Italy · Lazio · Historic villages
the town on a tufa spur between two gorges, and three thousand years of worked clay
Civita Castellana sits on a tufa spur closed in between two gorges, and from up there you cannot see it: you see it from outside, from the Ponte Clementino, which crosses the valley of the Rio Maggiore forty metres above the bottom. This was Falerii Veteres, the capital of the Falisci, until in 241 BC the Romans levelled it and moved the inhabitants six kilometres away, onto flat ground. What is left of the Faliscan town are the necropolises cut into the walls of the gorges. Then the rock filled up again, in the middle ages, and from that second town come the two things you go to see: the cathedral, with the porch the Cosmati signed in 1210, and Forte Sangallo, the pentagon Alexander VI Borgia had built on top of the rock and which today holds the Museum of the Agro Falisco. And then there is the thing the guidebooks do not tell you: for three thousand years the same clay has been worked here, and the town that came out of it is today the largest Italian district for sanitary ceramics.
Sleeping
Two areas, both below the new town and neither of them seen by us: what follows comes from the sources, and the notes line gets filled in when we go back.
via Terni 11, 01033 Civita Castellana
sixty free places with water and a waste drain, below the new town. OpenStreetMap knew only about the drain here, without saying what it was part of: that it is a sixty place area came from Park4Night. From the yard to the fort is a kilometre, and that means walking down into the old centre.
via della Carraccia 8, 01033 Civita Castellana
this is the equipped alternative, with toilets, showers and electricity, but more than twice as far from the centre. It has a telephone, so you can call ahead: the other one does not, and you look at it when you arrive.
Getting around
Seeing
The old centre takes a couple of hours to walk round. The necropolises are outside instead, along the gorges, and they ask you to leave the town. Tap a marker on the map to open its entry below.
Castle · paid entry · 42.28823, 12.40861
an irregular pentagon commissioned by Alexander VI Borgia from 1494, to a design by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder; the octagonal keep is by the Younger, years later. The thing to look at is the courtyard of honour, with two orders of pilasters, Doric below and Ionic above: it is among the first examples of a solution the early sixteenth century then repeated everywhere, and it takes ten minutes to look at. Inside is the National Archaeological Museum of the Agro Falisco, on the same ticket.
Museum · paid entry · 42.28810, 12.40919
it gathers the material from the Faliscan digs, and it is the place where the difference between Falisci and Etruscans stops being a footnote. Open Tuesday to Sunday 8:30-19:00, last admission at 18:00, closed on Mondays: full 5 euros, reduced 2 euros. There is also a combined ticket for the archaeological museums of northern Lazio, 15 euros, valid 365 days with one entry per site.
Church · free entry · 42.28748, 12.41072
the church is late twelfth century, the porch is from 1210. Jacopo di Lorenzo and his son Cosma signed it, and it is from that family of Roman marble workers that the adjective Cosmatesque comes, now used for all of them. On the pillars are the symbols of the four evangelists and at the centre of the arch the Lamb. On 11 July 1770 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, fourteen years old, stopped here and played the organ during Sunday mass: the plaque that remembers it is outside.
Monument · free entry · 42.29047, 12.41256
forty metres above the Rio Maggiore gorge and ninety metres long, double arched, built in 1709 at the wish of Clement XI to a design by Filippo Barigioni. It is the place from which Civita Castellana is looked at, not the place from which you look at the view: painters and engravers came here for two centuries, and it is the photograph you take home.
Monument · free entry · 42.29633, 12.42204
the remains of the Faliscan sanctuary at Celle, outside the town to the east. Juno Curitis was the deity of the Falisci, and the sanctuary stood outside the walls as was the custom: you get there from the road that goes down towards the gorge.
Monument · free entry · 42.29569, 12.42560
the chamber tombs cut into the tufa along the wall of the gorge, beside the sanctuary of Juno Curitis. They are Faliscan, that is from the centuries when the city was still up here.
Monument · free entry · 42.29001, 12.40742
the Faliscan necropolis on the other side of the gorge from the town, below the Castellaccio archaeological zone. It is the closest to the centre and you can see it from the bridge.
Square · 42.28899, 12.41181
the square of the old centre, between the fort and the cathedral.
When
Carnival here is not an addition to the calendar: it is the town's own festival, and it has been going for four and a half centuries.
in 2026 it was in its 460th year, which is to say it has been running since the sixteenth century, and it is not a re-enactment but the festival the people of Civita put on for themselves. On 17 January, the feast of Saint Anthony the Abbot, 'O Puccio enters the square: he is King Carnival, and he stays until the end. There are three gala parades, the two Sundays before Shrove Tuesday and Shrove Tuesday itself, with the Children's Carnival on the Thursday. It closes in piazza Matteotti with the burning of the Puccio. The dates move with Easter, so they are worth checking each year
Remember
Civita Castellana · part two
and then?
What to do, what to taste, and where to go tomorrow.
What we did starting from here, ordered by driving time.
The most typical dish, to cook again at home.
Looking
18 shots from our visit. Tap one to see it large.
