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Rieti
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Pleasantly situated but rather dull,
RIETI
is capital of Lazio's largest province, occupying the plumb geographical centre of Italy - and with a plaque in Piazza di San Rufo to prove it. In the days of the Romans this was a key region, the so-called
Umbilicus Italiae
, and the Via Salaria or "Salt Road" traversing these parts formed an essential route for trading salt (extracted from the Tiber estuary) with the Sabines who lived up in these hills. But nowadays it's on its last legs, with the second lowest population density in the country (after Aosta) and a drift from the land that's more often associated with the south. Three-quarters of the rural population has moved from the countryside since 1950, most of them to Rome, and it doesn't look like changing: poor communications have deterred any sort of industrial initiative - something that is to the visitors' if not the locals' advantage, leaving Rieti's mountain-ringed plain almost entirely unscarred by factories or housing. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Italy,
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