a city of Italy, capital of a cognominal delegation of the Papal States, on the Mediterranean, 38 miles W.N.W. of Rome. Lat. 42° 4' 38", N., Long. 11° 44' 52", E. The town is well built, and surrounded by walls, but the streets are generally narrow. It has several churches and convents, lazaretto, theatre, arsenal, warehouses, building-docks, prisons, &c. It is the principal seaport of the Papal States; and steamers between Marseilles, Naples, and the Levant, regularly touch here, so that the arrivals and departures of steamers are seldom less than 30 a month. The harbour, originally constructed by Trajan, is formed by three moles—two projecting from the mainland, and fringed by the third, on the south extremity of which is a lighthouse, with a lantern 74 feet above the level of the sea. There are from 14 to 18 feet water in the port, and the S. entrance has from 8 to 4 fathoms. The imports are chiefly cotton, woollen, silk, and linen stuffs; coffee, sugar, and other colonial products; salt and salted provisions, wines, jewellery, glass, and earthenware. The chief exports are staves, bark, wheat, coal, wool, cheese, skins, and alum.

Civita Vecchia occupies the site of the Roman Centum Cellae. On the destruction of that town by the Saracens in 828, the inhabitants removed farther inland, but returned to the former site in 854. From this circumstance the city derives its name of Civita Vecchia, or old town. It was made a free port by Clement XII. Pop. 7000.