NORTHERN LAZIO

From Roma,  Civitavecchia or Florence, 8 hours or 12 hours Medioeval City tour, Etruscan tour, Wine Tour

  The tour of Medieval Northern Lazio will plunge the visitor in an "old time" atmosphere, among narrow streets in small and wonderful villages perched on mountains. These villages haven't changed a lot since the medieval period, so that more than a visit it will be a travel through the past. The most representatives and impressive sites are Bagnoregio, Bolsena, the park of Bomarzo and Viterbo. The origins of Bagnoregio go back to the pre-Etruscan era. The area around Bagnoregio offers its visitors a vast and luxurious vegetation where it is possible to enjoy relax and tranquillity. The most interesting buildings are the Piramide-Ossario, the Porta Alabana, Piazza Cavour, the Church dell'Annunziata.

The traveller who approaches Bagnoregio notices immediately an unreal view, with a small group of houses perched on a rock. There are suggestive ruins of the houses of Bagnoreggio, along the only street running through the village. The hills and the landscape surrounding Bagnoregio offer the view of natural sculptures made by water, wind and time in the clay.

Bolsena is a charming town on the hill slopes overlooking the lake, plunged into a thriving and unpolluted nature. This village had its most flourishing period between the 1st and the 4th century A.D. The Roman city was abandoned during the 4th century, probably because of the raids of the longobards, then the town community went to live opn the cliff still holding the medieval quarter around the castle: Bolsena as we know it today.

Bomarzo is a weird park at 90 Km from Rome. It was built from Orsini family between 1552 and 1580 in theis beautiful villa. What makes this park peculiar are its sculptures: enormous monsters inmersed in a luxuriant landscape. Monsters are created by following the imitation of nature; they represent mythical, scary and starnge figures in marble. It remined uknown untill 1938, when Salvador Dalì discovered it.

Still enclosed within its walls, Viterbo has preserved a medieval appearance surprisingly unaltered and is even more colourful due to the survival of the ancient artisan traditions. Churches, buildings, towers, fountains, and the quarter of Saint Pellegrino, are all immersed together with its ancient construction of rock in an extraordinary captivating atmosphere. Viterbo was once the chief town of Tuscia, an area once possessed by the Etruscans, and boasts of archeological findings of this ancient and mysterious civilization found within its vicinity. The town's programs of cultural and folklore events are extremely entertaining and exciting.