Lago di Fondi

Lake Fondi (Italian: Lago di Fondi, Latin: Lacus Fundanus, Lacus Amyclanus) is a brackish lake about 90 km (56 mi) to the southeast of Rome in the Province of Latina, Lazio, Italy, in the region called Sud or "South" Pontino, the western end of which is the Piana di Fondi, "Plain of Fondi". The plain is a basin below the arc of the Monti Ausoni and the Monti Lepini. The lake forms naturally at the west end of the basin in a depression constantly filling with spring water exuding from the base of the mountains, which are a heavily cracked and faulted limestone karst absorbent of most rainfall. In addition to the flows from springs, a number of canals have been constructed from regions of the marsh below sea level to drain water from the marsh into the lake. Pumping stations are required to lift the water into the canals. Before the marsh was reclaimed the lake was part of it. Canals at either end of the lake connect it to the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Geology

All the coastal lagoons of Lazio formed in the same way: an offshore Pliocene graben created by extensional forces in NE and SW directions behind a karst of Mesozoic limestone gradually filled by peaty and fluvial deposition in the Pleistocene. A barrier fringe of sand developed offshore enclosing first a lagoon, then a coastal marsh. The remnant chain of lagoons are brackish due to heavy inflow of fresh water from springs at the base of the porous Volscian Mountains and the intrusion of salt water from the marsh, much of which is still below sea level. The positions of the lakes are determined by local elevations and equilibrium between inflow and outflow. In the last few centuries bonifica or "restoration", of the marshland to produce agricultural land, and associated control of the water channels, have stabilized the lakes as landforms.

Fondi

Fondi (Latin: Fundi) is a city and comune in the province of Latina, Lazio, central Italy, halfway between Rome and Naples. Before the construction of the highway between the latter cities in the late 1950s, Fondi had been an important settlement on the Roman Via Appia, which was the main connection from Rome to much of southern Italy.

Geography

Fondi is the main town of the Plain of Fondi (Piana di Fondi in Italian), a small plain between the Ausoni and Aurunci mountains and the Tyrrhenian Sea. The plain includes three lakes and is agriculturally very fertile. Most in evidence are greenhouses for the production of early crops for sale in Rome. The 15-kilometre (9 mi) long sandy beach stretches from Sperlonga in the south-east to Terracina in the north-west and lies along the Gulf of Gaeta, with views (when the weather is clear) to the Pontine Islands. It is marked by a somehow well-preserved, typical Mediterranean coastal dune landscape.

The territory of Fondi is partially included in the Regional Natural Park of Monti Aurunci.