The city of Fondi was destroyed by the Lombards in the Middle Ages and contested with the Church by Federico the 2nd and Manfredi, by passing through a lot of important families. They started to build the castle in 1319 with the restructuring of the boundary wall (whose remains are still visible). Roffredo the 3rd of Caetani wanted to make it the center of its signory, so he built the Baronial Palace that he used as an elegant residence, connected to the castle by a passage. Caetani family had a relevant role in the city, because it was under Onorato Caetani’s protection that in 1534 the antipope Clemente the 7th was elected in Fondi, so the city got the nickname of “City of Satan”. It happened during the conclave of the cardinals on the 20th of September in the rooms of the castle. In 1504 the dukedom passed to Colonnas and then to Gonzagas. An important figure is princess July Gonzaga, widow of Vespasiano Colonna duke of Fondi, who made a cultural club out of her palace, so much that in the Renaissance Fondi was called “the little Athens”. The fame of its beauty arrived to the saracen corsair Kai-Ed-Din called the Barbarossa, who planned her kidnapping to make a present to the Solimano sultan. The legend tells that July was told of the kidnapping and had time to flee through the underground passage that would be supposed to be in the castle. The castle, with its powerful structure and indisputable appeal, has met a lot of restoration and adaptation works, though keeping its architectural features: in 1840, for security reasons, the battlement of the donjon was demolished; in 1861 it became a prison, and stayed such until 1931. The last restoration work turned the castle into a structure to be visited, that hosts the municipal museum (with finds of the roman ages), and the hall at the ground floor now works as a meeting-room and common council hall.

Richard from St. Germano, Frederick the 2nd of Svevia’s official reporter, wrote that in 1223, after a decision of the monarch, the castles of Gaeta, Naples, Aversa and Foggia were reinforced. The term “firmantur” leaves no doubt on the intervention wanted by the emperor regarding only the reinforcement and extension of a structure already existing, not its building “ex novo”. Therefore, in the beginning of the 13th century, the castle had to have its final settling; it’s furthermore probable that fortified cores were already there since ages even more remote, given the frequent danger of attacks and incursions in the area. Destroyed by Pope Gregory the 7th, Gaeta castle was rebuilt in the Angevin Ages by Charles the 1st. Alfonso of Aragon, once in possession of the castle, started a deep restoration and strengthening work. At this point, the initial structure was extended to a layer marked by a rectangular building with angular towers. That’s how the castle ended to have two different structures, still strictly connected to each other despite the difference in height they were built on. Further restorations were made by Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles the 5th. Victim of sieges and bombings, during the centuries, the castle was object of several interventions that progressively changed its initial settling, and made a document-monument of totally different ages out of it. Of the two cores composing the whole building, the oldest is the lower one and can be identified by the Angevin structure. At an upper level we have the Aragonese age extension.

Ninfa was a wonderful village: it had nine churches, two out of the walls , St. Peters and St. Clement, and seven inside the walls, St. Mary the Major, St. Biagio, St. Salvatore, St. Lion, St. Angel, St. Martin and St. Quinziano. It included about 150 houses, almost all with two floors, an attic or a barn. Above the houses rose about ten strong and slender towers, proof of the most powerful families, among which, for power and beauty, “towered” Caetani’s embattled tower, that nowadays is still mirrored in the quiet waters of the lake. The whole town was defended by a double circle of walls, broken only by a few defense towers. The village was destroyed in 1380 after a few fights inside Caetani’s family and, because of malaria getting worse, it definitively depopulated never to be reconstructed. In his “Walks around Italy”, the German traveler and historian Ferdinand Gregorovius, admiring it in all its sad but dignified oblivion, called it “Middle Ages Pompeii”.". 

Sermoneta is a medieval installation with walls, semi-circled towers and a big and well kept castle. In the 12th century Sermoneta belonged to the Church; in 1222 it was Annibaldi’s feud, and 1297 it was bought by Caetanis who stayed its final owners. Caetani castle is one of the most famous examples of defensive architecture of Latium; probably started in the 11th century, its outside is filled with a complex series of bulwarks and communication trenches hanging on its big central core, placed around a court with a well. It’s structurally composed of a donjon with a notable 13th century tower, a building of the 14th century and a fortified house ( the Cardinal’s House). In the interior, that partly keeps the medieval furniture, we have two interesting rooms (Painted Rooms), maybe frescoed by a Pinturicchio’s student, a long corridor called “The Big Host” and the wide stables. We don’t know who the first architects were, but we certainly know that the widening, during Borgia dominion, were made by a great military designer: Antonio from Sangallo the Old, who had already planned the forts of Nettuno, Civita Castellana and Nepi.