Trajan built the harbour of Civitavecchia in the second century, and Rome has been using it ever since. Then called Centumcellae, it became the port of the capital, and today it is one of the busiest ports in Italy, with cruise ships, ferries to Sardinia and container ships crowding the docks. The town is not pretty, but it has character, and the old harbour walls still follow Trajan's lines.
The great fortress on the waterfront, the Forte Michelangelo, was begun in the early sixteenth century to defend the port against pirates, and Michelangelo is credited with designing its keep. It stands squat and massive by the cruise terminal. Stendhal, the French novelist, served as consul here in the 1830s and found it unbearably dull, which says more about Stendhal than the town.
Just outside the town, the Terme Taurine are the ruins of a Roman bath complex fed by hot springs, and the springs still flow. North along the Aurelia, Tarquinia has one of the great Etruscan necropolises, with painted tombs showing banquets, dancers and musicians, astonishingly vivid after two and a half thousand years.
The scenic part of this stop is the coast itself. The Aurelia runs along the shore, with views over the sea and the islands, and inland, the Tolfa hills offer quiet, winding roads through oak forest and pasture, with horses and cattle grazing. The Tolfa roads are narrow and the surface varies, but traffic is light.
Down on the seafront promenade the cruise giants and Sardinia ferries come and go a few hundred metres away, and the fish restaurants near the old port do a fine plate of spaghetti alle vongole. Fuel stations sit along the Aurelia on both sides of town.