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Segni is a lovely little
town near Rome, in a pretty good
geographic position to be serve as a base for traveling to various places in
Italy. From here you can travel by car
to Rome in one hour, to Pompeii in one and a half and to
Florence in three. You can stay in a lovely hotel called La Pace
(The Peace) (www.albergo-lapace.it)
with nice air-conditioned rooms, rates are less than 70 Euros a
night for a double including breakfast, and its great restaurant is
famous in the area. You might as well stay at Mrs. Augusta Ciotti's
B&B housed in an old and historical large home, right in the center
of the town. |
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Using Segni as a base you can travel with me, by car or motor
scooter, to visit Rome and all the little towns in the surroundings.
I can also take you on day trips to Pompeii and Sorrento, Florence,
Assisi etc... |
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Go out in the evening and
have fun going to the numerous festivals that, especially during the
summer, take place in Segni and the nearby towns. You might as well
spend a couple of nights in Rome before moving to Segni to enjoy the
country.
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Some distances:
Segni/Rome 60 km (37.5 Miles) 1 hour.
Segni/Pompeii 190 km (120 Miles) 1 hour 40
minutes.
Segni/Assisi 220 km (140 Miles) 2 hours.
Segni/Florence 315 km (200 Miles) 3 hours.
Segni/Positano 210 km (130 Miles) 2 hours. |
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Segni is rich in history, it already existed when
Rome was founded, but later was conquered by the Romans and,
according to the legend, became Rome's first colony in 494 BC and
that is why on Segni's coat of arms you read "Signia Civitas Prima
Romanorum Colonia". Signia is in fact Segni's original name and the
rest means "first city to become a Roman colony". |
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Since the first century BC, when it was upgraded from the status
of a colony to independent city, allied with Rome and with equal
rights, Segni also goes with the initialism S.P.Q.S. (Senatus
PopulusQue Signinum) same as Rome's
S.P.Q.R. |
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One of the two most important temples in Segni, in the days of
ancient Rome, was dedicated to the goddess
Juno Moneta where the additional name "Moneta" stands for
monitor in the sense of one who admonishes, gives advice. In Rome,
near the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitol hill, in the third
century BC, the Romans built their mint in the area that because of
the temple people called "ad monetam" and that is why in Italian we
call coins "moneta" which in English became "money". Segni was,
outside of Rome, the only town in the region that could mint its own
money and its coins had on one side the head of a boar and on the
other god Mercury denominated thereafter "Signinum". |
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No one knows for sure if the name of the city comes from the fact
that Segni could mint and put its seal "sign" on the coins or from
the emblem "sign" of
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus,
the Roman king who, according to the legend, first colonized Segni
in the fifth century BC. Segni is also the place where the first
water resistant stucco plaster was invented. It was largely used by
the Romans to line their aqueducts, cisterns, swimming pools and
such and it was called "opus signinum". Segni also still has its
belt of Cyclopean walls. Cyclopean masonry is a type of stonework
which probably originated in
Mycenae,
Greece. It consists in huge limestone blocks, fitted together with
minimal clearance between adjacent stones and without use of mortar.
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The boulders are so large that in the middle ages
people fantasized about who built those walls and said it must have
been the one-eyed giants. the Cyclopes, since a human being could
not have lifted such large stones. You might wonder why
I live in Segni. Well, this is where my mother's family came from
and when, back in 1990, my landlord wanted back the apartment I was
renting because she needed it for her son, I decided to move to the
country and chose Segni because I was very familiar with the place
since, when I was a kid, often I spent my summers over at my
grandparents'. |
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The picture on
the left shows their place, top floor right on the town's main
street! Why I decided to move to the country? Because my wife had
just told me, the same days I learned I lost my apartment, that she
was pregnant and I thought the kid would have lived better in a
small town than in Rome. |
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For those who would like to go
shopping, there are some shops in Segni, but
the fairly large city at the foot of the hill, Colleferro, surely
has more to offer in terms of shops.
But not to far from Colleferro, driving about 20 minutes from Segni,
you can reach the new outlet mall called
"Fashion
District" where they have good quality goods selling for a much
lower price than in any big city. |
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