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The hamlet of Raino in Itri: olive groves on the slopes of Monte Civita
Raino is a hillside hamlet in Itri, in the southern Pontine area, nestled on the southern flank of Monte Fusco — also known as Monte Civita — at an altitude that ranges from 300 to 600 metres a.s.l. Raino marks the starting point of CAI Trail 949 leading up to the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Civita, the historic route walked every year by thousands of pilgrims. The landscape of Ausonian agriculture is that of terraced olive groves, dry-stone walls, and Mediterranean scrub, a setting unchanged for many centuries.
A land of olives
The Itrana cultivar dominates the territory. It is a dual-purpose olive variety: it yields table olives — the famous Gaeta olives, exported ever since antiquity — and an extra virgin olive oil with herbaceous and peppery notes. In Raino, several farmsteads have produced organic oil for generations. The groves are centuries old: gnarled trees, gripping the exposed rock, looking out towards the Gulf of Gaeta.
The pilgrims' path
The ascent begins from the Raino square with its votive chapels, a statue of Padre Pio and a cross set on a boulder. Three and a half kilometres, 370 metres of altitude gain, an hour and a half's walk among fragrant scrubland, Stations of the Cross and, in the final stretch, a holm oak forest. At the summit, the Sanctuary’s terrace offers a sweeping view: the Circeo promontory, the Fondi plain, Monte Ruazzo. The pilgrimage “of the seven Saturdays before 21 July” sets out from here, every morning at dawn.
