Ausonia

Ausonia is located on a hill Ausoni-Aurunci with a view that reaches the sea at ​​Minturno. Until 1862 it was called "Le Fratte", from the Latin ‘Fracta’ meaning broken. Ausona, the ancient city of the Osci Ausoni people is difficult to locate, and was destroyed by the Romans in 314 BC.

Latin inscriptions were found from the Imperial Age concerning the divinity of Hercules that have been linked with an ancient processional way between Ausona and the Tyrrhenian coast of Minturno.

In 846 the Saracens arrived in Gaeta and settled in locations ad duos leones in Ausonia.

The village of Fratte was formed around a castle on a hill just to escape the Saracens and it was documented  in the Abbey of Montecassino documents, that the castle had been built, for the first time in the eleventh century.

From the fifteenth century onwards, it was a fiefdom first of the Caetani, then Colonna and Carafa and finally passed to the Kingdom of the Bourbons. The town found itself on the frontline during the Second World War.