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Anagni sits on a tufa ridge in the Ciociaria hills of southern Lazio, roughly sixty kilometres south-east of Rome, and it carries a weight of medieval history that few towns of its modest size can match. Known across Italy as la città dei papi, the city of the popes, it produced four pontiffs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and served as a favoured retreat for the papal court during the long centuries when Rome itself was too fractious for comfortable residence. That legacy is not merely symbolic; it is written into the stone of the old centre with unusual completeness, making Anagni one of the most coherent examples of medieval urban fabric anywhere in central Italy.

The cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Annunziata and consecrated in 1077, anchors the upper town with a Romanesque severity that rewards slow attention. Its crypt is the reason scholars and art historians make the journey: an almost entirely intact cycle of thirteenth-century frescoes covers the vaulted ceiling across three chambers, depicting scenes from the Old Testament, the life of Thomas Becket, and a remarkable cosmological diagram drawn from the scientific manuscripts of the Arab world. The Cathedral Museum of Anagni, known by its acronym MuCA, gathers the treasury and liturgical objects associated with the cathedral chapter, including reliquaries and vestments that document the town's direct entanglement with the medieval papacy. An entry ticket covers both the museum and access to the crypt, which is the genuine centrepiece of any visit.