I Luoghi della 1000 Miglia

Amelia

Nature, history, art and good food

Nestled in the enchanted landscape of the Amerini mountains, Amelia allows visitors to experience nature, history, art and good food. A very ancient city known by the name of Ameria, it was certainly among the first Italic centres. Cato, quoted by Pliny in his Naturalis historia, states that the city was founded 963 years before the war of the Romans against Perseus, king of Macedon, and thus in 1134 BC.

Amelia bears numerous testimonies to its past that are still perfectly legible today as one walks through its fascinating and well-preserved historical centre. If the remarkable polygonal walls constitute the most important monument, the gates, the architecture of the Renaissance buildings, the churches, tell us of the various eras experienced from the pre-Roman to the modern age.

The archaeological museum, which houses valuable archaeological artefacts found in the tombs, along the Via Amerina and in the numerous rustic villas, as well as in the necropolises of the area, also preserves the bronze statue of Germanicus Julius Caesar, a masterpiece of Roman bronze work. Monumental is the Roman cistern in Piazza Matteotti, consisting of ten rooms and superb evidence of Roman hydraulic engineering, the remains of the ancient theatre, the baths at Palazzo Farrattini and the domus, including that of Palazzo Venturelli with mosaics from the Hadrianic period.

Amelia, Land of the 1000 Miglia since 2010, thanks to the Driver and Mechanic Rinaldo Tinarelli who raced several editions of the race and to the Girotti Figs, official product of the Race in the 1930s, brought to Brescia by the Terni Driver Mario Umberto Borzacchini.