¹⁴⁸