Faleria (VT)

Faleria is a town of just over 2,000 inhabitants in the province of Viterbo, at the southern tip of the province, where the countryside of the northern Agro Romano fades into the Tuscia. The town hall is at Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi 1, postal code 01030, switchboard 0761 58981, certified email protocollo@pec.comunedifaleria.it. The town occupies a triangular tuff outcrop at the confluence of the Mola ditch with the Treja river, and borders six municipalities: Calcata, Castel Sant'Elia, Civita Castellana, Mazzano Romano, Rignano Flaminio and Sant'Oreste. From Rome you get there in just under an hour. The village can be visited freely and for free: there are no ticket offices, turnstiles or hours, because the historic center is a living town and not a fenced-in museum. The Anguillara castle, which dominates the square, is viewed from the outside: it is private property and cannot be visited inside, except for special openings that the Comune announces on its website. The church of San Giuliano follows the hours of the parish services, so it's best to plan the visit close to Sunday Mass or to phone the town hall on weekdays. The ruins of Castel Paterno, five kilometers outside the town, are in open countryside, with no custodian and no lighting: you get there on foot with closed shoes and not after sunset.

Anyone who arrives here is generally making a wider loop in the Treja Valley and the lower province of Viterbo, and does well: Faleria alone is worth a full morning, not a whole day. The right way to use it is to fit it between Calcata and Civita Castellana, or to make it the quiet and inexpensive base for working the whole area of the gorges.

How to get to Faleria (VT) from Rome

By car the simplest way is the Flaminia. You leave Rome to the north, take state road 3 Flaminia or the motorway link that runs alongside it up to Rignano Flaminio, then leave the main route and cut west on provincial road 79 Calcatese, which connects Faleria to Calcata and continues toward Mazzano Romano. The count is about 40 kilometers as the crow flies from the center of Rome and a little under 60 of actual route, which translates into 50 or 60 minutes if you leave outside rush hours. The alternative is the Cassia up to Campagnano and then the descent into the valley: slower, more beautiful, advisable only for the return.

A practical warning that is worth more than any scenic description: provincial road 79 runs along the valley and crosses the Mola ditch with a bridge that has recently been affected by a construction site with alternating one-way traffic. Before leaving it's worth checking the traffic notices on the website of the Comune di Faleria, which publishes them prominently. It's not fussiness: on a road of that caliber a construction-site light can add 20 minutes to a 50-minute trip.

Faleria (VT) by public transit

Lazio's extraurban public transport serves the town with bus lines that pass through the valley and rely on the rail and subway hubs of northern Rome. The runs are calibrated on the movements of students and commuters, so they are frequent early in the morning and in the early afternoon, sparse during the rest of the day and reduced to the minimum on Sunday. Schedules and stops must be checked on the regional operator's website on the same day, because they change between the school period and the summer. Put bluntly: Faleria as a day trip without a car is possible, but it ties the whole visit to the return schedules. If your program also includes Castel Paterno and the Monte Gelato waterfalls, the car is not a luxury, it is a condition.

Anyone traveling by train can reach Civita Castellana with the regional line that goes up the Tiber valley, or use the Roma Nord railway, formerly under concession, to Civita Castellana and Viterbo, and from there continue by bus or taxi for the last kilometers. It's a solution that makes sense for those who stay overnight in the area, much less for a hit-and-run trip.

Where to park in Faleria

The historic center of Faleria is a maze of alleys on an outcrop: you don't enter it by car and it's not worth even trying. You leave the vehicle in the pull-offs along the road that climbs to the town and in the area in front of the public buildings, then continue on foot. From the parking to Piazza della Collegiata it's five minutes uphill at a moderate grade. On patron saint festival days and during the summer events availability thins out a lot and the Comune orders temporary traffic closures: in those cases you arrive early or you arrive on foot from farther away.

Faleria (VT) at a glance: the numbers and the territory

2,018 inhabitants at the most recent census, province of Viterbo, Lazio region. The figure that surprises anyone reading the statistics of Lazio's villages is the sign: here the population has not collapsed as in most towns of the inner Tuscia, indeed over the last 150 years it has grown. Faleria is one of the few centers in the northern belt of the Roman suburbs that has gained residents instead of losing them, for a prosaic and not a romantic reason: it is close enough to Rome to allow commuting and far enough to have real estate prices of the deep provinces.

The whole municipal territory is drawn by water. The Treja rises on Monte Lagusiello, in the municipality of Trevignano Romano, not far from Lake Bracciano, and flows toward the northeast crossing Mazzano Romano, Calcata, Faleria and Civita Castellana before emptying into the Tiber between Foglia and Poggio Sommavilla, almost opposite the mouth of the Aia stream. Along the way the river has cut the tuff bank into a series of deep, narrow, wooded gorges, which are the dominant character of this piece of Lazio. Faleria sits on one of the spurs created by that cut, at the confluence of the Mola ditch into the Treja: a position that in the Middle Ages was worth a garrison, because two sides of the triangle are defended by a precipice.

Looking from the square you understand the whole geographic system at a glance. To the east rises Monte Soratte, the isolated relief that Horace saw white with snow and that from here looks like a whale's back resting on the plain. To the west the Sabatini Mountains close the horizon and, farther on, the Cimini with the basin of Lake Vico. In between is the ancient territory of the Falisci, the people who occupied this bank of the Tiber and who left their name to half the local place names.

Why the town is called Faleria and not Stabbia

The current name is recent and artificial. Until the 19th century the town was called Stabla, then Stabbia, Stabia, and in Latin documents Castrum Stabie. The name Faleria has been in force since at least 1873, with the decree of name change completed the following year, and comes from a cultural operation typical of post-unification Italy: they wanted to tie the town to the Faliscan civilization and to the Falerii of the ancient repertoires, giving the village a classical pedigree that the medieval name did not guarantee. Let it be said clearly: Faleria does not stand on the site of any known Faliscan city. The old Falerii Veteres is at Civita Castellana, Falerii Novi is the Roman city with polygonal walls just outside Civita Castellana. The name is a homage, not an archaeological identity.

In the town, cyclically, someone proposes going back to Stabbia. In our view they would be right: Castrum Stabie is the name under which this place appears in papal bulls and in the acts of the Anguillara, that is, the name of its real history. But place names, once printed on identity documents, have a resistance that no philology manages to dent.

What to see in Faleria (VT): the village, the castle, the churches

Faleria's historic center is compact and can be covered entirely in 40 minutes of walking, stops included. The layout is that of a triangle resting on the outcrop, with the tip facing north: down there, in the highest and most exposed part of the town, stand the ancient ruins of Faleria Vecchia, of which the Anguillara castle is the most conspicuous and best preserved part. The gates and the city walls that enclosed the town were torn down around 1900, when the urban planning needs of the 20th century demanded wider streets and vehicle access: it is the worst wound inflicted on the village, and explains why today you enter the town without the scenery of a medieval arch.

One thing has to be said that circulates in a confused form in the local tourist literature. Faleria is sometimes presented as a ghost town: it is not, and anyone who arrives expecting an empty town is thrown by an inhabited center full of people, children and cars. The real ghost town of the area is another, called Monterano, on the other side of the Sabatini. At Faleria the abandonment concerns only the northern core of the outcrop and the fortress, not the town.

The Anguillara Castle in Faleria (VT)

It's the monument that justifies the trip. The date of construction of the first structure is not known, but the documentation allows us to state with reasonable certainty that the castle already existed in the 13th century, when the Anguillara family had by then extended its lordship over a very wide belt of northern Lazio, from Lake Bracciano to the inner Tuscia. The bulk of the building says more about the power of that house than any chronicle: here we are not in front of a watchtower, but of a fortified palace that could house a court.

The family takes its name from the village on Lake Sabatino and appears for the first time in documents in 1019 with a Guido de Anguillaria. During the 13th and 14th centuries the Anguillara clashed with the Prefects of Vico for control of the southern Tuscia, hosted emperors, bought and retook castles with the ease of border lords. Their domain ended by implosion: Everso II, the most feared of the line, died in 1464 leaving his sons an estate that the papacy no longer tolerated, and within a few decades the possessions were confiscated. The line died out in the 18th century.

The facade, the cordonate and the entrance of the castle of Faleria

The entrance is on Piazza della Collegiata and is reached by two wide cordonate, ramps with low steps designed for the passage of horses. At their bases emerge two large stumps of ancient Egyptian granite columns: they are reused material, that is, pieces from a Roman building dismantled and reused as street furniture and as bollards. It's worth stopping for 30 seconds to look at them, because they are the only visible fragment of classical antiquity set into the fabric of the village, and they tell of a practice that in medieval Lazio was the norm.

You enter through a portal with a marble arch surmounted by the family coat of arms, with a monogram at the base. The portal is almost always closed: the castle is privately owned and has no ordinary visiting regime. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you an illusion. Openings take place on the occasion of municipal events and festivals, and should be looked for in the Comune's notices.

The courtyard and the travertine well

The portal leads into a wide inner courtyard. On one side there was an artistic travertine well, with the coats of arms of the Anguillara and of the Strozzi house side by side, evidence of the marital and political ties that connected the local lords to the Florentine aristocracy transplanted to Rome. The well has been stolen. It's a story that repeats itself at Faleria: over the last decades quite a few works of art from the town have taken the road to the clandestine antiques market, and none has ever returned. The theft of stone furnishings from the villages of the lower Viterbo area is a documented and continuing phenomenon, and anyone visiting these towns would do well to know that what they see today is almost always less than what was there 20 years ago.

The prisons and the right wing of the palace

The lordship's prisons were located in the right wing of the palace, on the ground floor. It's a detail that guides generally skip, and yet it's the one that explains the real function of the building: the Anguillara castle was not a vacation residence, it was the seat of judicial and fiscal power over a fief. In the same block justice was administered, salt was collected, prisoners were held. Anyone looking at the Renaissance loggias from the square sees the elegant face of a machine of government.

The Renaissance loggias in peperino

In the Renaissance part of the castle, which stands out sharply from all the other architectural members, there are three loggias in peperino, the gray volcanic stone of the Cimini and the Sabatini, which here is local building material and not a luxury import. The loggias look out over the church square in a majestic and solemn way.

It is the stylistically most accomplished portion of the whole complex: sober and at the same time precious elegance, a crisp rigor of austere monumentality. The loggias of the piano nobile highlight the composure of the architectural mass, which on the facade reaches an exact balance between width and height. If I had to point to a single spot to plant yourself and look, I would say the short side of the square, with your back to the church: from there the three arcades line up and the building stops looking like a ruin and goes back to being what it was, the residence of a family that dealt on equal terms with the popes.

How the castle of Faleria changed between the 14th and 16th centuries

In 1330 the castle was fully crenellated, much lower than the current one, and had four round towers. The later transformations progressively took away its grim fortress character: the crenellations disappeared, the buildings were raised, windows and then loggias were opened. It's the same trajectory as dozens of Lazio castles between the 15th and 16th centuries, when artillery made vertical defense obsolete and the lords discovered it was more useful to live comfortably than to resist a siege. Looking at the facade today means reading, in transparency, three centuries layered on top of each other.

The crossed snakes: the Anguillara coat of arms at Faleria

In several parts of the fortress, carved in the white marble coats of arms, are the characteristic crossed snakes. They are the heraldic sign of the house, and their most common reading links them to the family name and therefore to the eel of Lake Bracciano, where the Anguillara had their stronghold. Local tradition, instead, traces them back to a legendary progenitor of the 10th century, a certain Ramone who supposedly killed a dragon. The two explanations have coexisted for centuries: the first is the more sensible, the second is the one told to children. No medieval coat of arms was ever invented to be explained in a single way.

The Church of San Giuliano in Faleria (VT)

Facing the castle stands the collegiate church of San Giuliano, the town's main religious building. It was erected on a pre-existing 12th-century construction, while the current building dates in all likelihood to the 13th century. What you see today, however, is the result of the considerable modification and renovation works carried out in the Renaissance under the patronage of the Anguillara, with whom local tradition associates the name of Count Everso. The dedication to Saint Julian refers to a very widespread cult in medieval Lazio, tied to hospitality and wayfarers: a title consistent with a settlement placed along a transit route between the Flaminia and the Treja valley.

The facade and the bell tower of San Giuliano

The facade is Romanesque in style, and Romanesque too is the bell tower, marked by pairs of two-light windows, some of which are now walled up. The blocking of two-light windows is a recurring phenomenon in Lazio's bell towers: they were closed for structural reasons, after earthquakes or after the raising of the bell chamber, and their outline remains legible in the masonry like a scar. Look at the bell tower backlit in the late afternoon and you will see them all emerge, open and closed, in a regular grid that is the oldest part of the building.

The three naves and the wooden choir

Entering, you make out the three naves. The central one, wider, ends with an apse in which a wooden choir is placed. The choir is a furnishing of a collegiate church, that is, of a church served by a chapter of canons and not by a single parish priest: its presence here certifies the rank San Giuliano had in the ecclesiastical organization of the territory, and explains why the square in front is still called Piazza della Collegiata. The side naves, lower and narrower, house the altars of the confraternities and of the town's families.

The altar of San Giuliano and the canvas of the Saint

The standout element of the church is the altar of San Giuliano. Thanks to the initiative of the Compagnia del Santissimo Sacramento, the altar was restored in 1610. The Companies of the Most Holy Sacrament are lay confraternities born in the climate of the Counter-Reformation with the aim of promoting the Eucharistic cult: their activity as art patrons, between the 16th and 17th centuries, remade the face of hundreds of provincial churches, and Faleria is a textbook case.

Enriching the altar is a canvas depicting the Saint at the feet of the Virgin, framed by stucco with angelic figures. The pairing of the stucco frame with the painted altarpiece is typical of 17th-century taste: stucco is not an accessory decoration, it is the device that turns the wall into a theater and projects the painting toward the faithful. If the church is closed, don't insist on the side doors: ask about the service times, which are the only guaranteed access.

The Church of Sant'Agostino in Faleria (VT)

The small church of Sant'Agostino is built against the Anguillara castle, on the left side as you face the facade of the palace. It dates to the 14th century. The interior is a single nave and holds a canvas of the Saint. It's a tiny building, visited in five minutes, that many visitors walk past without noticing, absorbed by the bulk of the castle next to it.

Better not to treat it as an appendix. Noble chapels built against lordly palaces are not born to serve the town: they are born to serve the family, and their physical position, glued to the flank of the castle, says everything about the relationship between temporal power and private devotion in 14th-century Lazio. The lord stepped out of his house and was in church, without crossing public space. This is the reading that is worth the ticket, and the ticket here is not paid.

Faleria Vecchia and the ruins north of the town

In the northernmost part of the town stand the ancient ruins of Faleria Vecchia, of which the castle itself is a part. It is the original core of the Castrum Stabie, the narrowest and most defensible portion of the outcrop, where the medieval settlement had huddled before expanding south along the back of the tuff triangle. Today you walk there among battered walls, cellars dug into the tuff, underground rooms reused as warehouses and stables until a few decades ago.

The walkway requires caution. The tuff is crumbly, the edges are not protected everywhere, and below there are tens of meters of gorge. With small children it's best to stay on the paved streets and give up the most advanced lookouts: the best panorama, in any case, is not on the edge, but from the viewpoints set up along the road that goes around the town.

Castel Paterno, the castle where Otto III died

Five kilometers from the town, hidden in the scrub of Faleria, are the remains of what was an important castle in central Italy: Castel Paterno, whose history goes back to the 11th century. Here, in January 1002, Otto III, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, died. It is the historical event of greatest weight to have taken place in this territory, and the reason the name of Faleria appears in the textbooks of European medieval history.

How to reach Castel Paterno from Faleria

The castle is perched on an outcrop among the gorges and their woods. You reach it by following a country road that branches off the road leading to Faleria from Civita Castellana, right after the perimeter wall of the cemetery. From there you continue on foot.

Serious warning, not a formality: along the route there are holes hidden by vegetation, stretches of crumbling ground and deep drop-offs. It is not an equipped trail, there is no continuous signage, there is no reliable phone coverage at every point. Go with hiking boots or trekking shoes, long pants against brambles, your own water, and if possible not alone. In summer, after dry spells, the vegetation hides the track. After rain the ground becomes slippery and clayey. The right time is the end of winter or the beginning of spring, when the woods are still bare and the walls can be seen from afar.

At the site there is an information panel made by the Comprensorio della Via Amerina e delle Forre, with useful information for the visit and maps of the place and the territory. It is the only interpretive infrastructure present: don't expect a ticket office, restrooms or a custodian.

What remains of Castel Paterno

Imposing remains of the curtain wall survive, and a wide arched access gate, which local scholarly tradition calls the ancient posterula of the Saxons. The castle occupies the end of a height bounded by two deep ditches, at their confluence into the Treja: the same settlement logic as Faleria, multiplied by isolation.

The plan is irregular. The east side has almost entirely collapsed. The south side, preceded by a moat, survives only in the eastern sector. The complex was already abandoned in the 16th century: in a 1549 agreement on the boundaries of Stabbia, drawn up between Flaminio and Everso Anguillara, appears the formula Castri diruti Paterno, that is, of the ruined castle of Paterno. It is one of those notarial citations that are worth a hundred pages of description: in 1549 the place was already a ruin, and the lords of the place used it only as a cadastral reference point.

Anyone who arrives here must know that they will see a few meters of masonry amid the vegetation, not a standing fortress. The reward is not visual, it is mental: you walk on the exact spot where the life of the sovereign who had planned to refound the universal empire with Rome as its capital came to an end.

The death of Otto III in 1002

The documented facts are these. Otto III, born in 980, son of Otto II and the Byzantine princess Theophanu, emperor at not yet 23, had established his residence in Rome on the Aventine, cultivating the design of the renovatio imperii Romanorum. In January 1001 the Romans rebelled and forced him to leave the city. He spent the following year gathering forces to return, relying on the castles of the northern countryside, where he could count on the Saxon counts tied to the imperial dynasty and on the proximity of the via Flaminia. Castel Paterno was chosen for this: it was a military base well connected with Civita Castellana and with the great consular route.

Toward the end of 1001 the emperor fell gravely ill with fever. He died at Castel Paterno on January 23 or 24, 1002, aged 21. The contemporary sources describe a Christian and composed death, with the assistance of the bishops of his entourage. The body was brought to Germany at the cost of enormous difficulties and buried in the church of Saint Mary in Aachen, today's cathedral, beside Charlemagne.

The novelistic version that has circulated for centuries speaks instead of poison, and brings in Stefania, widow of Crescentius, the Roman patrician whom Otto had beheaded on the ramparts of Castel Sant'Angelo in 998 for his rebellion. According to the story, Stefania seduced the emperor to avenge her husband. The story is fascinating and appears from the 16th century in the scholarly literature, but has no confirmation in the contemporary sources: it must be classified as legend, not fact. I say it plainly because in local publicity it is still passed off as history, and because the documented truth, a 21-year-old boy killed by malaria in a country castle a few weeks before returning to a city that had driven him out, is tragic enough without additions.

The legend of the hen with the seven golden chicks

Ancient Faleria legends tell of the emperor's treasure, which included a hen with seven golden chicks hidden in the bowels of the outcrop. The motif is not local: the hen with golden chicks is an object that recurs in the Lombard and early medieval Italian tradition, where it indicates at once the kingship and the fertility of the line. That the tale latched onto Otto III is understandable: an emperor who died young and suddenly in a remote castle is exactly the kind of figure around whom peasant memory builds buried treasures. Nobody has ever found anything, and anyone who suggests searching with a metal detector is inviting you to commit a crime.

The history of Faleria (VT): from Stabla to the 20th century

This town's story is the story of a border fief, contested because it lies exactly on the line where the Patrimony of Saint Peter met the lay lordships of northern Lazio.

The etymology of Stabbia: Stabulum or Stabilis

The exact etymology of Stabbia remains uncertain. Some scholars explain the name as derived from the Latin stabulum, that is, a post station located along an Etruscan or Roman road, and link the place name to the so-called osteria di Stabbia, which survives as a locality on the via Flaminia. Others derive it from stabilis, stable, in reference to the mighty strongholds and the solid foundations of the site. Neither hypothesis is proven, and anyone who presents them as certainties is oversimplifying.

The hypothesis of the road station is the most economical from a historical point of view: a settlement at the confluence of two watercourses, a short distance from the Flaminia, in a territory also crossed by the via Amerina, is exactly the place where you would expect a rest station.

The Rocchetta and the first human settlement

The first human settlement at Stabbia took place at the site of the small tuff stronghold of the Rocchetta, located below the Casaccia di Piè di Castello. Inside, many traces of human presence have been found, some of them dating to the Archaic age, that is, to the period when this part of Lazio was Faliscan territory, culturally akin to the Etruscans but linguistically Latin. Don't expect an archaeological area open to visitors: these are findings known to scholars, not an equipped route.

Stabla in the papal bulls and the Anguillara fief

Stabla is first named in the bulls of John XIX and Benedict IX, that is, in the first half of the 11th century, and from those documents it appears to be treated as a fief. In the 14th century Stabia was taxed for a consumption of five rubbia of salt per half-year: the figure is less dry than it seems, because the salt tax was proportional to the population and makes it possible to estimate the demographic size of the castle. Already at that time the fief belonged to the Anguillara, to whom it remained until the 17th century. Three centuries under the same family are an eternity in feudal Lazio, and explain why the urban landscape of Faleria bears a single heraldic signature.

Girolama Farnese and the 1504 crime

November 1, 1504 is the date around which the grimmest story of local memory revolves. Girolama Farnese, wife of Giuliano Anguillara, was suspected of having tried, with her lovers, to poison her son Giuliano, and for this reason was savagely killed by her stepson Giovanbattista. The account belongs to the local scholarly tradition and must be taken for what it is: a story of a noble family handed down through late chronicles. That people in the houses of the Anguillara died of poison and dagger is however not in question, and the episode fits into the documented picture of the internal feuds of the house in the early 16th century.

The 1563 decree on the cutting of the cerque

On January 28, 1563 a lordly decree was issued establishing penalties for anyone who cut the cerque, that is, the oaks, because in a short time they would be left without woods. Local memory attributes the measure to an Everso Anguillara, and caution is needed on this, given that the most famous Everso of the family had died a century earlier. Beyond the attribution, the content is remarkable: we are looking at an act of forest protection from the full 16th century, in a fief whose economy depended on the woods for firewood, charcoal, acorns and the grazing of pigs. The forest was not scenery, it was capital, and the lords defended it with the penal code. Anyone who walks today in the wooded gorges of the Treja should know that that forest has survived also thanks to rules like this one.

The Borghese and the end of the fief, 1660

On June 25, 1660 Stabia passed to the Borghese prince, who bought it for 110,000 scudi. It is the moment when the town leaves the orbit of the old border lords and enters that of the great families of Baroque Rome, who in the 17th century systematically bought fiefs all over Lazio, turning them into income-producing farms. The change of master can be read in the landscape: less investment in fortification, more investment in land.

From the 1873 name change to the province of Viterbo

The name Faleria has been in force since at least 1873. The gates and the city walls were torn down in 1900 for the new urban planning needs. In 1927, with the administrative reorganization that created the province of Viterbo, the municipality passed from the province of Rome to that of Viterbo: this is the reason why today a town 40 kilometers from the Campidoglio carries the code VT. Between 1906 and 1932 the area was served by the Rome-Civita Castellana tramway, the narrow-gauge line that preceded the current railway: an infrastructure that for a quarter of a century kept these towns far better connected to the capital than they are today by public transport.

In 2015 the municipality counted 83 active businesses with 150 employees, equal to 0.36 percent of the businesses of the province. These are numbers that tell of a residential and agricultural economy, with a still modest tourist vocation and few accommodation facilities. It is also the reason you won't find lines, tour buses or menus translated into five languages here.

The Treja Valley around Faleria (VT)

Faleria stands in the Treja valley although it does not fall within the administrative boundaries of the nature park of the same name. It is a distinction that generates misunderstandings and is worth clarifying right away, because it changes the rules of the visit.

The Valle del Treja Regional Park

The Valle del Treja Regional Park was established by regional law in 1982 and extends over 628 hectares in the territories of just two municipalities: Calcata, in the province of Viterbo, and Mazzano Romano, in the Metropolitan City of Rome. It is a rugged area covered with dense vegetation, cut by the river, lying between the two great consular roads, the Cassia and the Flaminia. Faleria is just outside: its territory continues the same gorge but does not enjoy the same protection regime, and the rules of access to the land are the ordinary ones of private property.

The park's fauna includes foxes, badgers, porcupines and a bird life rich in woodpeckers, jays, kestrels, buzzards and nocturnal raptors. The flora counts oaks, hazels, maples, willows and an undergrowth with wild orchids and cyclamens. In the territory there are settlements from prehistory to the Archaic age, including the remains of Narce, a Faliscan center of the first rank, and the sanctuary of Monte Li Santi, which yielded one of the most important votive complexes of the Faliscan countryside.

The Monte Gelato waterfalls

At Monte Gelato, in the territory of Mazzano Romano, the Treja forms a series of drops over a tuff bed next to an old mill. The Monte Gelato waterfalls are the most visited place in the whole valley, and on summer Sundays their capacity is largely exceeded: if you go in August, go at eight in the morning or give it up.

The site is an impressive stratification. There is a Roman villa built in the Augustan age and kept in use until the middle of the 4th century, when the area was reoccupied in a Christian key. There is an 8th-century church with a baptistery, later enlarged, and in the 10th century a larger building dedicated to San Giovanni. There is a fortified settlement called Castellaccio, which between the 11th and 12th centuries defended itself with a ditch at least four meters wide and a curtain wall. The mill you see today was built in 1830 by the Del Drago family, probably on medieval foundations: a three-story tower with the water regulation mechanisms, in operation until the early 1960s and then restored by the park authority, which set up an information center in it.

The fact that always amuses groups is cinematic: between 1950 and 1973 scenes from about 97 Italian films were shot along this stretch of the river, from sword-and-sandal epics to westerns, including the famous They Call Me Trinity. If you have the impression of having already seen those waterfalls, you are not mistaken: you really have seen them, on television, on Sunday afternoons.

Calcata, a quarter of an hour from Faleria

Calcata has a little over 900 inhabitants and its historic center is perched on a tuff plateau overlooking the Treja valley, accessible through a single gate in the walls. The village, abandoned after the war because of the risk of collapse, was repopulated starting in the 1960s by artists and craftspeople, who made it the most eccentric town in Lazio. The church of the Santissimo Nome di Gesù dates to the 14th century, was renovated in 1793, has a single nave with a trussed ceiling and keeps a 16th-century holy water font. It was the church that housed the relic of the Holy Foreskin, found according to local legend in 1557 after having been hidden by a Landsknecht during the Sack of Rome of 1527: the relic disappeared in 1983 and has never been found. In the municipal territory there is also Opera Bosco Museo di Arte nella Natura, two hectares of woods with contemporary installations, awarded at the European level in 2011, 2013 and 2015.

From Faleria you reach Calcata in a quarter of an hour on provincial road 79 Calcatese. It's the smartest pairing in the area: the austere, feudal village in the morning, the bohemian and crowded village in the afternoon.

A curiosity about Faleria (VT)

The curiosity that no one will tell you in front of the castle concerns the name of the town, and it is not a pretty anecdote: it is a small case of invention of identity. Until 1873 this place was called Stabbia, in Latin Castrum Stabie, and that is how it appeared in the papal bulls of the 11th century, in the acts of the Anguillara and in the salt tax registers. Then, in the cultural climate of newly unified Italy, the local ruling class obtained the change of name to Faleria, tying the town to the prestige of the Faliscan civilization and to the name of the ancient Falerii.

The point is that Faleria does not stand on the site of any Faliscan city. Falerii Veteres, the capital of the Falisci destroyed by the Romans in 241 BC, stood on the plateau where Civita Castellana is today. Falerii Novi, the colonial city built right afterward, still preserves today its circuit of walls in tuff blocks just outside Civita Castellana. The territory of Faleria was certainly within the Faliscan cultural orbit, and the stronghold of the Rocchetta has yielded Archaic-age materials, but the modern name is a 19th-century honorary title, not an ancient inheritance.

This story also explains why the proposal to go back to Stabbia recurs periodically in the town. Whoever supports it has on his side all the medieval documentation. Whoever opposes it has on his side the registry office, which is a far stronger adversary than philology. The verdict is clear: telling Faleria without saying that it was called Stabbia deprives the visitor of the key to understanding every single document concerning this castle. The old name is not an erudite detail, it is the word you have to search for in the archives.

Something nobody tells you about Faleria (VT)

That the Anguillara castle cannot be visited. It seems like trivial information and yet it is the one that ruins more trips than any other: the palace is private property and has no ordinary opening regime, it is viewed from the outside, from Piazza della Collegiata, and openings take place only on the occasion of events that the Comune announces from time to time. Anyone leaving Rome imagining a visiting route with a ticket office, frescoed halls and sentry walks goes home disappointed, and the disappointment is not the town's fault: it is the fault of a tourist communication that over the years has used the photograph of the loggias without ever specifying that you don't go in behind those loggias.

The second thing nobody will tell you is that Faleria's works of art have suffered a long season of thefts. The travertine well with the coats of arms of the Anguillara and of the Strozzi house, which occupied one side of the castle's inner courtyard, has been stolen. It's not an isolated case: the lower Viterbo area and the upper Agro Romano have been for decades a hunting ground for the clandestine trade in stone furnishings, and in many villages what the elders remember no longer coincides with what visitors see. When in a town like this you find a sawn-off little pillar or an empty niche, it is not neglect: almost always it is a theft.

The third is a question of calendar. Faleria doesn't have large tourist flows, so accommodation and dining are sized for residents: outside weekends and outside festival weeks the town can offer you very little in terms of services. Anyone arriving for lunch on a Tuesday, on a winter weekday, seriously risks finding nothing open. You phone beforehand, or you bring your lunch and eat it at the tables of an equipped area along the river.

The advice I give you for visiting Faleria (VT)

Do it early in the morning and do it in winter or at the beginning of spring. The reason is technical, not aesthetic. The merit of this town is the reading of the relationship between the outcrop, the gorge and the castle, and that relationship can only be seen when the woods are bare: from November to March, from the viewpoints along the road that goes around the town, you can make out the layering of the tuff, the dug-out cellars, the line of the ancient walls and the profiles of Faleria Vecchia. From May on the vegetation closes everything off and only the roofs remain.

The second piece of advice concerns the order of the day. If you have a car, put Castel Paterno first, as soon as you arrive, with the raking morning light and the ground still cool: it's a walk of an hour and a half between going, returning and stopping, and doing it in the early afternoon in summer is a terrible idea. Then return to town, do the village and the collegiate church calmly, have lunch, and keep the afternoon for Calcata or for the Monte Gelato waterfalls, which look much better in sunset light.

Third: forget the idea of visiting Faleria in half an hour, in passing. It's not a showcase town, it doesn't have a shopping street, it has nothing that gets used up quickly. What it offers it offers to those who walk slowly, go into the church, look over the edge, read the Castel Paterno panel and get a few words from the old men sitting in the square. If you have two hours, they are two hours well spent. If you have 20 minutes, go straight to Calcata and come back here another time.

One last recommendation, unpoetic but decisive: closed shoes with a treaded sole, always. The village's paving is on a slope, wet tuff is slippery, and every interesting route outside the town goes along a country path.

Another well-known fact, yet seldom mentioned

That Faleria is one of the very few villages of the southern Tuscia whose population has grown instead of shrinking. Everyone in town knows it, the statistics say so, and no tourist guide ever writes it, because it contradicts the dominant narrative about Lazio's villages, that of depopulation and one-euro houses. Over the last 150 years the number of residents has doubled, and today the municipality counts just over 2,000 inhabitants.

The reason is geographic and economic together. Faleria lies in the belt that geographers call the contact belt: close enough to Rome that a resident can reach a workplace in the capital, far enough that house prices are a fraction of those of the main city. From the 1970s on this belt, which also includes Rignano Flaminio, Sant'Oreste, Mazzano Romano and Civitella San Paolo, has absorbed part of the residential outflow from the Roman urban area.

The consequence for the visitor is concrete and worth having clear. Faleria is not an open-air museum and not a set: it is a commuter town with a medieval historic center inside. Cars circulate, kids go to school, the town hall publishes notices about school canteen enrollment and transport for pupils with disabilities. Anyone looking for the postcard silence of an uninhabited village has to go elsewhere. Anyone who instead wants to see how a 13th-century castle continues to serve as a backdrop to ordinary daily life will find exactly that here, and it is a value that at Calcata, by now, has been lost.

I'll add a second very well-known fact yet rarely said out loud: Faleria has been in the province of Viterbo only since 1927. Before that it was in the province of Rome. This explains the town's double cultural belonging, which in habits, in accent and in economic relations looks much more to Rome than to Viterbo, and which on administrative maps is instead systematically lumped in with the Tuscia.

The right photo to take at Faleria (VT)

The photograph worth the trip is not the one of the castle straight on, which everyone takes from Piazza della Collegiata and which invariably comes out squashed: the square is narrow, the building is tall, and without a strong wide-angle the three loggias end up distorted. The right photo is taken from outside the town, from the road that climbs the valley toward the village, at the point where the tuff outcrop presents itself three-quarter on with the houses on top and the gorge below. From there you see the thing that really matters: the settlement and the precipice as a single body, the reason a castle was born at that spot and not 300 meters further on.

The best light is that of the first hour after dawn in winter, with the low fog that fills the gorge and lets the town emerge like an island. The second good moment is the last half hour before sunset, when the tuff goes from gray to orange and the peperino of the loggias turns almost violet. Avoid noon: the overhead light on a pale outcrop erases the volumes and returns a flat surface.

Inside the village, the best subject is the detail: a white marble coat of arms with the crossed snakes, framed tight against the dark masonry, with side light that carves out the relief. You will find several on the facades of the castle complex. They are the Anguillara's signature and also the only way to take the family's history home in one frame.

For the bell tower of San Giuliano, stand on the opposite side of the square in the late afternoon, when the raking sun reveals the walled-up two-light windows. With a moderate telephoto you isolate the bell chamber and read the sequence of open and closed openings: it's a photograph that explains a restoration without needing captions. At Castel Paterno, finally, forget the overall view, which the woods almost never grant: the possible photo is the arch of the access gate, shot head-on, with the vegetation framing it. No drones: flying over wooded areas and protected sites requires authorizations that almost no tourist has.

Some important events that happened here in history

The event that projected this territory into European history is the death of Otto III of Saxony, which took place at Castel Paterno on January 23 or 24, 1002. The emperor was 21, was the son of Otto II and the Byzantine Theophanu, and had built around Rome the most ambitious political project of the year 1000, the renovatio imperii Romanorum, that is, the attempt to refound the universal empire with the capital on the Palatine and the Aventine instead of beyond the Alps. Driven from the city by the Roman revolt of January 1001, he had entrenched himself in the castles of the northern countryside in order to return by force. He did not succeed: a fever killed him in this castle, and with him died the last chance that the empire would truly have Rome as its capital. The body was transported to Germany and buried in Aachen.

The second event is the long lordship of the Anguillara, which held the castle of Stabbia from the 14th century until the 17th. It was a frontier lordship, built on the control of the passages between the Flaminia and the Cassia, and it ended overwhelmed by the reaction of the papacy: Everso II, the most feared lord of the house, died in 1464, and within a few decades the family's possessions were confiscated, with the imprisonment of his son Francesco in Castel Sant'Angelo. The progressive loss of power can be read in the architecture of the castle of Faleria, where the crenellations and the four round towers documented in 1330 give way, in the 16th century, to the peperino loggias of a palace of representation.

The third event is a crime. On November 1, 1504 Girolama Farnese, wife of Giuliano Anguillara, accused of having tried to poison her son with the complicity of her lovers, was brutally killed by her stepson Giovanbattista. Local memory hands it down as the bloodiest event of the castle.

The fourth is administrative and apparently minor, and yet it changed the life of the town: on January 28, 1563 a lordly decree banned the cutting of oaks under penalty, to avoid being left without woods in a short time. It is one of the oldest forest protection measures documented in this part of Lazio.

The fifth is the sale of June 25, 1660, when Stabia passed to the Borghese prince for 110,000 scudi, closing the feudal age and opening that of the great agricultural estates of Baroque Rome. The sixth is the change of name, in force since at least 1873. The seventh is the demolition of the gates and the city walls in 1900. The eighth is the move to the province of Viterbo in 1927. Together, these four acts transformed Castrum Stabie into Faleria (VT): a modern Lazio town with a 13th-century castle at its center.

Who passed through Faleria (VT)

The most illustrious name is Otto III, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who in the countryside of Faleria did not merely pass through: he died there, in January 1002, within the walls of Castel Paterno. With him, in those weeks, was the entourage of imperial bishops who accompanied him in his attempt to return to Rome, and the contemporary sources describe their assistance at his bedside. If you are looking for a place in Lazio where early medieval imperial history truly happened, and was not simply told, this is one of the very few.

Passing through here, and residing here for three centuries, were the Anguillara, the house that from 1019, documented with Guido de Anguillaria, came to dominate Tolfa, Ronciglione, Capranica, Vetralla, Bassano and this castle. Everso II, who in 1433 purchased Santa Severa and whom papal chronicles paint as a tyrant, is the figure who more than any other left his mark on Faleria, even when the local attribution of individual acts fits him poorly chronologically. His son Francesco ended up excommunicated and a prisoner in Castel Sant'Angelo. Another Anguillara, Renzo, defended Rome during the sack of 1527.

Passing through here, tragically, was Girolama Farnese, belonging to the family that a few decades later would give the Church Paul III and Italy the palace of Caprarola: her marriage to Giuliano Anguillara is one of the many threads that tie the two houses of northern Lazio, and her violent death in 1504 tells how fragile those threads were.

Passing through here were the Borghese, who bought the fief in 1660 and kept it as a farm. Passing through, in a more prosaic and more recent sense, were the directors and crews of Italian cinema, who from the 1950s to the 1970s systematically combed these gorges: the Monte Gelato waterfalls, a few kilometers away, appear in about 97 films shot between 1950 and 1973, and the cliffs of the Treja valley served as a backdrop for sword-and-sandal epics, swashbucklers and spaghetti westerns. The landscape you see from the Faleria viewpoint you have already seen in the cinema, even if nobody told you where it was.

Faleria (VT) in a day: two tested itineraries

Half a day in Faleria, the short loop

Arrive at nine, park along the road, climb to the village. Piazza della Collegiata and the front of the Anguillara castle with the three loggias, 20 minutes. Church of San Giuliano, if open, 20 minutes for the facade, bell tower, naves, choir and 17th-century altar. Church of Sant'Agostino, five minutes. Walk through the alleys to the northern tip of the outcrop and the ruins of Faleria Vecchia, 30 minutes with stops at the viewpoints. Coffee in the square and departure toward Calcata by noon. Total, two full hours.

A full day between Faleria, Castel Paterno and the valley

Leave Rome at half past seven, arrive in the area at half past eight. First stop Castel Paterno, with the country road that branches off after the cemetery: an hour and a half between walking, exploring the remains and reading the panel of the Comprensorio della Via Amerina e delle Forre. Return to town around 11, tour of the village as above, lunch by reservation. Afternoon at Calcata, with the climb to the plateau and the visit to the village, or at the Monte Gelato waterfalls if the season allows. Back in Rome for dinner. It's the ideal day for small groups and photographers: it alternates hard history and landscape, and has no dead time.

Faleria (VT) with kids

The village works well with kids from age six up, with a few precautions. The sloping streets and the uneven paving make strollers tiring: better a baby carrier. The edges of the outcrop are not protected everywhere, so in the northern part of the town and at the viewpoints constant supervision is needed. On the other hand, the town has a perfect scale for the attention of the little ones: you see everything, you walk little, and there's a real castle with snake coats of arms to look for on the walls like a treasure hunt.

Castel Paterno, instead, is not suitable for kids under 10: the path is irregular, there are drop-offs and crumbling stretches, and the visual reward requires an imagination that small children don't yet have. If you're traveling with the family, replace it with the Monte Gelato waterfalls, which offer water, lawn, restored mill and easy trails.

Accessibility in Faleria (VT)

It has to be said honestly: Faleria's historic center is hard to get around in a wheelchair independently. The slopes are significant, the surface is paving and irregular stone, and the alleys are narrow. Piazza della Collegiata, which is the spot with the best view of the castle, can however be reached by car up to a short distance, and with a companion a stop in the square is feasible.

For access to the church of San Giuliano and the municipal facilities it's best to inquire directly at the town hall, in Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi 1, at 0761 58981. The ruins of Faleria Vecchia and Castel Paterno are not accessible to people with reduced mobility.

Where to eat and where to sleep in Faleria (VT)

The town's vocation is not strictly touristic and accommodation is limited. In the municipality and the immediate surroundings you find trattorias, farm stays and family-sized rooms for rent, with hours tied to weekends. There's only one rule: you phone the day before. In a town of 2,000 inhabitants, without a reservation, a group lunch on Saturday is a gamble and any lunch on a January Tuesday is almost impossible.

Anyone who wants to stay overnight in the area has more choice in the nearby municipalities, especially toward Nepi, Sutri and the belt around Lake Vico, where the farm-stay offering is more structured. Bookings are made directly with the facilities or through the channels each one indicates on its own website.

On the local cuisine don't expect revolutions: we are in a territory of hand-rolled egg pasta, meat sauces, lamb, mushrooms and chestnuts from the woods of the gorges, local olive oil and wines of the southern Tuscia. In these towns you eat well, and above all in the places that don't have a laminated menu.

When to go to Faleria (VT)

From November to March for the landscape and for reading the outcrop, as explained above. April and May for the woods in bloom and for the wild orchids in the Treja gorges. June and September for an acceptable middle ground. July and August only early in the morning: the valley is hot, closed in, humid, and in the middle hours the excursion to Castel Paterno becomes tiring with no advantage.

On summer weekends the area fills up because of the Monte Gelato waterfalls, and traffic on provincial road 79 Calcatese suffers for it. If your goal is Faleria and not the waterfalls, early Saturday morning and Sunday after 16:00 remain quiet windows. Patron saint festivals and the Comune's summer events instead bring people into town, with temporary traffic closures: they are the best days to see the village alive and the worst for parking.

What to see around Faleria (VT)

This is one of the densest territories of villages in Lazio, and Faleria is an excellent base camp. Within a radius of 20 kilometers there are Calcata, with the tuff plateau and the artists' village, Castel Sant'Elia, with the frescoed Romanesque basilica suspended over the gorge, Civita Castellana, with the Sangallo fortress and the Cosmatesque portico of the cathedral, Nepi, with the fortress and the aqueduct, and Sutri, with the amphitheater carved into the tuff and the mithraeum.

Widening the compass a little you reach Civitella San Paolo, Ronciglione with its historic carnival, Lake Vico enclosed in the caldera of the Cimini, Lake Bracciano with Trevignano Romano and Anguillara Sabazia, the town that gave its name to the lords of the Faleria castle. To the north are the gorges of Corchiano, which repeat on a larger scale the carved landscape of the Treja, and farther on Tuscania with its two basilicas. To the east towers Monte Soratte, with the hermitage of San Silvestro and the World War II bunkers.

If you have three days and want blunt advice: the first day the Treja valley with Faleria, Calcata and Monte Gelato. The second the via Amerina with Castel Sant'Elia, Civita Castellana and Nepi. The third Sutri and the lakes. It's the best way I know to use this piece of Lazio, and it never involves more than 40 minutes by car between one stop and the next.

Frequently asked questions about Faleria (VT)

Where is Faleria (VT)?

Faleria is in Lazio, in the province of Viterbo, at the extreme southern border of the province, on a tuff outcrop at the confluence of the Mola ditch with the Treja river. It borders Calcata, Castel Sant'Elia, Civita Castellana, Mazzano Romano, Rignano Flaminio and Sant'Oreste.

How far is Faleria from Rome and how do you get there?

Faleria is about 40 kilometers as the crow flies from the center of Rome. By car you leave Rome to the north on via Flaminia, state road 3, up to Rignano Flaminio, then merge onto provincial road 79 Calcatese, which connects Faleria to Calcata and continues toward Mazzano Romano.

Can the Anguillara Castle in Faleria be visited?

No, the Anguillara castle of Faleria cannot be visited: the building is private property and has no ordinary opening regime, so it is viewed from the outside, from Piazza della Collegiata. Openings take place only on the occasion of events that the Comune announces from time to time.

Is Faleria suitable for a visit with kids?

Yes, the village of Faleria works well with kids from age six up, with a few precautions. The sloping streets and the uneven paving make strollers tiring, so a baby carrier is preferable, and constant supervision is needed in the northern part of the town, where the edges of the outcrop are not protected everywhere.

Is Faleria wheelchair accessible?

Faleria's historic center is hard to get around in a wheelchair independently, because of the significant slopes and the surface of paving and irregular stone in the narrow alleys. Piazza della Collegiata, from which you get the best view of the castle, can however be reached by car up to a short distance.

Where do you eat in Faleria?

In Faleria the accommodation and dining facilities are few, because the town doesn't have a strictly touristic vocation: in the municipality and the immediate surroundings you find trattorias, farm stays and family-sized rooms for rent, with hours tied mainly to weekends. It's always best to phone the day before to book.

How much time do you need to visit Faleria?

Faleria's historic center can be covered entirely in about 40 minutes of walking, stops included, while half a day is enough for the complete short loop with Piazza della Collegiata, the castle, the church of San Giuliano, the church of Sant'Agostino and the ruins of Faleria Vecchia.

What is there to see near Faleria (VT)?

Within a radius of 20 kilometers from Faleria are Calcata, with the tuff plateau and the artists' village, Castel Sant'Elia with the frescoed Romanesque basilica, Civita Castellana with the Sangallo fortress, Nepi with the fortress and the aqueduct, and Sutri with the amphitheater carved into the tuff.

Guides, groups and guided visits in Faleria (VT)

A territory like this pays off much more with someone who knows how to read it. The ruins of Castel Paterno, in particular, without a guide are 100 meters of wall in the woods. With a guide they are the end of an imperial project. For groups, companies and private visits across northern Lazio you can turn to the network of tour leaders and authorized guides of TourLeaderPro, which gathers verified professionals by region and language in its network of tourism professionals. Anyone organizing a group and needing a quote or a tailor-made itinerary will find the contacts on the contact page.

Foreign visitors who read in English and are putting together a trip to Italy need different tools: the regional overview of Lazio, the guide to day trips and, for those who have Rome as a base, the list of the best things to do in Rome.

Quick questions about Faleria (VT)

Where is Faleria (VT)?

In Lazio, in the province of Viterbo, at the extreme southern border of the province, on a tuff outcrop at the confluence of the Mola ditch with the Treja river. It borders Calcata, Castel Sant'Elia, Civita Castellana, Mazzano Romano, Rignano Flaminio and Sant'Oreste.

How far is Faleria from Rome?

About 40 kilometers as the crow flies from the center of Rome, which becomes a little under 60 of actual road route. By car you get there in 50 or 60 minutes outside rush hours.

How much does it cost to visit Faleria?

Nothing. The village is a public settlement and can be walked freely, without tickets and without hours. There are no fenced-off paid areas.

Can you visit the Anguillara castle in Faleria?

Not inside, except for special openings. The castle is private property and has no ordinary visiting regime: it is admired from the outside, from Piazza della Collegiata, where you see the entrance with the two cordonate, the portal with the coat of arms and the three Renaissance peperino loggias. Exceptional openings are announced by the Comune.

How much time do you need to visit Faleria (VT)?

Two hours for the village, the collegiate church and the ruins of Faleria Vecchia. A full day if you add Castel Paterno and a second stop in the Treja valley.

How do you get to Castel Paterno from Faleria?

You follow the road that leads to Faleria from Civita Castellana and take the country road that branches off right after the perimeter wall of the cemetery, then continue on foot for about five kilometers from the town. The route is not equipped: you need trekking shoes, caution on the crumbling stretches and attention to the drop-offs.

Where did Otto III die?

At Castel Paterno, in the territory of Faleria, on January 23 or 24, 1002, aged 21, of a fever contracted at the end of the previous year. He was buried in Aachen.

Is it true that Otto III was poisoned by Stefania?

It's a legend that appears in the scholarly literature from the 16th century on and finds no confirmation in the contemporary sources. The contemporary chronicles speak of a feverish illness.

Is Faleria a ghost town?

No. It's a municipality inhabited by just over 2,000 people, whose population has doubled over the last 150 years. Only the northern part of the outcrop is uninhabited, where the ruins of Faleria Vecchia are. The real ghost town of the area is Monterano.

Why was Faleria called Stabbia?

Because that was the original name of the place, attested as Stabla, Stabbia, Stabia and Castrum Stabie in medieval documents. The name Faleria, in force since at least 1873, was adopted in the post-unification age to tie the town to the Faliscan civilization.

Is Faleria part of the Valle del Treja Park?

No. The regional park, established in 1982 over 628 hectares, includes only the territories of Calcata and Mazzano Romano. Faleria is in the same valley but outside the boundaries of the protected area.

How far is Faleria from the Monte Gelato waterfalls?

A few kilometers, toward Mazzano Romano along the valley. It's the most frequent pairing for anyone coming here for the day.

How far is Faleria from Calcata?

A quarter of an hour by car on provincial road 79 Calcatese, which connects the two towns directly.

Can you get to Faleria by public transit?

Yes, with the regional extraurban bus lines, but the runs are calibrated on school and commuter hours, so frequent in the morning and sparse during the rest of the day, with reduced service on Sunday. Schedules and stops must be checked on the regional operator's website before leaving.

Where do you park in Faleria?

In the pull-offs along the road that climbs to the town and in the areas in front of the public buildings. You don't enter the historic center by car. From the parking to Piazza della Collegiata it's five minutes' walk uphill.

Is Faleria suitable for kids?

The village yes, from age six up, with supervision at the edges of the outcrop and with a baby carrier instead of a stroller. Castel Paterno no, under 10: the path is irregular and there are drop-offs.

Is Faleria wheelchair accessible?

Only partly. Piazza della Collegiata can be reached by car up to a short distance, but the sloping alleys and the uneven paving make the rest of the village hard to get around independently. The ruins and Castel Paterno are not accessible.

Is the church of San Giuliano always open?

No, it follows the hours of the parish services. It's best to plan the visit close to Sunday Mass or to ask for information at the town hall.

What do you see inside the church of San Giuliano in Faleria?

Three naves, with the central one, wider, closed by an apse that houses a wooden choir, and the altar of San Giuliano restored in 1610 on the initiative of the Compagnia del Santissimo Sacramento, with a canvas of the Saint at the feet of the Virgin framed by stucco with angelic figures. Outside, the Romanesque facade and the bell tower with pairs of two-light windows, some walled up.

What is the church of Sant'Agostino in Faleria?

A small 14th-century church built against the left flank of the Anguillara castle, with a single nave, which holds a canvas of the Saint.

Can you take photographs in Faleria?

Yes, anywhere in public spaces. Inside the churches common sense applies: no flash and no shots during services. For drones, specific authorizations are needed that ordinary visitors don't have.

When is the best time to visit Faleria (VT)?

From November to March, when the bare woods let you read the outcrop and the gorge, and in the early hours of the morning. In summer only early: the valley is hot and closed in.

Why is Faleria in the province of Viterbo if it is so close to Rome?

Because in 1927, with the creation of the province of Viterbo, the municipality was transferred from the province of Rome to that of Viterbo. Before that date it was Roman for all administrative purposes.

What is worth seeing near Faleria?

Calcata, Castel Sant'Elia, Civita Castellana, Nepi, Sutri, Ronciglione, Lake Vico, Lake Bracciano with Trevignano Romano and Anguillara Sabazia, the gorges of Corchiano and Monte Soratte. All within an hour by car.

Do you eat well in Faleria?

You eat village-style: hand-rolled pasta, meat, mushrooms and chestnuts from the woods of the gorges, oil and wines of the southern Tuscia. The places are few and family-run, so it's best to book the day before, especially off-season.

Are there events in Faleria during the year?

Yes, between patron saint festivals and summer events organized by the Comune, which on those occasions also orders temporary traffic closures. The updated calendar can be found in the notices published by the town hall.

Faleria is not a place that imposes itself. It has no famous church, no museum, no postcard square, and its main monument cannot be visited. And yet it deserves the visit, for anyone who wants to understand how the Lazio of the castles really worked: an outcrop, two ditches, a family with snakes on its coat of arms and 300 years of power exercised from a palace that looks at the church. And five kilometers away, in the middle of a wood that eats the stones, the spot where a 21-year-old with the title of emperor of the Romans stopped breathing and took with him the last serious idea of an empire with Rome as its capital. If you go looking for it, go in winter, early, with the right shoes, and stay there in silence for 10 minutes before heading back.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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