Cascata del Pellico

The Cascata del Pellico is a drop of water on the Fosso Timone, the stream that runs through the countryside west of the town of Canino, in the province of Viterbo, in the heart of the Maremma of Lazio and southern Tuscia. The exact spot is recorded in open map databases at coordinates 42.46399 north and 11.73719 east, a little over a kilometer as the crow flies from the main square of the town: a distance that, in practice, means you go from houses to rock and water in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. It is this closeness that makes the Cascata del Pellico one of the most surprising stops in the whole province, because nobody expects to find a drop like this right next to a town of 5,000 residents. The stream often runs fiercely and recalls the most concrete vitality of nature: on the approach, the endless current of the drop can be heard long before you reach it, and this detail, trivial to tell, is the first thing that strikes anyone arriving for the first time. Anyone moving around the area would do well to read the pages on Vulci, Montalto di Castro and Tuscania too, because the Cascata del Pellico on its own is worth a stop, not a whole day, and it pairs very well with a wider tour of Tuscia.

Where the Cascata del Pellico is and how to really get there

Geography, here, matters more than it seems. Canino lies in the immediate hinterland of the Tyrrhenian coast, inside the Maremma of Lazio and inside Tuscia, a short distance from the ancient Etruscan city of Vulci, which falls partly within its municipal territory, and from the area where the destroyed city of Castro once stood. The municipality borders Cellere, Ischia di Castro, Manciano in the province of Grosseto, Montalto di Castro, Tessennano and Tuscania: six borders that show by themselves how much this piece of Lazio looks toward Tuscany at least as much as toward Rome. The territory is mostly hilly and slopes slowly down as it nears the coast, in the direction of Montalto di Castro. In the northern part it is skirted by the Fiora river, in the southern part, for a short stretch, by the Arrone stream. Among the notable areas are the hills of the Monti di Canino and the upper Timone valley: and it is precisely the Timone, the watercourse that gives that valley its name, that carves the rock step of the Cascata del Pellico.

Distances as the crow flies, measured from the spot of the drop, help place the stop inside a wider itinerary. The center of Canino is a little over a kilometer away. The archaeological area of Vulci is about 10 kilometers. Tuscania is 12, Ischia di Castro 12.5, the edge of the Selva del Lamone around 9. Montalto di Castro is 17, Lake Bolsena at the stretch of Capodimonte 14, Pitigliano 20, Tarquinia 23, Viterbo 31, Civitavecchia 42 and Rome 88. These are numbers as the crow flies, not road distances: the real road, in a territory of hills and cut valleys, always adds something. But the picture is clear: the Cascata del Pellico is far from Rome and very close to everything else in western Tuscia.

By car: Regional Road 146 Castrense and the final little roads

The main route through the municipal territory is Regional Road 146 Castrense, which links the Maremma coast of Lazio with Lake Bolsena, touching the town of Canino. Following the same direction, from the slopes of the lake toward the sea but farther north, runs the Doganella provincial road. The Abbadia provincial road, running north to south, links the Canino territory with that of Montalto di Castro, joining the Fiora provincial road a little north of Vulci. Anyone coming from Rome normally takes the Aurelia or the A12 motorway as far as Montalto di Castro, then heads inland. Anyone coming from Viterbo goes down the Castrense. Anyone coming from Tuscany enters from Manciano or Pitigliano.

The last stretch is the one that causes the few problems of this visit. Reaching the drop presents no technical difficulty: the difficulty, if anything, is working out the right road. You have to follow a few minor little roads, which are nonetheless well paved, and which by sight seem to lead nowhere. The signage doesn't help as much as it should, and the local place naming is the kind that asks for a little familiarity with the area. The simplest way not to go wrong remains satellite navigation: with the help of Google Maps you get to the spot directly by vehicle, a few steps from the water, with no need at all to walk long stretches.

This is the fact that changes the profile of the visit compared with almost all the other waterfalls in Lazio. At the Cascate di Monte Gelato you park and walk. At the Cascata dell’Inferno in the Parco di Veio the trail is an integral part of the experience. At the Cascate di Diosilla in Monterano the setting is that of a protected area with its own rhythms. At the Pellico, instead, you arrive practically with your wheels in the water. The site is therefore accessible to a very wide public, including people who because of age or physical condition would not tackle an approach on foot. This is its rarest quality, and it is also the reason it deserves to be better known.

By public transport: the truth, without beating around the bush

Canino has no railway station. The nearest line is the Tyrrhenian one, with the stations of Montalto di Castro and Tarquinia, both about 20 kilometers by road from the town, and with Civitavecchia as the main hub farther south. Bus connections exist and serve mostly commuters and students: they are designed to take people to Viterbo and Montalto in the morning and bring them back in the afternoon, not to take visitors to a waterfall at the edge of town. No frills: the Cascata del Pellico is a destination for cars. Anyone arriving by train at Montalto di Castro who still wants to see it has to count on a rental or a taxi, and at that point you might as well build the day around Vulci, which is a few minutes away and justifies the logistical effort on its own.

What the Cascata del Pellico really is: a stream drop at the edge of town

Clarity is needed here, because this is the point that causes the most misunderstandings. The Cascata del Pellico is not a waterfall from a big national park, it is not the Marmore Falls and it has nothing of the equipped attraction with ticket office, water release schedules and panoramic walkways. It is a natural drop of the Fosso Timone, set into a rock step, which plunges into a basin where the water gathers before resuming its way downstream. On the open map databases it appears exactly like this: a point classified as a waterfall, on the watercourse recorded as Fosso Timone in the Regione Lazio data, inside the municipal territory of Canino.

This modest scale is its strength. In northern Lazio there are dozens of waterfalls and almost all of them demand an approach, some effort, a half-day commitment. The Pellico asks for a quarter of an hour of driving from Canino and gives back, in exchange, one of the most photogenic views in the whole province. Anyone who goes expecting the roar of the big Apennine waterfalls goes home disappointed. Anyone who goes knowing they will find a rock amphitheater, a veil of water and a silence that no longer exists in Rome goes home happy.

The name: Pellico, Pellicone and the confusion to avoid

The name is worth a couple of lines, because people in the area mix things up quite easily. The Cascata del Pellico is on the Timone, at the edge of Canino. The little lake of the Pellicone, instead, is another body of water, famous and much photographed, which lies along the Fiora river near Vulci and regularly appears in images of the archaeological park. Not far from the town there is also the small Lake Timone, which takes its name from the same stream but is a different thing from the drop. Three nearby places, three similar names, three distinct realities: anyone who plans the day looking only at photographs risks arriving at one and believing they are at another.

Access and costs

Access appears to be completely free, and therefore at no cost. There are no ticket offices, no opening hours, no gates. This is an obvious advantage and, at the same time, the reason the place has to be treated with some care: where there is no manager there is also no daily cleaning service, and everything left on the ground stays there until someone picks it up. The place, however, appears unexpectedly well kept, apart from some inevitable litter left by some equally inevitable litterbug. It's an observation worth making honestly: in many free corners of Lazio the situation is worse, and those who visit the Pellico show on the whole a respect that is missing elsewhere.

The water, the little lake and the rock walls: what you see at the Cascata del Pellico

The body of water that forms at the base of the Cascata del Pellico is a spectacular color, and anyone who has been tells it the same way: it goes from cobalt to emerald, turning toward the color of earth where the bottom rises and the water gets shallow. It's not a constant effect, and it's good to know before leaving. It depends on the time of day, the angle of the light, the amount of sediment the stream carries and, above all, the rains of the previous days. After a storm the water turns cloudy and the emerald green disappears. After a week of sun the sediment settles and the colors return. Anyone who arrives convinced they will find exactly the photograph they saw online has to allow for this variable, which is natural and depends on nobody.

All around, the atmosphere is magical, and the word is not there to fill space. The drop sits at the center of an amphitheater closed in by very tall walls of dark rock, covered with dense green made by wild vegetation that clings to the cracks and comes down in plant cascades parallel to the water one. Historical descriptions of the place speak of basalt rock, consistent with the volcanic nature of a good part of Tuscia: the visual result, for the viewer, is an almost black wall against which the white of the foam stands out sharply. It is this contrast, more than the height of the drop, that makes the place memorable.

To complete the picture there is a detail that anyone who has been to the Pellico remembers. On the right, above the watercourse that forms at the exit of the basin, a fallen tree leans on another tree and, as if by magic, stays leaning there, threading three or four weakened branches among those of the other, still alive. It's a scene of involuntary still life, the kind no gardener could compose: dry wood held up by green wood, suspended above the water. Trees fallen in streambeds shift with the floods, so it's not certain the tangle is still exactly there. But the fact that it became a recognizable element of the place says a lot about what kind of place the Pellico is. Not a monument, but a piece of nature that changes by itself.

The sound before the sight

There is an aspect of the visit that photographs don't convey and that is in fact the real reason to come all the way here. You hear the current before you see it. On the last stretch of the approach, when you are still among fields and olive trees, a continuous background noise arrives that grows with every meter. It's a full sound, without pauses, different from that of wind through branches. In periods of high flow it becomes a roar that covers voices. In the weeks of low water it shrinks to a murmur. That passage from the silence of the countryside to the noise of the water, compressed into a few tens of meters, is the best part of the visit and the reason I recommend doing the last stretch with the window down or, even better, on foot.

The flow: when the water is there and when it's missing

The Fosso Timone is a stream, not a perennial river of large flow, and it behaves like all the streams of central Italy with a Mediterranean regime. This means the amount of water varies a lot over the year: abundant after the autumn and winter rains, generous in spring, reduced in the final part of summer. Anyone arriving in August after weeks without rain may find a veil of water instead of the full drop they expected. It's not a flaw of the place: it's its nature. The practical advice is simple and holds for all the smaller waterfalls of Lazio, from the Cascate del Salabrone to the Cascate dell’Acquarossa: check what the weather was like in the previous week and plan accordingly.

A curiosity about the Cascata del Pellico

The curiosity concerns the name of the stream that creates the drop, and it opens a window on how place naming works in this part of Lazio. The watercourse appears in the Regione Lazio map data as Fosso Timone, but in everyday speech and in local accounts it almost always becomes torrente Timone. It's not a contradiction: in Tuscia the term fosso usually indicates a minor watercourse set into tuff or volcanic rock, while torrente points to its seasonal fierceness. The same watercourse, that is, changes its grammatical name depending on whether you look at it from the land registry or from the bank.

The remarkable thing is that the name has left a trace in administrative geography too. Among the notable areas of the municipality of Canino, in fact, the upper Timone valley is cited, next to the hills of the Monti di Canino: an entire landscape unit named after a stream that, for most of the year, a Roman passing through would call a brook. And not far from the town is the small Lake Timone, which is the other face of the same name: still water instead of running water, surface instead of drop.

The ironworks and the mill: the work of water on the Timone

The Pellico drop has not always been just a nice place to stop. The story handed down in the town, and reported by those who dealt with the place before me, places nearby a metalworking plant active from about the 17th century until the 19th: a workshop that harnessed the power of the water flow and in which mainly cast iron was produced. After that season, during the 20th century, the activity is said to have been converted into a mill for grinding olives and wheat.

The sequence of ironworks, then mill, is a classic trajectory of preindustrial and industrial Italy, and in the case of Canino it has an evident territorial coherence. On one side metallurgy: Tuscia and the Maremma were for centuries lands of iron, with the hub of the island of Elba and the metal-bearing hills a few tens of kilometers away by sea, and the Farnese had documented interests in plants of this kind in their duchy. On the other side agriculture: the economy of Canino has a very strong farming vocation and the municipal countryside is mostly cultivated with wheat, grapevines and olive trees. A mill that grinds olives and wheat, in a town that lives on olives and wheat, is the most natural use a disused workshop could find.

Why water was a source of energy and not just a landscape

To understand what a waterfall meant in the 17th century you have to forget the contemporary idea of a waterfall as a photo attraction. A natural drop on a steady stream was, before steam power, the equivalent of a power plant: water wheels driven by the fall, drive shafts, trip hammers and bellows for the furnaces, millstones for grain and for olives. Communities organized themselves around these points, and the right to use the water was the subject of very long disputes among landowners, municipalities and church authorities.

The conversion into a mill follows the same logic in reverse. When metallurgy concentrates in modern plants and scattered facilities become uneconomical, the water wheel remains useful anyway for milling. The oil of Canino, which in 1996 obtained the protected designation of origin with EU Regulation No. 1263 of July 10, comes from the Canino cultivar and is the town's signature product, so much so that Canino is a member of the national association Città dell’Olio. An olive press driven by the water of the Timone, in this picture, is not a colorful detail: it was the infrastructure that turned the harvest into income.

What remains today

Anyone who arrives at the Pellico looking for monumental ruins comes away empty-handed. The countryside around the drop has absorbed almost everything, and masonry production structures of this kind, once abandoned, are dismantled to recover the material or crumble in a few decades under the vegetation. What remains is the landscape: the rock step that made the plant possible, the basin of water below, and the very fact that a paved little road reaches almost to the bank. Country roads rarely come into being for tourism: they exist because someone, at a certain moment, needed to get there with a cart.

One thing nobody tells you about the Cascata del Pellico

The thing nobody says is that the Cascata del Pellico has to be treated as a stop and not as an outing, and that anyone who doesn't understand this ruins the day for themselves. Online guides and image collections describe the Pellico as if it were a self-sufficient destination, able to fill a Sunday. It isn't. The drop is visually exhausted in 20 minutes, there are no equipped trails around it, no refreshment points, no visitor center, no bookshop and not even a bar. Anyone who drives two hours from Rome with the idea of spending the day here goes back with the feeling of having come a long way for little.

The correct reading is the opposite. The Pellico is the piece that makes a day already built on something else memorable. The combination that works best is this: morning at the archaeological area of Vulci, with the Abbadia bridge and the castle that houses the archaeological museum, lunch in Canino with the local oil as the common thread, a stop at the Pellico in the early afternoon when the light still enters the rock amphitheater, and then up to Lake Bolsena for sunset from Capodimonte or from Marta. In this structure the waterfall becomes the most beautiful moment of the day precisely because it lasts a short time and arrives unexpectedly.

The second thing nobody says concerns the absence of services. There is no restroom, no drinking water, no organized shade, no reliable trash can, and in the warm months there is nobody to ask for information. Anyone coming with small children or elderly people has to get organized beforehand, in Canino, where the town offers what is needed. Taking your own trash away is not a courtesy but the condition for the place to stay as it is: in a place without a manager, maintenance is done by the visitors or by nobody.

The third, and perhaps the most useful: the Pellico is a place of running water in a narrow valley floor. This calls for the same care that would apply in any gorge of central Italy. Wet rocks are slippery, the bottom of the basin is not visible and not predictable, and the flow of a stream can change quickly during and after a storm, even when the storm fell upstream and the sun is shining on the spot. There is no supervision and no immediate rescue. Looking, photographing and staying away from the line of the current is the only sensible behavior.

The advice I give you for visiting the Cascata del Pellico

The main advice is just one: go in spring, at mid-morning on a weekday, after a week in which it rained at least once. Every word of that sentence counts. Spring because the stream still has full flow and the vegetation is at its densest and greenest, before the July sun dries it out. Mid-morning because the light enters the amphitheater at an angle that lights the veil of water without burning it out, while at noon the contrast between dark rock and white foam becomes impossible to handle for any camera. A weekday because on Sunday, in the good season, families from Canino and the neighboring towns arrive and the place loses exactly the quality that makes it worth coming. Rain in the previous days because without water there is no waterfall.

Shoes, and why they are not a detail

Even if you park a few steps from the water, the wrong shoes ruin the visit. The ground around the basin is that of a damp valley floor: packed earth that turns to mud, exposed roots, stone smoothed by the water and covered with a film of green algae that makes it slick as soap. Flip-flops and smooth soles are a very bad idea, and even more so in a place where there is nobody to ask for help. A closed shoe with a lugged sole is more than enough: you don't need mountain gear, you need common sense.

What to put in the car

Drinking water, because none can be found on the spot. A mosquito repellent, because the damp valley floor on spring and summer evenings is what it is. A light sweatshirt even in May, because in the permanent shade of the gorge the temperature drops by quite a few degrees compared with the open countryside. A bag to carry your trash away. And, if photography really interests you, a microfiber cloth: the water mist settles on the lens within seconds and turns every shot into a haze.

The stop in Canino, which is part of the advice

The second piece of advice is not to treat Canino as a parking lot. The town has a heavy and visible history: the collegiate church with the chapel of the Bonaparte family, the church of Santa Croce, the complex of San Francesco, the town hall building that over time also took on the functions of courthouse and of palace of the podestà, Palazzo Bonaparte and a 12-sided Farnese fountain whose design is attributed to Vignola. It's 20 minutes on foot that double the meaning of the day, and 20 minutes that almost no visitor to the Pellico takes.

On sleeping, an honest note. Canino is a small town and the accommodation is sized accordingly: a few places in the center, agriturismi in the countryside between Canino, Cellere and Tessennano, and the much wider pool of the coast between Montalto di Castro and Tarquinia. Anyone who wants to base themselves in the area for two or three days would do well to think about Lake Bolsena or the coast, and to reach Canino as a day trip. Rates and availability change from season to season and should be asked about directly with the properties.

The greenery, the countryside of Canino and the natural areas around

The Cascata del Pellico sits inside an agricultural landscape that is worth as much as the drop of water. The municipal territory is mostly hilly and slopes down toward the coast. The fields are cultivated mainly with wheat, grapevines and olive trees, and the olive grove is the dominant element of the view. Driving from Canino toward the Pellico means crossing rows of olive trees of the Canino cultivar, the one from which the extra virgin oil with protected designation of origin is made, recognized by the EU regulation of 1996. Alongside the oil, the other signature product is the green asparagus of Canino, which obtained the protected geographical indication for its above-average sweetness and for the low fibrousness of the inner parts, which allows it to be eaten raw.

The protected areas within reach

The area is very rich in protected nature. To the north, the territory is skirted by the Fiora river, which rises on the Grosseto side of Monte Amiata and flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea southwest of Montalto di Castro, and whose course is recognized as a site of Community importance and a special protection area: along the Fiora survives one of the most important otter populations in central Italy. A few kilometers inland opens the Selva del Lamone, the nature reserve of lava rock and dense woods that is perhaps the wildest environment in the whole province of Viterbo. To the east is the Tuscania nature reserve, along the Marta. Farther south, on the coast, the Tarquinia Salt Pans remain one of the most interesting oases of the shoreline for birdwatching.

Anyone who wants to stay on the water theme has plenty to choose from. In the same province you find the Cascate del Salabrone, the Cascate dell’Acquarossa, the Cascata del Picchio in Nepi and the Cascate di Diosilla in the territory of Monterano. Moving toward the border with the province of Rome there are the Cascate di Monte Gelato in Mazzano Romano and the Cascatelle di Fosso del Norcino in Cerveteri. An itinerary of the waters of Tuscia exists, and the Pellico is one of its least known and most photogenic stops.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

The well-known fact is that Canino is a short distance from Vulci. All the guides say it, every brochure repeats it, and anyone who studied the Etruscans in middle school associates the name of the Etruscan city with the Canino territory. What is almost never said, though, is the historical consequence of that closeness: the history of Canino, and therefore also that of its countryside and of its workshops on the water, depends on Vulci in a direct and measurable way.

It is believed, in fact, that Canino arose as an agricultural center tied to the Etruscan city, and then rose to the role of pagus. The decisive point is that, like all the other centers that gravitated around Vulci, the fortunes of Canino grew with the decline of the Etruscan city, which went deserted in the Middle Ages. It's a mechanism worth keeping in mind because it overturns the common intuition: it was not the prosperity of the great city that made the village grow, but its abandonment. When Vulci emptied, population, lands and functions were redistributed among the smaller inland centers, and Canino was among those that benefited most.

The right photo to take at the Cascata del Pellico

The photograph everyone tries to take at the Pellico is the frontal one from below, with the drop in the center and the colored basin in the foreground. It's the natural shot, it's the one that appears in online collections, and it is also the hardest to get right, because it puts in the same frame the dazzling white of the foam and the black of the rock wall: a range of brightness that puts any sensor in crisis. Anyone who wants that photo should come on an overcast day, not in full sun, or in early morning, when the light is diffuse and the contrast softens by itself.

The three framings that work best

The first is the detail of the water on the rock. Getting close to the foot of the drop, the film of water sliding over the dark stone creates patterns that change every second, and a long exposure turns them into a silk surface. You need a stable support, and a flat big rock works as well as a tripod.

The second is the vertical frame that includes wall, vegetation and water, keeping the drop on one side of the frame instead of the center. This composition tells the story of the amphitheater much better than the symmetrical frontal one, because it conveys how much the rock towers over the water and how dense the green hanging from the cracks is.

The third is the reverse shot: turning your back to the drop and photographing the stream moving away downstream, with the fallen trunk leaning on the living tree if it's still in place. It's the shot nobody takes and the one that best conveys the character of the place, because it shows a piece of nature left to itself instead of a natural monument posed for the camera.

The technical mistakes to avoid

The first mistake is the handheld shot with long exposures. If you want the silk effect on the water you need long fractions of a second, and handheld you only get a blurred photograph. If you have no support, it's better to give up the effect and freeze the water with a fast shutter: a sharp waterfall is still a good photograph, a shaky, blurred waterfall never is.

The second, and the most important, concerns safety. The best photographs of any waterfall are taken from the spot where you shouldn't stand. Wet stone, algae, an invisible bottom and nobody around is a combination that doesn't deserve any shot. The rule I always apply and recommend to everyone: first you decide where it is safe to stand, then you compose the frame from there.

Some important events that happened here in history

The Pellico drop doesn't appear in the textbooks, but the territory that contains it has been through some of the densest events of northern Lazio. It's worth lining them up, because they give depth to a stop that would otherwise remain purely scenic.

The Etruscan age and the arc of Vulci

Vulci was one of the great Etruscan cities, spread over a plateau of about 120 hectares skirted by the Fiora river, a little over 10 kilometers from the Tyrrhenian coast, today divided between the municipal territories of Canino and Montalto di Castro. Its best-known monument is the Devil's bridge, also called the Abbadia bridge, which dates to the 3rd century BC and crosses the Fiora at a height of over 20 meters. Canino was born in its orbit as an agricultural center and grew when the Etruscan city emptied: in the Middle Ages Vulci was by then deserted.

The Middle Ages of alliances

Between 1214 and 1259 Canino was allied with Viterbo, to which it had sworn an act of vassalage. From the end of that period until the beginning of the 14th century the alliance shifted to Tuscania. These are almost two centuries in which the town lives inside the game of the larger cities of Tuscia, never having the strength to stand on its own and never fully losing its autonomy.

1468: the future Pope Paul III is born in Canino

On February 28, 1468, Alessandro Farnese, who would become Pope Paul III, was born in the municipality of Canino. It is the single event that ties this town most firmly to general Italian history, and it explains why the Farnese presence is so visible in the territory: the Farnese were for a long time lords of these lands, and their mark reaches the town's 12-sided fountain, whose design is attributed to Vignola, and well beyond, to the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola.

1537: the Duchy of Castro is born, and Canino is part of it

On October 31, 1537, with the bull Videlicet immeriti, Pope Paul III Farnese established the Duchy of Castro for his son Pier Luigi Farnese and his male line of succession. The duchy includes a list of centers that is almost a map of western Tuscia: Castro, Montalto, Musignano, Ponte della Badia, Canino, Cellere, Pianiano, Arlena, Tessennano, Piansano, Valentano, Ischia, Gradoli, Grotte, Borghetto, Bisenzio, Capodimonte, Marta, plus the islands of Lake Bolsena. For a little over a century Canino belongs to a State within the Papal State, with a capital of its own and a dynasty of its own.

1649: the destruction of Castro

The end comes in 1649 and is one of the most brutal pages in the history of Lazio. Duke Ranuccio II Farnese opposes the appointment of the Barnabite Cristoforo Giarda as the new bishop of Castro. The bishop is murdered on March 16 while on his way to his see, Pope Innocent X holds the duke responsible and invades the duchy. After the surrender of the city, on September 2, 1649, the pope orders the total destruction of Castro, including the churches and sacred places. With a deed drawn up on December 19 of the same year the last duke surrenders all rights to the Apostolic Chamber, and the territory is incorporated into the Patrimony of Saint Peter, the papal province of Tuscia. The name of the erased city still survives today in the place names of the neighboring municipalities, from Ischia di Castro to Montalto di Castro to Grotte di Castro.

1804 and after: the age of the Bonapartes

In 1804 Lucien Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, settled in Canino. In 1814 Pope Pius VII conferred on him the title of Prince of Canino. In 1824 Pope Leo XII added that of Prince of Musignano, from the name of the castle in the Canino countryside. In 1837 Pope Gregory XVI named him Prince Bonaparte. Lucien died in Viterbo on June 29, 1840, and his body rests in the family chapel built in the collegiate church of San Giovanni e Sant’Andrea in Canino. His second wife, Alexandrine de Bleschamp, widow of the banker Jouberthon, married in 1802, organized systematic research campaigns on the family estate: it is from the excavations financed by the Bonapartes that thousands of Etruscan finds came out of the ground at Vulci, now scattered in the museums of half of Europe.

1927: the move to the province of Viterbo

With Royal Decree No. 1 of January 2, 1927, the province of Viterbo was established, and Canino passed from the province of Rome to the new district. It seems an administrative detail and yet it changes the orientation of the town for the following century: schools, hospitals, offices and connections reorganize themselves toward Viterbo.

1996 and 1997: the modern identity

On July 10, 1996, EU Regulation No. 1263 recognized the protected designation of origin for Canino extra virgin olive oil, made from the Canino cultivar. On November 10, 1997, by decree of the President of the Republic, the municipal coat of arms and banner were granted: red, with a running dog set in lowered bend, silver, surmounted by three golden lilies, with the banner on white cloth. The dog for the name of the town, the three lilies for the Farnese: two symbols that sum up a thousand years of history in a single image.

Who has passed through the Cascata del Pellico

No illustrious visit is documented at the waterfall itself, and it would be dishonest to make one up. What can be told with solidity is who passed through the territory that contains it, because in that case the names are there and they carry weight.

The Farnese

Canino was a residence of the Farnese family, and right in the municipality was born, on February 28, 1468, Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, the man who would convene the Council of Trent and establish the Duchy of Castro for his own son. In the Farnese wake also moves Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, the architect to whom the town's 12-sided fountain is attributed and who worked for the Farnese all over Tuscia, starting from the palace at Caprarola. That an architect of that level put his hand to a fountain in Canino says how much the town counted within the Farnese system.

Lucien Bonaparte and Alexandrine de Bleschamp

The second big name is that of Lucien Bonaparte, born in Ajaccio on May 21, 1775, brother of Napoleon, a leading politician of revolutionary France and later an exile in Italy. He settled in Canino in 1804 and built there a relationship that lasted over 30 years. He was Prince of Canino from 1814 by grant of Pius VII, Prince of Musignano from 1824 by grant of Leo XII and Prince Bonaparte from 1837 by grant of Gregory XVI. He died in Viterbo on June 29, 1840, and rests in the family chapel of the Canino collegiate church. Beside him, his wife Alexandrine de Bleschamp, who organized the excavation campaigns on the estate and who left a huge and for a long time underestimated contribution to the history of Etruscan archaeology.

There is an aspect of this story that directly concerns the landscape of the Pellico. The Bonaparte couple lived in a countryside that was then full of activity, with workshops, farms, mills and service roads, and that today appears silent. Anyone walking along the Timone crosses the same valley floor that the princes of Canino had under their windows, and which for them was first of all a productive place.

Today's visitors

The contemporary public of the Cascata del Pellico is almost entirely local: families from Canino and the neighboring towns, photographers from Tuscia, groups of young people on spring Sundays, a few travelers coming from southern Tuscany who stop out of curiosity at the sign. International tourism, which does arrive in droves at Vulci and Tarquinia, has not yet arrived here. Personally I consider that a merit, and I hope whoever reads this treats the place in a way that doesn't change this balance.

When to go to the Cascata del Pellico and when to avoid it

The best moment, without hesitation, is spring: from March to May the stream has full flow thanks to the winter rains, the vegetation is at its maximum density and the valley floor temperatures are pleasant. April is the ideal month, also because it coincides with the season of the green asparagus of Canino and lets you build a day that joins nature and table.

Autumn is the second choice and in some ways the most fascinating. From mid-October on, after the first serious rains, the drop is full again and the woods of the valley floor change color. It's also the olive harvest season, and crossing the Canino countryside while the harvest is under way is an experience worth the trip on its own. The days are short, so it's best to plan the stop at the Pellico before 15:00, because in the gorge the light goes away much earlier than over the rest of the countryside.

Summer is the most uncertain season. In July and August the flow can shrink a lot, the green dries out and the contrast of midday light makes the place hard to enjoy and almost impossible to photograph. On the other hand, the shade of the gorge offers a real thermal refuge compared with the open countryside. Anyone coming in summer should make the stop early in the morning or in the last hour of light, and avoid August weekends, when the place fills with people from the surrounding area.

Winter deserves a separate discussion. The drop is at its most powerful and the roar becomes impressive. On the other hand, the valley floor stays damp and cold all day, the ground is muddy and little light gets in. It's the season of patient photographers and nobody else. The period to avoid entirely is the one immediately after an intense weather system: the water turns murky, the color of the basin disappears and the current increases unpredictably. On those days it's better to change plans and head to a museum or a village.

What’s around the Cascata del Pellico

The stop at the waterfall makes sense inside a wider trip, and western Tuscia offers within a few kilometers a density of things to see that few other areas of Lazio reach.

The archaeological loop

The first obligatory stop is Vulci, with the nature and archaeological park, the necropolises, the Abbadia bridge and the 12th-century castle built by the Cistercian monks, which houses the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. About 20 kilometers away, on the coast, Tarquinia preserves the painted tombs that are worth a trip to Italy by themselves. Tuscania, 12 kilometers away, adds the two Romanesque basilicas of San Pietro and Santa Maria Maggiore, among the most beautiful and least crowded things in Lazio.

The lake and the villages

Heading north you reach in 20 minutes Lake Bolsena, with Capodimonte on the promontory, Marta with its tower on the water, Valentano and Grotte di Castro on the inland heights. Toward the Tuscan border you enter the land of tuff with Pitigliano, and to the east you reach Civita di Bagnoregio. Viterbo, 31 kilometers away as the crow flies, completes the picture with the medieval San Pellegrino quarter, the Papal Palace and the Terme Libere Piscine Carletti.

Nature and sea

For anyone who wants to stay in the green there are the Selva del Lamone, the Tuscania nature reserve and, farther south, the Parco Marturanum between Barbarano Romano and Blera. On the sea, besides the Tarquinia Salt Pans, there are the Bagni di Sant’Agostino and, past the Tuscan border, the WWF Oasis of Lake Burano, Ansedonia, Orbetello and the Argentario.

Quick questions about the Cascata del Pellico

Where exactly is the Cascata del Pellico?

In the municipal territory of Canino, in the province of Viterbo, on the Fosso Timone, a little over a kilometer as the crow flies from the center of the town, at coordinates 42.46399 north and 11.73719 east.

How much does it cost to get in?

Nothing. Access appears to be completely free and at no cost, with no ticket office, no hours and no gates.

Do you get there by car or do you have to walk?

You arrive by vehicle practically on the spot, a few steps from the water. The last little roads are minor but well paved, and satellite navigation solves the problem of finding them.

Is it suitable for children and elderly people?

For the approach yes, precisely because it doesn't require long stretches on foot. On the spot, though, the ground is damp and wet stone is slippery: you need closed shoes and constant supervision of the little ones.

Can you swim in the basin under the drop?

There is no official indication that swimming is allowed, there is no supervision, the bottom is not visible and the flow of the stream changes quickly after rain. The sensible behavior is to look and photograph.

What is the best time?

Spring, from March to May, and second best autumn after the first rains. In August the flow can shrink quite a lot.

How much time does the visit take?

From half an hour to an hour. It's a stop inside a wider day, not a destination that fills an outing by itself.

What is the difference between the Cascata del Pellico and the little lake of the Pellicone?

They are two distinct places. The Pellico is a drop of water on the Fosso Timone at the edge of Canino. The Pellicone is a body of water along the Fiora river, near Vulci. The names are similar, the places are not.

Are there bars, restrooms or refreshment points?

None. The nearest service is in Canino, a little over a kilometer away. It's best to bring water and take your own trash away.

How far is it from the Vulci archaeological area?

About 10 kilometers as the crow flies, a few minutes by car: it's the natural pairing for building the day.

What should I eat in Canino?

Canino extra virgin olive oil with protected designation of origin is the town's signature product, along with the green asparagus of Canino with protected geographical indication, in season in spring.

Is the place well kept?

On the whole yes, with the exception of some abandoned trash. Since it's a free place with no manager, its state of conservation depends almost entirely on the behavior of the people who go there.

In our judgment the Cascata del Pellico is one of the places with the best ratio between effort required and beauty returned in all of northern Lazio. It asks for nothing: no ticket, no walk, no preparation. In exchange it hands over an amphitheater of dark rock, a veil of water that changes color and a noise that cancels out everything else. Anyone who demands an equipped park will be disappointed. Anyone looking for a fragment of real nature a kilometer from the houses, and who can stop for half an hour without asking for anything else, will come back to Canino for the rest too.

Frequently asked questions about the Cascata del Pellico

What is the Cascata del Pellico?

The Cascata del Pellico is a natural drop of the Fosso Timone, in the territory of Canino, in the province of Viterbo, set into a rock step that plunges into a basin where the water gathers in a small pool. It is not an equipped attraction like the Cascata delle Marmore: it has no ticket office, no water release schedules and no panoramic walkways.

Where exactly is the Cascata del Pellico?

The Cascata del Pellico is in the municipal territory of Canino, in the province of Viterbo, on the Fosso Timone, a little over a kilometer as the crow flies from the center of the town, at coordinates 42.46399 north and 11.73719 east. Canino lies in the immediate hinterland of the Tyrrhenian coast, inside the Maremma of Lazio and Tuscia, not far from Vulci.

How much does it cost to visit the Cascata del Pellico?

Visiting the Cascata del Pellico costs nothing. Access appears to be completely free and at no cost, with no ticket office, no hours and no gates, since it is a natural drop on a stream and not a managed attraction.

Why does the little lake of the Cascata del Pellico change color?

The body of water at the base of the Cascata del Pellico goes from cobalt to emerald, turning toward the color of earth where the bottom rises and the water gets shallow. It is not a constant effect: it depends on the time of day, the angle of the light and the conditions of the moment, so the same person can photograph it in very different ways on different days.

Was there a mill or an ironworks near the Cascata del Pellico?

Yes, according to the story handed down in the town, in the immediate vicinity of the Cascata del Pellico stood a metalworking plant active roughly from the 17th century until the 19th, a workshop that harnessed the power of the stream's water flow and in which mainly cast iron was produced.

When is it best to go to the Cascata del Pellico?

The best time to visit the Cascata del Pellico is spring, from March to May, when the stream still has full flow thanks to the winter rains and the vegetation is at its maximum density. April is considered the ideal month, also because it coincides with the season of the green asparagus of Canino. Autumn remains the second possible choice.

What is near the Cascata del Pellico?

Near the Cascata del Pellico you find Vulci, with the nature and archaeological park, the Etruscan necropolises, the Abbadia bridge and the 12th-century castle built by the Cistercian monks. The territory of Canino, moreover, was a residence of the Farnese family: it is where Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, was born on February 28, 1468.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences. To build a day in western Tuscia between Vulci, Canino and Lake Bolsena with a licensed tour leader, start from the TourLeaderPro contact page. Tour operators working on Etruscan and Maremma itineraries will find the consulting service in the section dedicated to tour operators.

Planning a trip to Italy? The English guides for visiting Rome and Lazio are on ItalyPlanner.com. For anyone thinking in terms of days out of town there is the guide to the best day trips from Rome, useful for working out where to fit a detour into Tuscia inside a trip that starts from the capital.