Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

CENTRAL ITALY
oil refining and light engineering, generally more recent and organized in larger
units, fall into a different category, but as a centre o f commerce and manufacture
Rome is still o f the second rank. The older industrial quarters lie in S. Lorenzo
and along the Via Ostiense, but many new ventiures have been sited on the periphery,
a tendency encouraged by financial concessions available within ‘depressed’
areas impinging on the city, Rome is obviously the main centre o f roads
and railways in the peninsula and its equipment has been reinforced recently by
the Strada del Sole. It is the most important airport not only o f Italy but o f the
whole Mediterranean area and is well placed to serve routes from north-west
Einope to the Middle East, the Far East and East Africa.
Between the M ti Prenestini and the Alban hills the ancient Via Latina,
accompanied by the railway and the Strada del Sole, passes over the low Palestrina
col into the Sacco-Liri trench (Valle Latina). T o the north the Cretaceous
limestones of the Monti Ernici-Simbruini, their rugged slopes clothed in oak and
beech scrub when not completely barren, offer a landscape suggestive o f nearby
Abruzzi; Lake Cantemo is o f karstic origin. Occasionally, in a basin or on a
shelf (Fiuggi), a more generous soil, sometimes containing far travelled volcanic
ash, permits the cultivation o f ohves and other dry tree crops. M uch o f the Valle
Latina is hilly, particularly near Frosinone (32,000) where Miocene marls and
sandstones occm:, but the lower section round Pontecorvo is the bed o f a Quaternary
lake. Locally irrigation is practicable but in general a dry polyculture predominates.
The northern hilly margin with its line o f perched settlements
(Anagni, Ferentino, Roccasecca) is grey with olives. The Monti Lepini, Aurunci
and Ausoni, folded and faulted Cretaceous limestone blocks like the M ti Simbruini,
repeat many o f the features o f that range. M uch o f their surface is good
only for sheep grazing or coppiced woodland but patches o f terra rossa support
the olive groves o f the hill-top villages overlooking the Pontine Marshes (Cori,
Norma, Priverno, etc.).
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Something has already been said o f the unfortunate past o f the Agro Pontino
(p. 41). Fundamentally it contains two types o f cotmtry, a region o f Quaternary
dunes and a region o f marsh. Before its improvement, the first, stretching inland
some 6 to 8 km, was largely macchia and oak bosco, part o f which is preserved in
a national park. The danger to health here came mainly from the lagoons (lakes
Fogliano, Sabaudia) lying between the Quarternary dunes and a fine o f lidi
anchored at their southern end to the isolated limestone block o f M . Circeo. The
traditional fishing industry using elaborate traps (really sluices) survives, but the
lidi are being increasingly exploited for bathing resorts. The undulating Quaternary
dune zone has been systematically colonized in large poderi. Subterranean
water is tapped by tree crops, especially vines, and the field crops, notably wheat,
fodder and groundnuts, are assisted with sprinkler irrigation where possible.
Eucalypts have been used imaginatively to give shade and shelter along the
roads and round the farms.
The second region, with its organically rich alluvial soil, would soon revert to
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