Brindisi, Italy

Brindisi is a city of roughly 87,000 residents on Italy's Adriatic coast, built around a natural harbour shaped like a deer's head that gave the ancient Roman settlement of Brundisium its name. The harbour marks the eastern end of the 616-kilometre Via Appia, the military road begun in 312 BC to link Rome to the Adriatic. Two castles guard the entrance to the port: the 13th-century Castello Svevo built for Emperor Frederick II and the Castello Aragonese dating to 1071. A pair of 17-metre Roman columns from the 2nd century AD once signalled the terminus of the Appian Way, and the poet Virgil died here in 19 BC.