In the last years, in vitro production of ’C3’, an early clone of globe artichoke of ’Romanesco’ type, has spread and taken over the local populations traditionally grown in Latium region, where they are now risking severe genetic erosion. To recover and characterize the traditional landraces Castellammare and Campagnano of ’Romanesco’ type, a collection of original plants has been recovered to this end. Basal shoots were collected in small fields both from the areas near Tarquinia (Viterbo, Italy) and Latina (Italy), where Campagnano and Castellammare landraces were traditionally cultivated. The basal shoots were utilized for the isolation of vegetative apices, as materials to start in vitro multiplication of clones. Twenty-three clones were isolated and then transferred to the experimental field. Morpho-physiological and productive data, collected during 2004 and 2005 growing seasons, have shown that a quite large variability has been found for the earliness and the size of the plant, for the size and the shape of the head as well as for the commercial plant productivity. Two main types of ’Romanesco’ globe artichoke have been identified. Molecular analyses, performed by using two AFLP combinations and six ISSR primers for a total of 159 polymorphic markers, allowed for determining the polymorphisms of the clones and underlying their genetic distances. Moreover, some markers showed a significant correlation with agro-morphological parameters.