Italy, Alatri

Perhaps the real period of peace and splendour for Alatri was many centuries before Christ and is visible in its walls and the Acropolis. Until the fall of Rome it was a high-ranking town allied faithfully to the city of Rome. Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Alatri has been invaded by barbarians of Totila Ostrogoths and threatened by the Lombards and Saracens. It became a town in 1200, and has always been a borderland between the papacy and the kingdom of Naples. It has been a bishopric since the age of Constantine, and in the early sixth century it was the centre of one of the oldest Cenobitic communities of the West.