Civita di Bagnoregio: Visiting the Dying City from Civitavecchia

There are places in Italy that photographs prepare you for, and then there is Civita di Bagnoregio, which photographs do not prepare you for at all.

The problem is that no photograph quite communicates the scale of what surrounds it — the immensity of the ravines, the narrowness of the bridge, the fact that the village is not on a hill so much as on a column of eroding tufa that is visibly, measurably, losing its argument with gravity. Civita di Bagnoregio from Civitavecchia is a two-hour drive each way. It is worth every minute.

The City That Dies

Civita was a prosperous Etruscan and then medieval city. The problem was always the geology: the plateau it sits on is composed of volcanic tufa and clay, two materials that behave very differently in rain. The clay expands and contracts; the tufa above it cracks and slides. Over centuries, the surrounding plateau eroded into the ravine system that now encircles the village on all sides. Streets that once led somewhere now end in thin air. The population, which numbered several thousand in the Middle Ages, has dwindled to perhaps a dozen people who actually sleep there year-round.

The name — la città che muore, the dying city — was given to it in the early twentieth century by the writer Bonaventura Tecchi, who was born there. It has been used in every description since.

How to Get There

Civita is not accessible by road. The nearest you can drive is Bagnoregio, the still-inhabited town on the adjacent plateau. From the visitor centre at Bagnoregio, a pedestrian bridge — about 300 metres long and exposed to sun, wind and the view — connects the two plateaus. The crossing takes about ten minutes. You arrive through a gate in the medieval walls into a single main street with a few small restaurants, a church, some converted caves and nothing else.

The best time to be inside the village is early morning — before the day-trippers from Rome arrive, when the light comes in low from the east and the tufa glows. We time departures from Civitavecchia accordingly.

What There Is to See

The answer is: not much, in the conventional sense, and everything in the less conventional one. The Church of San Donato contains some modest medieval art and an Etruscan sarcophagus that was found nearby. The central piazza is small, with a Renaissance loggia on one side and the church on the other. The caves carved into the tufa below the main street were used as stables and storage by generations of inhabitants.

What you actually look at, the whole time, is the landscape. The ravines below are extraordinary — kilometres of eroded channels, white and orange and grey, with the remaining tufa columns rising from them like geological ruins. The view from the far edge of the village, on a clear morning, extends across the Umbrian hills to where Orvieto sits on its own separate cliff.

Combining Civita with Orvieto and Lake Bolsena

A full day itinerary from Civitavecchia visits Civita in the morning, then drives twenty minutes to Orvieto for the Cathedral and a glass of Orvieto Classico, then south to Lake Bolsena — the largest volcanic lake in Europe — for lunch on the water before the return to the port. Three utterly different experiences, all within the same ancient volcanic landscape.

We cover this combination in our Civita, Orvieto & Lake Bolsena private tour, which runs in eight hours from Civitavecchia.

Practical Notes

The bridge entrance to Civita costs a few euros. There are two or three small restaurants inside the village; booking ahead is recommended in summer. The walking is not strenuous on the bridge itself, but the streets inside are cobbled and uneven — guests with significant mobility limitations should ask us for honest advice before booking.

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