GAETA, at one time the “Gibraltar of Italy,” a strongly-fortified seaport town in the province of Caserta, at the.extremity of a peninsula forming the N.W. boundary of the Gulf of Gaeta, with a station on the railway 40 miles N.W. of Naples. The citadel occupies the heights of the peninsula, and the town stretches below in a long thin line. To the east lies the harbour, one of the safest on the whole coast, with a depth of about 15 feet. The principal buildings are the cathedral, the churches, the conventual buildings (of which the most noteworthy are those of the Franciscans and the Benedictines), the hospital, and the foundling asylum. In the cathedral, which was founded or partially built by Barbarossa, are several objects of historical interest :—the body of St Erasmus (the St Ermö or Elmo, whose “fires” are familiar to the Mediterranean sailor); the standard presented by Pope Pius V. to Don John of Austria, the hero of the battle of Lepanto; and a baptismal font from the ruins of Formiae, which had formerly been an altar to Bacchus, and still bears the Greek inscription 2αλ7∏ωE A0τyva7oς eπoiησe. Among the larger remains of Roman Gaeta are a temple and an aqueduct; and the circular Torre T Orlando, which crowns the height above the citadel, is, in reality, the sepulchre of L. Munatius Plancus, as is distinctly proved by a well-preserved inscription. The suburbs of Gaeta, called Castellona, Mola di Gaeta, and Del Borgo, are larger than the town itself, and form a separate commune under the name of Formia (see Foemia). The population of the town in 1871 was 7193, and of the commune, which includes Anatola, 18,385....
Gaeta is identified with Caieta, a town of great antiquity, about whose origin and name very different accounts are offered by the various Greek and Roman writers. Virgil makes it the burial-place of Caieta the nurse of Aeneas, while Strabo connects the name with a Laconian word signifying a cavern. In Cicero’s time the harbour of Caieta was a portus celeberrimus et plenissimus navium, and it was afterwards greatly improved by Antoninus Pius. As a town, the Roman Caieta does not appear to have attained to any great development or importance. On the fall of the Western empire it became a republic, or free town, under the Byzantine government, and it was also the residence of the imperial praetor for Sicily. A considerable increase of its population and power resulted from the destruction of the neighbouring town of Formiae by the Arabs, in 850. In the 9th century Pope John VIII. bestowed the fief on Pandolf, count of Capua; but in 877 Duke Docibilis called in the assistance of the Arabs against the C’anuans, and in the course of the 11th century we find the people of Gaeta exercising their rights for the election of their dukes. At a later period the fief became an apanage of the princes of the successive dynasties of Naples. The capture of the town by Pedro, brother of the king of Aragon, in 1435, was followed by the erection of the fortress to which so much of its subsequent importance was due. Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V. both added to the strength of its defences. In 1707 the citadel was taken by storm by the Austrian general, Daun, after a three months’ siege; and in 1734 it was forced to capitulate, after a five months’ siege, by the allied army under Charles, afterwards king of Naples. In 1806 it was brilliantly defended against the French, under Masséna, ' by Prince Louis of Hessen-Philippsthal, who was, however, severely wounded and obliged to leave the fortress to its fate. Pope Pius IX. found an asylum in the governor’s palace at Gaeta in 1848, and remained there till September 1849. In 1861 it afforded a last point of defence for Francis II. of Naples, who capitulated to the Piedmontese on 13th February. Gaeta has given the name of Gaetani to a famous Italian family, about whose original connexion with the town there are, however, various accounts; and Antonio di Gaeta, one of the great Benedictine missionaries to Africa in the 17th century, bears the mark of his origin.
See Kosetto, Brere descrizione delle cose ρiiι notabili di Gaeta, reprinted by Antonio Bulifone, at Naples, ∙n 1690; “Geschichte von Gaeta,” in Oester, milit. Zeitschrift, 1823.
[745 words — estimated reading time: 5 minutes]