Ariccia (25km southeast of Rome on Via Appia Nuova, in the Castelli Romani hills) occupies a specific position in Roman consciousness that has nothing to do with tourism and everything to do with the Sunday lunch drive: the Romans have been going to Ariccia to eat porchetta (the herb-roasted whole pig that the Ariccia tradition has been producing for centuries and that the specific wood-fire roasting technique of the Castelli Romani area produces differently from any other Italian porchetta) since the first paved road connected Rome to the Castelli hills. This isn't a tourist activity, it is the specific Roman weekend ritual of driving to the Castelli, eating porchetta with bread and local white wine at one of the fraschette (the informal wine taverns), and returning to the city in the late afternoon. Ariccia is where Romans go to eat when they want to eat well without thinking about it.
The specific Ariccia contradiction: it is simultaneously the most visited Castelli Romani town (the porchetta pilgrimage) and the least-known artistically, because the visitors who come for the porchetta rarely connect the lunch destination with the fact that Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the entire central piazza of the town in 1664, the Piazza di Corte with its church of Santa Maria Assunta (a miniature copy of Bernini's own design for Saint Peter's in Rome, with the elliptical colonnade adapted to a much smaller scale) and the adjacent Palazzo Chigi (the family palace of Pope Alexander VII Chigi, for whom Bernini worked in Rome) form one of the most coherent Baroque urban spaces in Italy, in a town that people visit primarily to eat pig.
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Ariccia: What to Know
Bernini's Piazza di Corte
The Piazza di Corte (the central piazza of Ariccia, with the church of Santa Maria Assunta, the Palazzo Chigi, and the connecting loggia, all 1664, all Bernini) is the most specific Baroque urban intervention in the Castelli Romani and one of the finest examples of Bernini's civic scale work outside Rome. The specific Bernini-Ariccia detail: the church facade (the circular plan church topped by a dome, with the two curved portico arms that echo the Saint Peter's colonnade at a fraction of the scale) was Bernini's direct application of his Roman models to a provincial setting. Alexander VII Chigi wanted the family's Castelli residence to have an appropriate architectural backdrop, and Bernini provided it with the specific economy of scale that the setting required. The Palazzo Chigi (now the Museo di Arte Barocca e Ariccia Pittoresca) contains paintings and furniture from the Chigi collection. Open Tuesday-Sunday.
Porchetta di Ariccia: The Specific Product
The Porchetta di Ariccia (IGP. Indicazione Geografica Protetta since 2011) is a whole pig (20-40kg) deboned, rubbed with a specific mixture of salt, rosemary, garlic, black pepper, and wild fennel, rolled tightly, and cooked in a wood-fired oven for 4-5 hours until the skin is crisp and the interior is moist and aromatic. The Ariccia porchetta is eaten in the specific format: sliced or carved to order and served in a ciabatta or rosetta roll, eaten at the fraschette or standing at one of the porchetterie on the Piazza di Corte and the adjacent via. Price: approximately €3-5 for a sandwich. The Ariccia porchetterie open from approximately 8am (serving workers buying the morning sandwich) through the afternoon.
Q&A: Ariccia
How do I get to Ariccia from Rome?
By car: 25km southeast of Rome via Via Appia Nuova (SS7) or the A1 exit at Montecompatri-San Cesareo then SP Tuscolana. Total driving time approximately 35-45 minutes without traffic. The Ariccia viaduct (the 19th-century stone viaduct spanning the Valle della Galleria, the deep volcanic valley below the town, with three levels of arches and a maximum height of 59 metres) is one of the finest engineering monuments in Lazio and is visible approaching the town from the Rome direction. By bus: COTRAL from Laurentina Metro B terminal, approximately 45 minutes. The Sunday porchetta drive: traditionally combines Ariccia for the porchetta lunch with a return via the Lago di Nemi (the small crater lake known for its wild strawberries, 6km north of Ariccia) and Castel Gandolfo (the Papal summer residence with its Lago Albano view, 8km north).
