Map - Frascati

Frascati is a city and comune in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital in the Lazio region of central Italy. It is located 20 km south-east of Rome, on the Alban Hills close to the ancient city of Tusculum. Frascati is closely associated with science, being the location of several international scientific laboratories.

Frascati produces the white wine with the same name. It is also a historical and artistic centre.

The most important archeological finding in the area, dating back to Ancient Roman times, during the late Republican Age, is a patrician Roman villa probably belonging to Lucullus. In the first century AD its owner was Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus, who married Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero. His properties were later confiscated by the Flavian imperial dynasty (69–96 AD). Consul Flavius Clemens lived in the villa with his wife Domitilla during the rule of Domitian.

According to the Liber Pontificalis, in the 9th century Frascati was a little village, probably founded two centuries earlier. The name of the city probably comes from a typical local tradition of collecting firewood ("frasche" in Italian)—many place-names around the town refer to trees or wood. After the destruction of nearby Tusculum in 1191, the town's population increased and the bishopric moved from Tusculum to Frascati. Pope Innocent III endorsed the city as a feudal possession of the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, but in the following centuries its territories were ravaged by frequent raids that impoverished it. It was owned by various baronial families, including the Colonna, until, in 1460, Pope Pius II fortified the city with walls.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pope Julius II gave Frascati as a feudal possession to the condottiero Marcantonio I Colonna, who lived there from 1508 together with his wife Lucrezia della Rovere (1485–1552), niece of Pope Julius II. In 1515 Colonna gave Frascati its first statute, Statuti e Capituli del Castello di Frascati, under the Latin title Populus antiquae civitas Tusculi.

In 1518 a hospital was built, named after St. Sebastiano, in memory of the old basilica destroyed in the 9th century. After Prince Colonna's death in 1522, Lucrezia della Rovere sold Frascati to Pier Luigi Farnese, nephew of Pope Paul III.

On May 1, 1527, a Landsknecht company, after having sacked Rome, arrived out of the bordering villages. However, the soldiers changed the direction of their movement next to a niche, a "Rural Aedicule" consecrated to the Virgin Mary, and the town was therefore saved. This event is commemorated by a church now called Capocroce.

In 1538, Pope Paul III conferred the title of "Civitas" to Frascati, with the name "Tusculum Novum". In 1598 construction began on a new cathedral dedicated to St. Peter.

On September 15, 1616, the first public and free school in Europe was established on the initiative of Saint Joseph Calasanz.

On June 18, 1656, a part of the plaster peeled off a wall inside the Church of St. Mary in Vivario, and an ancient fresco became visible. It was the image of Saints Sebastian and Roch, protector from the plague. In that same year there was an epidemic of plague in Rome but Frascati was unaffected. Since that year, the two Saints have been co-patron Saints of the city. There are statues of the two saints in the façade of the Cathedral.