Jean Webster 
Wheat Princess 

Excerpt: "If you leave the city by the Porta Maggiore and take the Via Praenestina, which leads east into the Sabine hills, at some thirty-six kilometers’ distance from Rome you will pass on your left a grey-walled village climbing up the hillside. This is Palestrina, the old Roman Praeneste; and a short distance beyond-also on the left-you will find branching off from the straight Roman highway a steep mountain road, which, if you stick to it long enough, will take you, after many windings, to Castel Madama and Tivoli."