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The historic center of Viterbo
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The historic center of Viterbo is one of the most typical examples of medieval architecture.
The San Pellegrino district, in particular, with its characteristic houses built on the tufa, contains a fascinating succession of enchanting views. At the center of the district opens the homonymous square, on which overlook a church and the majestic building of the Palazzo degli Alessandri. Built around the first half of the 13th century by the powerful Alessandri family, the building has three floors and presents an interesting variant of the typical Viterbese profferlo, which instead of being built outside the building, as occurs in the usual and widespread typology, it is built inside the perimeter wall of the building. The staircase is flanked by a parapet, decorated with an ornamental star-shaped pattern. Next to it there is a portico on massive columns, behind which rises the Torre Scacciaricci, a four-storey tower house.
Speaking of Viterbo, city of the Popes, it is impossible not to mention the grandiose Papal Palace.
The building, in Romanesque style, dates back to 1255, while the loggia next to it was completed in 1267 and is in Gothic style. It rests on a large vault whose center is an octagonal pillar that encloses a well that feeds the fountain above. The mirrors of the basin bear the coats of arms of the Gatti family, of the cardinal Raffaele Galeotto Riario, of Sixtus IV della Rovere and of the bishop Francesco Maria Visconti dei Settala.
Next to the Papal Palace we find the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. The church has an imposing Romanesque structure dating back to the twelfth century, even if the façade, due to the 16th century changes ordered by card. Gamabara, presents itself as a Renaissance style structure and for this reason strongly contrasts the surrounding buildings, of origin and medieval style.
Another important element of the square is certainly the Palazzo della Valentino della Pagnotta, a wealthy prior Viterbese of the late Middle Ages. It is one of the most interesting examples of private construction in Viterbo, probably built in 1278 and remodeled in 1920. The two-light windows on the second floor are closely related to those in the loggia of the papal palace and are placed asymmetrically with respect to the arches below; the arch, in the construction, assumes a strong relief both as a constructive and ornamental element.
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The S.Francesco’s church
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The church of San Francesco a Vetralla is one of the most important monuments of the Viterbo area. It is located on the Via Francigena, at the confluence with the current Aurelia bis that leads to Tarquinia. It was built on the remains of an early Christian temple of the ninth century called Santa Maria in Valle Cajano. The first phase of obstruction probably concerns a sector of the current crypt and could date back to the eleventh century, certainly the subsequent expansion of the crypt and the construction of the upper basilica as we see it today brings its crowning in the dates of the papacy of Clement III (1187 – 91), in which the high altar was consecrated and 1207 when there was a visit by Innocent III who probably witnessed the completion of the works. The church was dedicated to St. Francis in the early fifteenth century. The crypt has been created in the tufa rock and has a trapezoidal layout with three apses and two staircases that allow access from the side aisles of the upper church. There are twenty-seven columns, some embedded in the walls of the perimeter and largely reused like many of the capitals. The interior of the upper church, which has many similarities with S. Maria Nuova of Viterbo, has three naves and three apses with two rows of 6 columns and capitals carved with plant themes. The Cosmatesque floor is remarkable and well preserved. In the right aisle there are frescoes from the second half of the century. XV, a valuable S. Orsola with eleven thousand virgins, with evident influence of the art of Benozzo Gozzoli. In the presbytery, on the right is the valuable sarcophagus of Briobris, the natural son of Giovanni Di Vico (died in 1353), a work of the early fifteenth century, by Paolo da Gualdo Cattaneo, known as Paolo Romano. The façade, which is also similar to the church of Viterbo, is very simple and has a double sloping roof and a single double-entry portal with a smooth marble archivolt that stands out on the bottom of the wall. The bell tower joins the right side of the church at the level of the apses and has a simple structure. A frame delimits the belfry open by an order of mullioned windows. The internal structure has undergone numerous alterations, the most intrusive of which was in 1612 by the work of Father Maestro Bona Ventura Onofri, who built large baroque stucco altars, closed the side windows, decorated the main nave of paintings, doing poorly. the ancient ones. Also in the central apse there was a large altar that completely obstructed it. Perhaps then the crypt was also closed, turning it into a burial ground. In 1894 the last major intervention was carried out, which returned much of the Romanesque apparatus and the reopening of the crypt, even if, in the work of cleaning it, much of the frescoes that decorated it were lost.
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Porcina Cave Vetralla
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Reaching Grotta Porcina is not difficult even if the last sign is not clear and the final stretch (50 meters) is not passable by car.
the archaeological site of Grotta Porcina is made up of an Etruscan necropolis referring to a small rural town built in the Archaic period along the road that led from Blera to Castel d’Asso and continued northwards.
The necropolis occupies the valley crossed by Fosso Grignano and shows various types of tombs, some of which are monumental. The singular name of the place alludes to the transformation of the Etruscan tombs into pig shelters, reuse that in some tombs has involved radical tampering.
The main monument of the necropolis is represented by a large mound, better known as Grande Ruota or Castelluzzo and dates back to the first half of the 6th century BC. C. It was obtained from the tufaceous spur by sculpting a circular drum. Crowned with a tripartite frame it is 3.5 meters tall and its diameter is about 28 square meters.
Grotta Porcina is a pleasant discovery.
In a natural amphitheater there are a dozen large tombs used as tombs before … and stalls for pigs and cattle (from which Grotta Porcina) then.
Particularly beautiful are the great Tomb 3 and its opposite Tomb 3 bis
Downstream there is the Great Wheel with its mysterious altar (what was it for?).
But the surprises that Grotta Porcina reserves for us do not end here.
In the wood on the right looking at the Great Wheel there is a path that leads to the ruins of a Templar building.
And always in the woods you think the ancient Etruscan village is located.
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Via Francigena
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Located on a hill, near the Cimini Mountains, Vetralla dominates the valley below, offering a splendid panoramic view. You enter Vetralla through a short avenue and, left on the left the Villa Comunale and the Parco della Rimembranza, you come out in Piazza Marconi, where there is a fountain of the late Middle Ages. In the entrance side stands the church of San Filippo e Giacomo (XV-XVII century). Then take Via Roma, which leads to Piazza della Rocca, where the Fortress of Prefectural Di Vico stood, of which there remains a large cylindrical crenellated tower. From here continue in Via Cassia Interna from which, on the right, a doorway leads into the little square Franciosoni where the Palazzo Franciosoni, of the school of Vignola, stands on the left.
Shortly afterwards, Piazza Umberto I opens up, adorned with two eighteenth-century fountains and on which stands the elegant façade of the Palazzo Comunale. The majestic facade of the Duomo (eighteenth century) rises majestically in front of it. Continue past the square in Via Cassia Interna, on the right, meet Palazzo Vinci of the Vignola school; on the left opposite the Piatti Palace from the narrow facade with the large portal. After a long stretch you reach Piazza Vittorio Emanuele where on the left there is the Church of San Francesco (XI century) one of the most important monuments of Vetralla.
History
On the rocky hill where Vetralla stands today, during the Etruscan period, there was certainly a flourishing village, which developed from the VI century BC. on a previous Villanovan settlement. The certainty is given by the discovery of a vast Villanovan burial ground in the locality of Poggio Montano and of various Etruscan necropolis surrounding the present town, especially that found in Cerracchio. With the Roman conquest of the territory the primitive of Vetralla is abandoned in favor of the nearby center of Maria in Forcassi. The modern name of the settlement, located in the North-East of the current Vetralla, preserves the ancient name of the place, Forum Cassii.
It is also reported in the famous Tavola Peutingeriana an ancient “European” road atlas in which were reported settlements, mansiones, and stationes along the ancient roads. Nothing remains of the settlement destroyed at the time of the first barbarian invasions. In the Middle Ages a Romanesque church was built, S. Maria in Forcassi, also today reduced to ruin: inside, only partially covered by the original roof, remains of fourteenth-century frescoes are visible. It is probable that after the destruction of Forum Cassii the inhabitants reoccupied the ancient rocky hill for its easier defensibility.
The presence of the Via Cassia constituted an important development factor in the medieval period for Vetralla. But its strategic position was also the cause of invasions and destruction. At the end of the twelfth century Vetralla found itself in the uncomfortable position of bearing between Viterbo and Rome. The frequent wars between the two cities involved her for more than two centuries and her civil life was disturbed by internal struggles between the factions of Rome and Viterbo. Between 1110 and 1134 it underwent an initial destruction by the Viterbo militia. Rebuilt, in 1145 it housed Pope Eugene III who officially banned the second Crusade in Vetralla. In 1185 during the war that opposed the two cities, it suffered a new destruction.
The glass-making feud then belonged to the Orsini family and from 1345 and for about a century to the Prefetti Di Vico. This was the period of greatest development of the town; the prefects in fact chose it as a fortified garrison on the Cassia to watch over the southern borders of their possessions. In 1432 Giovanni Di Vico was however forced by the papal troops to take refuge in Tuscany. On 17 February 1432, with the bull Exigit, Pope Eugenius IV gave a definitive gift to the people of the glasslands of the possessions of the forest of Monte Fogliano and the woods of the valleys of Pian della Botte and Monte Panese, assets taken from the Prefect’s family of Vico, who it was appropriate, after a “fierce battle that took place around the Rocca of Vetralla.
In this town, from that distant epoch, so began the custom, never abandoned, to celebrate the 8th May, with a ceremony, the taking possession of the first glass-lian citizen of the Monte Fogliano wood, to reaffirm on it the rights Property. The ceremony is called the “Wedding of the Tree” because a symbol has then become a pair of tall trees adorned with feast. The similarity of this ceremony with that of the Marriage of the Sea of the city of Venice has provided the basis for a perpetual twinning between the two cities. The Di Vico returned temporarily to Vetralla but in 1435 they were definitively defeated by Cardinal Vitelleschi.
After a brief period in which it was directly administered by the Apostolic Chamber, the fiefdom began to pass from hand to hand, following the evolution of the nepotistic politics of the Renaissance Popes. First he was assigned to the Anguillara, then the Pope Alexander VI donated it to his nephew Giovanni Borgia. In 1529, despite the opposition of the Glasswriters, Pope Clement VII granted it to his nephew Lorenzo Cjbo. This last one was removed in 1534 by Paul III who entrusted it to his nephew, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.
After the destruction of the Duchy of Castro (1649), dominion of the Farnese family, Vetralla returned permanently to the papal possessions and on 4 April 1783 it obtained the title of “City” from Pope Pius VI. At the end of the eighteenth century, during Napoleonic campaigns, it was chosen as garrison first by the French then by the Austrians and by the Russians and finally the troops of Gioacchino Murat settled there. When the Napoleonic adventure ended, it returned to the Papal State, but on numerous occasions it was involved in the events of the Italian Risorgimento until the 1870 Rome seizure.
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Treasures of Tuscania
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Tuscania is located on seven promontories of tuff rock in a beautiful area just 18 km from Viterbo, and the history of its population begins with the final phase of the Bronze Age.
The course of the river Marta and its tributaries are the pole of attraction of the first archaic settlements in the area, which settle on the natural reliefs formed by the erosion of the waters. In this period it is not possible to speak of a single inhabited center but (as also indicated by the discovery in the territory of twelve distinct rupestrian necropolis), more likely, of a group of small villages with predominantly agricultural vocation that had as an economic, administrative reference point and just the hill of San Pietro that became, in short, one of the most important political and religious centers of Tuscia. On the same hill stands today the cathedral of St. Peter built in the eleventh century. The church, in Lombard Romanesque style, is the most important monument of the city and is particularly known for the stupendous rose window (and in general for the facade), as well as for the crypt.
Another notable monument is certainly the Duomo (formerly the San Giacomo Cathedral), a simple but imposing structure dating back to 1563, and to its left, the bell tower built in 1781 by the architect Viterbese Domenico Lucchi.
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Villa Lante of Bagnaia
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Villa Lante is one of the major achievements of the Italian’s Cinquecento.
The story of the villa begins when Cardinal Raffaele Riario and his nephew Ottaviano decided to fence a large plot at the foot of the cimini and turn it into a hunting boat. Subsequently, around the middle of the sixteenth century, thanks to the will and intuition of Cardinal Francesco de Gambara, the real construction began, which mainly concerned fountains, waterfalls, hedges, water games, niches and labyrinths, whose ideation is attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola. One of the most characteristic aspects of the project is the absence of a real Villa: there are in fact only two twin buildings on the same side open on the ground floor and each characterized by loggias with three large arches, frescoed by Raffaellino da Reggio and Agostino Tassi. It is therefore the garden that is at the center of the realization, and in particular the element of water, which flows from numerous fountains, enriched by sculptural groups of great charm and arranged along five levels of overlapping terraces. Of incredible impact the fountain composed of a triple circle of tanks: it is the so-called Fontana del Quadrato surmounted by a sculptural group attributed to Taddeo Landini, depicting Quattro Mori. Gambara also celebrated its lineage by creating a “chain” fountain. The constituent elements of the “chain” recall the shapes of the crayfish.
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