Santa Marinella

When I left the kitchen at Pierluigi around one I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and had a missed call from Melissa who had taken a train out to the beach at Santa Marinella, about 45 minutes from Rome. We had talked about maybe going out there for the afternoon but hadn't made an real plans. It was a beautiful day and the idea of a nice swim was incredibly appealing so I headed home, threw on my bathing suit and walked across St. Peter's QSquare to to Stazione San Pietro just on the other side.

From the time I walked out of my door until my feet were in the sand was a measly 50 minutes. Santa Marinella is by no means the nicest beach in Italy, but for how close it is to Rome it's a great little spot. There are local trains that run to and from Rome at least once or twice an hour and stop at Termini, Stazione Trastevere and Stazione San Pietro (about 4 euros each way). Once you get off the train it is a 5 minute walk from the platform to the main beach which is a semi-circle of about 500 yards and is protected from the sea by jetties, blocking what few waves there are in the Mediterranean.

I went for a nice swim along the length of the beach and was surprised to find that nowhere within the jetties is the water deeper than 5 feet, if that much. Young Italians take advantage of this, walking out to the jetties to run around amongst the rocks and play various ball games, mostly volleyball-esque. Even this weekend in early May the beach was reasonably crowded, and I can only imagine that by June it will be absolutely jammed. On the train out there you pass a few smaller beaches before arriving in the center of town and I think with a little effort walking, or even better on a bike, you could find a slightly more secluded spot than the main beach.

There are beaches closer to Rome, Ostia, Fiumicino and Fregene, which young Romans flock to in the summer, I think more for the night life than anything else, but they are so close to the ports in Fiumicino and Ostia that the water is practically unswimmable and the beaches themselves are not particularly scenic because of the partially industrial setting of the towns they lie in. If you just want to lie in the sun and don't care about getting in the water these might be the places to go, but if you do want to go for a dip (a requirement for me to sit on a beach for any length of time) Santa Marinella is a great beat.