South of the Alban Hills, the Via Appia drops onto the Pontine plain and runs dead straight for mile after mile, as if the Roman engineers had laid it with a ruler, which in a sense they did. This was the Regina Viarum, the queen of roads, begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus to link Rome with Capua, and later extended to Brindisi. Here, near Sezze Scalo and Latina, the road crossed the Pontine Marshes, a malarial swamp that defeated would-be drainers from the Romans to the popes. Travellers sometimes took a canal boat alongside the road instead, and the poet Horace complained about the mosquitoes and the frogs keeping him awake on that very journey.
The marshes were finally drained in the 1930s under Mussolini, in a huge project that created new farmland and new towns, including Latina, founded in 1932 as Littoria, with its rationalist architecture of squares and straight avenues. The modern SS7 follows the line of the old road across the plain, lined with umbrella pines and eucalyptus, and the whole route of the Appia became a UNESCO site in 2024.
The riding on the plain is fast, flat and straight, and the traffic can be heavy and impatient, so do not expect much fun on the SS7 itself. The real pleasure is in the hills to the east, the Monti Lepini, where Sezze sits on a ridge overlooking the plain. The roads up to Sezze, Bassiano and Sermoneta climb in tight bends through olive groves and forests, with views over the plain to the sea and the Circeo promontory. Sermoneta, with its Caetani castle, is one of the most beautiful medieval villages in Lazio, and the Garden of Ninfa below it, built among the ruins of a medieval town, is famously romantic but open only on certain days.
Sezze, about five kilometres away, has fuel, shops and restaurants, and is known for its artichokes, celebrated with a festival in spring. Latina and the coast offer more services and beaches. Local food includes buffalo mozzarella, fresh vegetables from the reclaimed land and the hearty cooking of the hill towns. Spring is lovely, with green fields and mild weather.