Marino

Marino is a Castelli Romani wine town on the Alban Hills above Rome, where a painted Roman Mithraeum lies beneath the streets and each October wine famously flows from the town fountain. Churches, a civic museum, underground galleries and views toward the capital make it a rich day trip from the city.

Why visit

Marino rewards travellers who like their hill towns layered. On the surface it is a handsome Castelli Romani centre of churches, baronial palaces and peperino-stone lanes, with wide views toward Rome from its hillside position. Below ground, the town opens into another world: galleries quarried into the soft volcanic rock, and a rare Mithraeum — a temple of the mystery god Mithras — whose painted walls make it one of only a handful in Italy to retain frescoes of the tauroctony scene. Above all, Marino is a wine town with a party to match: its October grape festival is one of Lazio’s most celebrated, capped by the moment when the fountain in the main square runs with white wine instead of water. Half an hour from Rome by train, it slips easily into a Castelli itinerary alongside Frascati, Grottaferrata and Castel Gandolfo, yet sees far fewer foreign visitors than its neighbours.

Character and history

The site has been inhabited since antiquity, when a Latin settlement and later Roman villas spread across these slopes overlooking the coast road. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Marino was a fief of great baronial families, above all the Colonna, whose local dominion peaked with Marcantonio II Colonna, the admiral who commanded the papal squadron at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 — a victory the town still commemorates in its fountains and civic heraldry. The historic centre accumulated its present shape around that era: the collegiate basilica dedicated to the patron St. Barnabas, convent churches, and the Palazzo Colonna raised on the bones of an earlier Orsini fortress. Wine has been the town’s other constant, from the Castelli’s vineyards to the Sagra dell’Uva founded in 1925, when poet Leone Ciprelli invented the tradition of the fountain flowing with wine in honour of the Madonna dell’Acquasanta and the local vintage. The twentieth century brought war damage and rebuilding, but the old streets and their underground passages survived to become one of the area’s most atmospheric archaeological circuits.

What to see

Begin at the Piazza Matteotti and Fontana dei Mori, the town’s entrance square, where the fountain’s chained Moor figures recall the Lepanto triumph. Nearby, the Basilica of St. Barnabas (Marino) is the patronal church, a seventeenth-century collegiate basilica on the square below Corso Trieste. On Piazza Garibaldi stand two contrasting neighbours: the Church of the Most Holy Rosary (Marino), home to a community of cloistered Dominican nuns, and the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Marino), among the oldest in town with roots in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Umberto Mastroianni Civic Museum (former Church of Santa Lucia) occupies the medieval church known locally as the Tempio Gotico and displays the work of the great sculptor who lived in the Castelli. Book ahead for Marino Sotterranea (underground galleries), the guided circuit through the peperino caves below the centre, which includes the Mithraeum of Marino and its painted tauroctony. On Piazza Lepanto, Colonna Palace (Marino) rises on the former Orsini fortress site and houses the town hall; and down the road toward the Bosco Ferentano valley, the Sanctuary of Madonna dell’Acquasanta is a small rock-cut sanctuary tied to the miracle behind the wine festival.

How to experience

Plan Marino around two registers: the underground and the autumn festival. The underground circuit runs by guided visit on scheduled days, so book through the local cultural associations or the tourist office before you come — it is the single most memorable thing to do here. Time an October trip for the Sagra dell’Uva on the first Sunday of the month, when historical processions, food stalls and the wine fountain transform the town; arrive early, as crowds arrive from Rome. The rest of the year, a half-day suffices for the churches, palace and museum, ideally with lunch on Castelli specialities — porchetta from neighbouring Ariccia, wine under the local Castelli Romani denominations, and sweets from the town’s bakeries. Hikers can descend toward the Ferentano valley or link onward across the hills, and the town pairs naturally with Grottaferrata’s abbey in the afternoon.

Practical planning

Marino sits about twenty kilometres southeast of Rome, with its own railway station on the Albano line and frequent direct trains from Termini making it one of the easiest Castelli to reach without a car. The historic centre is compact and steep in places; comfortable shoes handle the cobbled climbs. The underground tour is not suitable for anyone with mobility limitations and operates on a limited schedule that varies by season and by association of volunteers — confirm times with the municipal site (comune.marino.rm.it) or the Castelli Romani tourist board (visitcastelliromani.it). Churches generally open in the morning and late afternoon with a midday closure. Spring and autumn are ideal; the first Sunday of October brings the festival but also the year’s biggest crowds.

Nearby places

Immediate neighbours make perfect pairings: Frascati for its villas and white wine, Grottaferrata for the Byzantine abbey, Castel Gandolfo for the papal palace above Lake Albano, and Nemi for its lake and the museum of the Roman ships. Farther out, Tivoli and Ostia Antica fill a full day in either direction.