Pontinia, lying on the Pontine Plain about 90 km from Rome and 20 from Latina, is the City of Foundation inaugurated on December 18, 1935, exactly one year after the laying of the first stone.
The original urban nucleus, still intact, follows the style of other “new cities” with essential architectural features and some load-bearing structures, located around the central square or in its vicinity. These are the Town Hall, with its writings from the fascist period, the post office, the cinema-theatre and the Casa del Fascio (now Casa della Cultura), which houses the Museum of Malaria and its History. Furthermore, we find the parish church of S. Anna, the school, the barracks, and the aqueduct tower.
The municipal territory extends over an area rich in spring waters, rivers and artificial canals lower than sea level; the most important water pumping plant in the Pontine Plain was built here.
There are several historical sites, such as the Roman Statio Ad Medias (the current Mesa of Pontinia) on the Via Appia, with the eighteenth-century post office built by Pope Pius VI, in whose entrance hall two milestone columns of the Roman Appian Way and numerous tombstones testify its belonging to distant eras. Don’t miss the Agro Pontino Museum which collects important testimonies from the pre and post reclamation periods.
The city maintains its character as a centre with a predominantly agricultural economy, with some industrial settlements and a growing tourism economy.