There’s nothing like that first sight of it. And the suddenness of the view only adds to its impact. One moment you’re in the pleasant little town of Bagnoregio – all plastered Renaissance townhousesand tidy piazzas – and the next you’re looking at a fairytale group of ginger buildings perched on a tall pedestal of striped rock rising out of a lunar canyon edged by weirdly collapsed, razor-sharp hillsides. The only thing connecting those buildings to the rest of the world is a kilometre-long footbridge slung high across a tree-lined abyss. It’s a view that catapults you in an instant from calm reality to jaw-dropping fantasy. Like a unicorn suddenly sitting next to you on the bus.
Currently home to about thirty people, but drawing several thousand astonished visitors each year, the story of how this perilously-sited village – Civita – came to be here is almost as interesting as the thing itself. Twenty-eight centuries ago, this tiny settlement was a large, thriving Etruscan city, spread across a wide table of rock surrounded by fertile land and flanked by two valleys cradling streams of fresh drinking water. An idyllic spot, but one which was slowly and silently consuming itself. Unbeknown to the original Etruscan founders, the surrounding streams were busily undermining the wide mass of rock upholding their city, jealously licking away the soft clay and sand from its base and leaving ever wider sections of volcanic tufa stone unsupported. The tiniest flicker of an earthquake – a regular occurrence here in central Italy – and whole chunks of the city’s periphery would break off and tumble down to the valley floor, taking homes and lives with them.
Things were no better after the Romans took the place over in the 3rd century B.C. Whole streets, even whole neighbourhoods, sometimes just slid away into oblivion. And so it continued through the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance and beyond. Civita grew smaller and smaller, its edges constantly nibbled away by the forces of nature. Regardless, people carried on living here, and building here – often to their terrible cost. Some losses are still vividly imprinted on the village today – the single surviving walls of houses set on sheer precipices, their window-holes and doorways framing nothing but blue sky – wordlessly prompting the visitor’s imagination to play out horrific scenes.
Strangely, all that remains of Civita today is the most central and most important part of the original city – the heart of its political and commercial life. (It’s like London falling to bits while Westminster and the West End stay standing). The main street through the village is still the old decumanus maximus – the major east-west axis of all Etruscan and Roman settlements. The ancient cardo maximus or north-south axis, still crosses the main street to form the main square – the civic and religious epicentre of Civita from its very beginning. To the symbolic-minded, the surviving arrangement seems to suggest that what matters most will always endure. The ground may fall away from beneath people’s feet, but there’ll always be God and commerce!
God may have protected the centre of Civita until now, but commerce is likely to protect its future. Locals realise what an irresistible prospect their village presents to outsiders, and burgeoning tourism is doing much to save the place. Its nickname might be ‘la citta che muore’ (‘the dying city’), but these days a steady trickle of visitors are bringing Civita back to life, making it financially worthwhile for residents to stay put and giving extra urgency to engineers’ attempts to prop up the rock and prevent the rest of the village falling out of existence. No one’s yet found a way to stop the rot, but they surely try harder with every euro spent in the tiny art studios and cafés. Meanwhile, the homes with so few inhabitants stay remarkably well-maintained and decked with flowers – anticipating the tourist’s camera, perhaps.
Civita is so small you can explore it all in about two hours, but what a voyage of discovery are those two hours, with a series of wonders constantly unfolding. First there’s the bridge – that slim, umbilical kilometre of concrete connecting Civita to civilisation. Crossing this is like leaving the real world behind and climbing toward a fairytale. An ocean of trees rustles beneath your feet, the only sound in the vast, silent space around you. Previous bridges across this abyss collapsed, fell to bits in earthquakes, or were blown up by Nazis, but this robust zigzag of modern stone was built to last. It’s the only route for all supplies into Civita – driven in by mopeds now, the donkeys of yesteryear having hung up their hooves. The final slope up is a killer, and the old stone steps that follow seem endless, but curiosities are already appearing, and you have no thoughts of turning back.
First you see a shattered house on the left – a single wall with a gate and windows gazing onto the void. A little coloured shrine to Mary is still embedded in the wall, perversely bright and unbroken in the midst of surrounding destruction. Up ahead there’s the city gate, an elegant Renaissance arch topped with a loggia. Step through it and you’re in a dark entrance tunnel, carved by the Etruscans more than two and a half thousand years ago. You emerge into the village, into little Piazza Colesanti. Flowers burst from terracotta pots, a café and a tiny gallery modestly beckon for your attention, and another house stands shattered on the edge of the abyss – half of it apparently still occupied. The place is silent. Even in the height of summer when visitor numbers are at their highest and many home-owners move back here, Civita remains eerily peaceful. Emptiness, it seems, is the village’s recurrent theme – felt in its silence, seen in its void-gazing windows, experienced in little streets that end suddenly on a precipice. Tunnels and holes abound. This is a place that continually defines itself with empty space.
From the small piazza, there’s only one route forward – the ancient decumanus maximus. The Etruscans arranged all their city streets on a grid-plan, neatly running north-south or east-west – an idea later snapped up by the Romans. Walking east you emerge into Civita’s central square, the Piazza del Duomo Vecchio. As the square’s name suggests, the sleepy church here was once Civita’s cathedral – until 1699 when the local religious heavyweights decamped to Bagnoregio for safety. It’s built on the site of an original Etruscan temple, and there’s still an ancient shaft nearby dug to connect the temple to the network of Etruscan burial caves beneath Civita’s rock. The Romans spruced the place up when they took over, and the columns of the temple they built are still here now – as stubby grey stumps in a neat line at the foot of the church steps.
Inside, the church is unexpectedly gaudy – more a work of Central America than central Italy. The heads of plasterwork saints are ringed by domestic lightbulbs. A life-size Jesus writhes in lurid agony on the cross. But there are delicate frescos too – faded and crumbling – and sprays of fresh flowers touchingly laid by the genuinely faithful. The exterior is undeniably pretty, with its vaguely Florentine shapes and proportions, its mix of grey basalt and honey-coloured tufa. It’s nice to imagine the boisterous crowd here on the church steps on the first Sunday of June, when Civita holds its madcap ‘Tonna’ festival each year. Think Sienna’s palio, but with donkeys instead of horses – crazily racing round the tiny piazza with local men on their backs.
From the central piazza, the main street carries on through the village. To the right and left, cosy domestic lanes end suddenly on precipices, hastily cordoned off with chicken wire overgrown with weeds. The views of the surrounding landscape glimpsed from these death-defying spots are breathtaking – vistas of collapsed hillsides like the tall, jagged waves of a white, violent ocean. Infinities of trees climb the far canyon walls, and the gentle round hills of Umbria line the horizon. Back on the main street, if you’re lucky you’ll be accosted by an impossibly ancient lady or her equally aged husband. Either or both will be sitting on the low wall outside their house on the left. They’ll invite you to visit their garden and see the ‘panorama’. If they do, for heaven’s sake go and see it. Their garden has easily the most spectacular view in the whole village – the huge surrounding landscape on very fullest display.
But it’s not just the view that’s fascinating. The couple have also assembled a weird, ramshackle little folk-museum of farming implements and whatnots from a wide range of centuries in little caves behind their house. Arranged with no regard to age or usage, and somehow all the more interesting for it, the caves are hung higgledy-piggledy with myriad pots, baskets, trowels, bridles, ceramic icons of saints, frightening iron scythes, esoteric spikes and strange hoops of rusted metal. Old wooden dressers stand beside giant terracotta amphorae and what look for all the world like Roman breastplates. Here is the whole history of life in Civita seen through its objects. It’s a simple, agricultural way of life. Family, farming, faith – these were always Civita’s central tenets, it seems. Be sure to give the old couple a few euros when you leave, in thanks for the wide views and the narrow historical glimpses.
Soon after the old couple’s house, Civita’s main street dips and dwindles. The homes come to an end, and an open space between two walls of rock gazes out across the barren landscape of ‘calanchi’ or collapsed hillsides. An east-facing city-gate once stood here, but no longer. And the desolate view was once one of fields and forests. Many visitors turn round at this point, but they’re missing Civita’s best secret. If you carry on, following the increasingly narrow and overgrown path round to the right, descending the flank of Civita’s rock, you’ll pass various caves with rustic wooden doors – Etruscan tombs turned toolsheds – and gaze up to see homes sitting on the sheer edge of the rock, doubtless the next to go unless the engineers hatch a brilliant plan. These aren’t what you’re looking for, though, and you must keep on until the tiny path suddenly and unexpectedly turns to reveal it. A long straight tunnel with daylight at its end, piercing the whole rock and running the full subterranean width of Civita. Positioned directly beneath the village’s main square, this tunnel was the dromos of Etruscan Civita – an access corridor to its necropolis. It’s an amazing sight, and as you wander through, small chasms to right and left seem to suggest other routes, or at the very least, undisturbed tombs. Like everything else about Civita, this final tunnel is quietly, utterly fantastical – and once you’ve seen it, you return to the normal world with ever so slightly different expectations of reality.
ANTICO FORNO B&B
Piazza del Duomo Vecchio
+39 0761 760016
www.civitadibagnoregio.it
The only hotel actually in Civita itself, the Antico Forno enjoys a lovely position on the main square of the village, with every room looking out onto Civita’s most central space. The 15th-century building has been refurbished in a quaint, vaguely rustic style, and there’s a very good restaurant on the first floor. Hotelier and chef Franco speaks English.
Double room from €62
AGRITURISMO DIVINO AMORE
Localita Cerasone
+39 0761 792757 / 792379
www.agriturismodivinoamore.com
This 18th-century farmhouse sits on a low hill in the otherworldly valley of calanchi at the foot of Civita. Beautifully renovated inside and out using traditional materials like basalt, tufa and local hardwoods, the agriturismo has two double rooms, a quadruple, and a ground floor double equipped for disabled visitors. The wide, leafy grounds contain a pool and a small artificial lake.
Double room €80
HOTEL FIDANZA
Via Fidanza, 25
+39 0761 793444
In the centre of old Bagnoregio, with Civita a pleasant 20-minute walk away, the two-star Fidanza occupies a stately old townhouse with a long-standing family connection to St. Bonaventura. Its 24 en suite rooms are decorated in an unfussy and comfortable modern style. There’s private parking, and a good inhouse restaurant serving local dishes.
Double room €74
LA LOGGETTA
Via Roma, 33
+39 0761 792328
www.laloggetta.vt.it
This tiny, homey B&B in a renovated old house in the centre of Bagnoregio has just two double rooms – with pleasant, simple décor. Breakfast is a friendly affair in the small, tidy kitchen with its open stone fireplace. Parking is available on the street outside, and buses to Orvieto and elsewhere stop nearby.
Double room €40 - €50
HOTEL ROMANTICA PUCCI
Piazza Cavour, 1
+39 0761 792121
www.hotelromanticapucci.it
This friendly hotel in a recently-restored building in the middle of old Bagnoregio has five romantic rooms decorated in very different styles – two with curtained four-poster beds. The cosy little restaurant with dark beams overhead serves typical local dishes. There’s private parking, and the owner speaks English.
Double room €75
HOSTARIA DEL PONTE
Localita Mercatello 11
+39 0761 793565
Splendidly sited just before the footbridge out to Civita, this lovely restaurant and enoteca is justifiably popular with tourists, who are keen to drink in the awesome view from its terrace. The typical local dishes show Umbrian influence – making much use of black truffles, porcini mushrooms, wild boar and game. There’s an especially extensive list of good local wines.
Meal for two about €40
ANTICO FORNO
Piazza del Duomo Vecchio, Civita
+39 0761 760016
The only proper restaurant in Civita itself, and well-situated on the village’s main square, the Antico Forno is a friendly place serving very good local cuisine – bruschetta with truffles/peppers/pumpkin, meat and game dishes, strozzaprete (‘priest-choker’) pasta traditional to northern Lazio, and so on. Dining is outside on the square or in an atmospheric dining room with a large fireplace.
Meal for two about €40
ROSANNA AND ANTONIO’S WINE CELLAR
Via Maesta, Civita
On Civita’s main street, on the right just past the church, this gloriously rustic wine cellar and bruschetteria has a couple of tables outside and a cavernous indoor dining room flanked by stout wine-vats. The friendly owners serve stunningly-delicious and laughably-cheap bruschetta, cake, and homemade wine. Their sangiovese-ciliegiolo blend is unforgettably smooth, sweet and cherry-like.
Bruschette and wine for two about €10
IL VECCHIO MULINO
Via Marconi 25, Lubriano
+39 0761 780505
Five minutes north of Bagnoregio, the tiny town of Lubriano sits perched on a cliff- edge – gazing straight across the canyon to Civita. Il Vecchio Mulino’s tiny balcony enjoys a fabulous view, but there’s more reason than this to come here. Super-friendly staff serve wonderful regional food (traditional dishes plus exotica such as tortelli filled with buttered nettles and cinnamon).
Meal for two about €55
IL FRANTOIO
Via delle Fontana, Lubriano
+39 0761 780401
Also situated in Lubriano, this restaurant and enoteca has splendid premises, occupying a series of refurbished caves that served as agricultural storage spaces until the 1960s. The enoteca section is especially impressive – with bottles standing inside myriad wall-niches. The menu features typical local dishes (meat, game, and pasta) prepared with some refinement and imagination.
Meal for two about €55
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