Ladispoli


Ladispoli is a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Lazio, central Italy. It lies about west of center of Rome, on the Mediterranean Sea.

History

Modern Ladispoli occupies the area of the ancient Alsium, the port of the Etruscan city of Cerveteri and later a Roman colony cited by Cicero.
Alsium was destroyed in the 6th century AD, during the Gothic War, by the Ostrogoths led by Totila. Later a castle, named Palo, was built in the area: it was a fief of the Orsini and, from 1693, of the Odescalchi family.
Modern Ladispoli was founded in 1888 by Ladislao Odescalchi, from whom it takes its name.
In the late 1970s and until the early 1990s, parts of Ladispoli served as refugee camps for Soviet emigrants seeking political and/or religious asylum in Western countries. The experience of Jews from the former USSR staying in Ladispoli in the 1980s was first described in English by Maxim D. Shrayer in his literary memoir "Waiting for America".

Main sights

According to ISTAT figures dated 31 December 2010 there were 7711 foreign nationals living in Ladispoli. The nationalities most represented according to their percentage of the total population were: