We often use prepositional phrases to talk about the place where something is happening. For instance, we might say that a person is traveling to a place or away from a place or that a person is standing in a place. In Latin, these place constructions usually use prepositions, generally with the noun (the place) in the accusative or ablative case.
| Accusative | Place to Which He runs to the country house. Currit ad villam. |
| Ablative | Place Where He stands in the country house. Stat in villā. |
| Place from Which He runs away from the country house. Currit ā (ab, de, ex) villam. |
Note: the names of cities, towns, and small islands, as well as some other special words, have their own special place constructions that don't use prepositions. You have already seen this in words like Pompeiīs (in Pompeii) and Romae (in Rome). This is a topic for later, and for now those words will be translated in the sidebar when you first encounter them.