Farnese (VT)

Farnese is a town in Viterbo Province, postal code 01010, at 343 meters above sea level on a spur of tuff that looks west to Lake Bolsena and northwest to the Tuscany of Pitigliano. The town has about 1,350 inhabitants, is 42 kilometers from Viterbo, about 15 from the lake and 152 from Rome. By car from Rome you leave the Cassia or the Aurelia and go up via Valentano or via Montalto di Castro and Ischia di Castro. By bus you get there with the Cotral runs from Viterbo's Riello station, which stop in Piazza Umberto I, at the entrance to the town. The village has no entrance ticket and you walk around it at any hour of the day. The two things you pay for are the Museo Civico Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller, in the Magazzino dell'Ammasso at Colle San Martino 1, open in summer Tuesday to Sunday in the morning from 9:30 to 13:00 and on weekends also from 15:30 to 19:00 (reduced winter hours, closed on Monday and on December 25, January 1 and 6, and rates and special openings for groups of at least 15 people are to be requested directly from the museum), and the guided excursions in the Selva del Lamone Nature Reserve, whose office is in località Bottino, telephone 0761 458861. The Poor Clares monastery can be visited only by reservation, and the Rocca Farnese is privately owned and opens by arrangement, which it's worth asking about at the town hall, at Colle San Martino 10, before setting out.

People who arrive here are usually going around the lake: the pages on Lake Bolsena and on the Selva del Lamone are the best way to place Farnese in a two-day itinerary between the Tuscia and the Maremma.

Farnese (VT), the Town That Gave Its Name to the Farnese Family

The Tuscia is full of villages on a cliff, but Farnese has a title nobody else can claim: it is the town from which takes its name the family that gave the Church Pope Paul III, gave Rome the palace of the French embassy, gave Caprarola Vignola's pentagonal villa and gave Parma a duchy. The order of the factors matters. It isn't the town that is named after the family: the family is named after the town. The medieval place name is Castrum Farneti, the castle of the farneto, that is of the wood of farnia, the oak that covered these hills before man cleared them for wheat and olives. The lords of Farneto appear in documents of the 11th and 12th centuries as minor military nobility in the service of the communes of Orvieto, Siena and Florence, in the Guelph ranks. Local tradition pushes the origins further back, to a Pietro Farnese consul of Orvieto in 984, but that is erudite tradition and should be taken as such.

The landscape explains the castle. The spur is enclosed by three watercourses that carved it into the tuff: the Fosso dei Cai to the south, the Fosso della Galeazza to the north and the Olpeta river to the west. To the southeast opens Valle Cupa, a hilly basin of red tuff that marks the border with Tuscany. To the northwest the Lamone begins, a lava flow covered in woods. On three sides, therefore, Farnese was already defended by nature before anyone raised a wall. That is why the site has been inhabited since the Final Bronze Age, that is since the 12th to 10th century BC, when a village of huts stood here, and why the 19th-century brigands felt so at home here.

Anyone coming from Rome expecting a small Caprarola is left disoriented. The Farnese of the Farnese family, the one of palaces and loggias, is almost absent here: the town has remained an agricultural village of tuff, with a single main street that goes around the cliff, dead-end alleys, block arches, outside stairs that climb to the upper floors. The family's greatness was spent elsewhere. What remained in Farnese is the name, the Rocca, a few churches and a surprising quantity of Renaissance ceramics, pulled out of the wells where the people of Farnese threw their broken shards.

Why Farnese (VT) Is Perched on Tuff

All the towns in this part of the Tuscia, from Pitigliano to Civita di Bagnoregio, are built on a slab of tuff resting on older sands and clays. It's a structure that holds for centuries and then gives way: rain and frost hollow out the sandstone base, the tuff block cracks, boulders are left balanced over the void. In Farnese the problem is old and well known. The municipality has carried out several consolidation works around the spur in recent decades and others remain to be done. Walking along the outer ring road you can see very well the tuff walls hanging over the gorges, with the concrete interventions and the nets. It is one of the places where you understand with the naked eye why rupestrian Tuscia is both beautiful and fragile.

The second problem is urban planning. In the 20th century, like almost all small centers in marginal areas, Farnese lost inhabitants to the cities and the master plans pushed families out of the old town, toward newer, more comfortable houses. The village emptied and today's challenge is keeping it inhabited without distorting it. Anyone who visits the Historic Center on a weekday finds it silent, with many closed doors: it's something to factor in, and in our judgment it is also its strength, because nobody ever had the money to redo the facades in style.

What to See in Farnese (VT): the Historic Center

The walk around the village takes a good hour if you just walk, half a day if you add the museum and the monastery. You enter from Piazza Umberto I, where the bus stops, and climb toward the cliff through Porta Nuova.

Porta Nuova and the Main Street of Farnese (VT)

Porta Nuova dates from 1613 and is the work of the architect Ettore Smeraldi, who worked for the Farnese of the Duchy of Castro. It is the clearest sign of a precise moment: the medieval town squeezed on the cliff was no longer enough, and the dukes wanted a monumental entrance linking the old quarter with the Renaissance expansion and, via a viaduct, the Rocca with the woods. Past the gate you immediately understand the structure of the town: a main street running along the perimeter of the spur and, to the side, a comb of short alleys, often dead ends, closed by arches of tuff blocks. The houses have profferli, the covered outside stairs leading to the first floor, the most recognizable feature of building in the Viterbo area. There is nothing monumental, and that is exactly why it reads well: every house is a worked piece of rock.

The Dump Wells of Farnese (VT)

Under the houses lies the real archaeological treasure of the Historic Center. Tuff is easily dug, and the medieval people of Farnese took advantage of it to open deep wells under their homes and in courtyards, cylindrical or flask-shaped, that is narrow at the top and bulging at the bottom. They served as silos for grain and as cisterns for rainwater. When they stopped serving their original purpose, they became household dumps: the pozzi da butto, from the verb buttare, to throw. Everything ended up inside: broken plates, jugs, animal bones, glass. For an archaeologist a butto is an archive: each layer corresponds to a generation and the ceramics can be dated precisely.

The excavation campaigns carried out between 1980 and 1990 in the village's butti yielded a mass of ceramic and bone material ranging from the 14th to the early 17th century and which today forms the core of the civic museum. Among the majolica there is also tableware painted with the Farnese coat of arms, the six blue lilies on a field of gold, that is the family's table service, which ended up in the garbage like any other broken plate. It's a detail that says a lot: the lords ate off decorated ceramics, but threw them in the same well as the peasants.

The Rocca Farnese in Farnese (VT)

The Rocca is the building that dominates the village and it is also the hardest to visit. It was born in the 13th century as a fortress, with the military function the name says, and was transformed between the 16th and 17th centuries into a noble residence: ramps, corridors, stairs and courtyards follow one another in a tangle that betrays the construction phases. From the courtyard you see the dome of the inner chapel, and on the walls remain the coats of arms of the three families that succeeded one another in possession of the fief: the Anguillara, the Farnese and the Chigi. Today it is private property and access depends on the owners' availability: whoever wants to enter asks at the town hall or the tourist office, without taking for granted that they'll find it open. The advice is not to make it the center of the trip. The ground floor of the Rocca, with its courtyard, has however entered Italian collective memory for a reason that has nothing to do with the dukes: in 1971 Luigi Comencini shot there the scene of the prison where Geppetto is locked up.

Palazzo Chigi, Seat of the Town Hall of Farnese (VT)

The town hall occupies Palazzo Chigi, also called Palazzo Ceccarini Chigi, an 18th-century building built around 1700 at Colle San Martino, when the fief had already passed from the Farnese to the Chigi. Behind the palace is the Magazzino dell'Ammasso, the old granary where the peasants delivered their grain, which houses the civic museum. The town hall palace also has a cinematic side: it was the school in front of which Pinocchio does not enter, leaving Geppetto outside in the cold. Palazzo Platonio, not far away, with a fine portal, was the residence of the Farnese administrators, that is of the men who kept the accounts of the fief on behalf of the distant dukes.

The Monumental Fountain of Piazza del Comune in Farnese (VT)

The fountain in the square isn't old, but it marks an important date for the town. Farnese, on its rock, has always had a water problem: the cisterns dug into the tuff were there precisely to collect rainwater. After several failed attempts in earlier centuries, in 1887 the Comune managed to bring the water of the spring known as La Botte to the town. The inauguration took place on September 25, 1887 with religious and civil celebrations and with the monumental fountain, which is therefore the monument to the aqueduct. For a town that until that day had drunk cistern water, it was a more concrete revolution than any change of dynasty.

The Churches of Farnese (VT)

The churches are the part of the town where the Farnese patronage really shows. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century the family no longer lived here, but the minor branches of the Duchy of Castro, in particular Mario Farnese, lord of Farnese and Latera, called in first-rate painters to decorate churches that, from the outside, would never let you suspect it.

The Church of the Santissimo Salvatore in Farnese (VT)

It's the parish church and the main place of worship in the town, a 15th-century building with a Romanesque-style facade and an interior remade in Baroque forms. Antonio Maria Panico worked here, a Bolognese born around 1560 and died in 1621, trained in Bologna and Parma in the circle of the Carracci: having moved to Rome to work under Annibale Carracci on the Palazzo Farnese building sites, he was noticed by Mario Farnese and settled permanently in the Duchy of Castro, where he produced the best of his work. At the Salvatore, the frescoes of the Rosary altar are his. In the same church, local tradition and regional guides place a painting by Orazio Gentileschi, the Pisan who was among the first to take up the lesson of Caravaggio and who came to Farnese for the same Farnese patronage. The attribution is reported by the official sources of the Region and should be checked in front of the work, by asking at the parish, because the church opens according to the schedule of services. It's the artistic reason to come to Farnese. A Gentileschi canvas in a town of 1,300 residents is an anomaly worth the trip.

Santa Maria delle Grazie and the Poor Clares Monastery of Farnese (VT)

The Poor Clares complex was built in 1560 at the wish of Giulia Acquaviva, and it includes the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the nuns' cells, a guesthouse and a garden of about 5,000 square meters enclosed within the walls, on the edge of the rock. Inside there are still 16th-century frescoes, among them a Visitation of Mary to Saint Elizabeth. The Poor Clares are still here, and their guesthouse welcomes anyone who wants to stop for a moment of silence: believers and non-believers, families, parish groups, scouts, associations, up to 30 people. The monastery can be visited by reservation only. From the monastery's viewpoint you get the best view of the town, the one in the opening photo.

Sant'Anna Church and the Alchemical Frescoes

Sant'Anna dates from the last quarter of the 16th century and is, for anyone who likes strange stories, the most interesting church in the town. The cycle of frescoes with the stories of the Virgin contains, according to the studies gathered by the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, alchemical meanings. It's not an extravagance, because alchemy was practiced at the court of Mario Farnese, and Panico himself, in his late works such as the Birth of the Virgin and the Assumption, inserted esoteric connotations tied to that environment. A provincial lord who has hermetic symbols painted in the town church, at the end of the sixteenth century, while in Rome the Council of Trent is being celebrated: it's the kind of detail that makes Farnese more cultured than it looks.

Santa Maria della Neve, San Rocco and the Other Churches of Farnese (VT)

Santa Maria della Neve is the oldest church, dated to the 10th century, that is, to before the very birth of the Castrum Farneti. Outside the center there is the convent of San Rocco, from the seventeenth century, with the attached church, where choir stalls in inlaid walnut made by two French Franciscan friars are preserved. You see it by appointment. Regional guides also cite, among the paintings of the Farnese churches, a Lanfranco, Giovanni Lanfranco, the Parmesan who was one of the great decorators of Baroque Rome. Take it as a reported tradition, because the exact location of the work has to be asked about on the spot.

The Museo Civico Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller of Farnese (VT)

The museum, abbreviated MuRV, was established in 1980 and opened to the public in 2003 in the Magazzino dell'Ammasso, behind the town hall. It is part of the Lake Bolsena Museum System. It is named after Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller, the prehistorian from the University of Milan who in 1968 did the first test digs at Sorgenti della Nova and effectively opened research on the protohistory of the Fiora valley. The route is arranged by chronology and by place, from prehistory to the Renaissance, with hundreds of finds from the sites of the area. It's small, you can see it in an hour, and it's done much better than you'd expect from a town museum: if you have time for only one thing in Farnese besides the walk, this is it.

The Prehistoric Section: Rinaldone, Roccoia and the Cave Cults

The oldest display cases tell of the Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age, with evidence of the Rinaldone culture from several necropolises, and the Middle Bronze Age with the necropolis of Roccoia. Roccoia is a recent discovery: reported in 2007 by a local resident, excavated on an emergency basis by the Soprintendenza and the Centro Studi di Preistoria e Archeologia of Milan under the direction of Nuccia Negroni Catacchio and then systematically between 2008 and 2013, it yielded four chamber tombs with a dromos, the sloping access corridor, all cut into the tuff and oriented northwest to southeast, with the entrance closed by slabs of tuff or trachyte. They had already been looted in antiquity and by clandestine diggers, so the finds are few. But their existence shows that in the early Middle Bronze Age a group of eminent families had monumental tombs built, an early sign of aristocracy. The museum also displays many objects linked to water cults in caves, a phenomenon widespread throughout prehistoric southern Etruria.

Sorgenti della Nova, the Final Bronze Age Village

The central section is devoted to Sorgenti della Nova, one of the most important Final Bronze Age sites in Italy, a few kilometers from Farnese. The village occupied a cliff of tuff and pumice between the Varlenza and Porcareccia streams from the second half of the 11th to the 10th century BC, and was then abandoned, with sporadic use in Etruscan and medieval times. The excavations, begun systematically in 1974 and directed from 1976 by Nuccia Negroni Catacchio, first for the University of Milan and from 2009 for the Centro Studi di Preistoria e Archeologia together with the Soprintendenza, have continued without interruption to this day and have identified four types of dwelling: huts with a sunken base on the summit, elliptical houses founded on channels along the terraces, artificial caves cut into the tuff on all sides of the cliff, and a long monumental dwelling with a ditch at the foot of the plateau. The vases, loom weights, spindle whorls and bronze objects displayed at the MuRV come from here. It's the only chance, in all of the Tuscia, to see the life of a village from 3,000 years ago told well without going to Rome.

Rofalco and the Etruscans in the Farnese (VT) Museum

The Etruscan section revolves around Rofalco, the Vulci fortress inside the Selva del Lamone discussed further on, and around materials of different kinds from the area, which was repopulated in the 8th century BC under the control of Vulci. There is also evidence from the Etruscan necropolises of Naviglione and Palombaro and from the Tomba del Gottimo, a burial of the Vulci type. The destruction of Rofalco in 280 BC, when the consul Tiberius Coruncanius triumphed over Vulci and Volsinii, is documented by thick layers of burning and by clay projectiles: the museum tells it with the finds.

The Maiolica from the Refuse Pits and the Renaissance Sets

The last part is the one that surprises most: the medieval and Renaissance ceramics recovered from the refuse pits of the old town, between the 14th and the early 17th century. Painted maiolica, jugs, plates with the Farnese coat of arms, and tiny objects like a coral rosary. For those who have seen the great ceramics museums, this collection has a particular value: these are not collector's pieces bought on the market, they are the real tableware of a town, broken and thrown away, with the dating guaranteed by the stratigraphy.

The Selva del Lamone, the Lava Forest of Farnese (VT)

Northwest of the town begins the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve: 2,002 hectares of almost unbroken forest, established by regional law no. 45 of September 12, 1994 and managed by the Comune of Farnese. It's one of the most intact forests in Lazio and its character depends on a geological fact: the Lamone is a lava flow that came out of the Latera volcano between 150,000 and 50,000 years ago. As it cooled, the lava broke into a chaos of dark boulders and collapse craters. On that rubble grew a forest no plow has ever been able to touch, because the soil doesn't exist. 90 percent of the reserve is covered by Turkey oak woods, pure or mixed, with hop hornbeam and hornbeam, hazel, holm oak, downy oak, mock privet, field maple and Italian maple, manna ash. Along the Olpeta grows a riparian forest of willows, alders and poplars.

The Murci: How to Read the Landscape of the Lamone

The word to learn before entering the forest is murci. They are the piles of lava blocks, sometimes several meters high, that rise among the trees and that shepherds and woodcutters christened with that name. Walking the trails you keep coming across these hills of black stone covered in moss, with the roots of the oaks slipping between the boulders. It's a landscape that looks like no other forest in Lazio, and in winter, without leaves, it looks like a field of ruins. The Etruscans of Rofalco built the walls of their fortress with this very stone. The Sentiero dei Crateri, one of the marked routes, leads to the circular depressions left by the collapse of the lava.

The Trails of the Selva del Lamone from Farnese (VT)

The reserve has a network of numbered trails: 1 Voltamacine, 2 Valderico, 3 Lacioni, 4 Rosacrepante, 5 from Sant'Anna to Rofalco, 6 La Strompia, the Sentiero dei Crateri, the 11 of the Monumental Trees, the CAI 163 and six mountain bike routes. The two I recommend to anyone with no forest experience are the Sentiero di Rosacrepante and the Sentiero della Strompia, both fairly easy. There is one rule that matters more than any other: in the Lamone you walk only on the marked trails and, better still, with a reserve guide. The forest is dense, the murci all look alike, the phone signal comes and goes, and local history is full of people who got lost in it. An expert guide of the area, besides sparing you the problem, tells you the geology, the plants and the stories of the brigands the way no panel could. The most famous route is the Sentiero dei Briganti, which you can do on foot, on horseback or by bike.

The Salabrone Waterfall

Along the Olpeta river, which comes down from Lake Mezzano and cuts through the reserve, there are two waterfalls: the Pelicotonno and the Salabrone, the better known. The Salabrone waterfall is reached from trail no. 8 of the reserve, 600 meters and about 10 minutes of walking suitable for anyone, starting from the road that connects Farnese to Pitigliano, about one kilometer outside the town. Nearby remain the ruins of an eighteenth-century powder magazine and, a little farther downstream, those of a small hydroelectric plant: before becoming an attraction, the river was a working force. The right season is spring, when the Olpeta is full. At the end of summer the drop shrinks to a trickle. The page dedicated to the Salabrone waterfalls goes into the route in more depth.

Santa Maria di Sala, the Abbey in the Forest

On the banks of the Olpeta, inside the reserve, stands Santa Maria di Sala, a Cistercian abbey that the centuries and the forest had reduced to a ruin and that the Reserve restored in 2013 and 2014 with European funding from the regional POR-FESR program. Getting there on foot after a stretch of forest is one of the best experiences in the area: you come out of the trees and find a stone church in a clearing, with the river beside it. The Cistercians always chose places like this, isolated and with water nearby. Here the model is respected to the letter.

Rofalco, the Etruscan Fortress Hidden in the Lamone

Inside the Selva, on a tuff hill overlooking the Olpeta valley, are the remains of Rofalco, an Etruscan fortified settlement from the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century BC, built by Vulci, some 20 kilometers away, to control the valley and the northern border of its territory. The site was protected partly by the rough terrain and partly by a mighty circuit of walls with watchtowers, built with the lava boulders of the Lamone. The place had already been frequented in the Bronze Age, perhaps only seasonally, and was occupied permanently only for that barely half century.

The End of Rofalco in 280 BC

Rofalco died a violent death. In 280 BC the consul Tiberius Coruncanius celebrated a triumph in Rome over the Volsinians and the Vulcians, and the thick layers of fire found by archaeologists, together with the clay sling bullets, tell of the assault and destruction of the fortress in that campaign. Afterward, no one came back to live there until the Renaissance, when someone plowed the plateau: the excavations found the plow furrows and fragments of sixteenth-century majolica above the Etruscan ruins. It's one of the few places in Etruria where the Roman conquest can be touched by hand, layer by layer.

The Excavations of the Gruppo Archeologico Romano

The site was first explored systematically in 1981 and since 1996 it has been excavated every summer by the Gruppo Archeologico Romano, in agreement with the Soprintendenza, the museum of Farnese and the Reserve. The campaigns, begun to counter looting by clandestine diggers, have involved hundreds of Italian and foreign volunteers and have brought to light the defenses and several buildings, with their storerooms. You reach Rofalco by trail 5, from Sant'Anna, or by trail 4 from Roppozzo and Rosacrepante. Anyone who wants to dig can apply as a volunteer for the summer campaigns, which are open to anyone who pays the fee and agrees to work.

Castro, the City the Pope Erased

A few kilometers from Farnese, in the territory of the neighboring comune of Ischia di Castro, in a forest along the river, are the remains of a city that no longer exists. Castro was an Etruscan and then medieval city, a bishop's seat. In 1537, three years after the election of Alessandro Farnese to the papal throne as Paul III, the pope made it the capital of an independent duchy for his son Pier Luigi Farnese and had it rebuilt according to the designs of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, with churches and a Palazzo Farnese. Farnese, the town, entered the domains of the duchy. A century later it all ended. Between 1639 and 1641 Duke Odoardo Farnese went to war with the Barberini of Pope Urban VIII. There was a treaty, then the pope's death in 1644. His successor Innocent X demanded the agreed reparations and appointed a bishop whom Odoardo's son, Ranuccio II, refused to recognize. The bishop was murdered on the road to Castro. The pope then ordered the city razed to the ground: the demolition was completed on September 2, 1649 and a column was erected on the spot with the inscription Qui fu Castro, "Here stood Castro." The city was never rebuilt and the diocese was transferred to Acquapendente. Even today the curious look for its ruins in the forest, and the page on Vulci and the one on Montalto di Castro complete the picture of the Etruscan and Farnese Maremma.

Farnese (VT), the Town of Pinocchio

For two generations of Italians, Farnese is Geppetto's town. In 1971 Luigi Comencini chose the village to shoot the first scenes of The Adventures of Pinocchio, the five-episode TV miniseries broadcast by Rai starting April 8, 1972, with Nino Manfredi as Geppetto, Andrea Balestri as Pinocchio, Gina Lollobrigida as the Blue Fairy, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia as the Cat and the Fox and Vittorio De Sica as the judge, with music by Fiorenzo Carpi. Comencini was looking for a poor town of stone, believable for a nineteenth-century Tuscany, and he found it here, not in Tuscany. Filming then continued at Lake Martignano for the Fairy's house and at the Tarquinia Salt Flats for the Land of Toys.

The Pinocchio Route in Farnese (VT), Set by Set

The Comune has marked a route in five stops, with panels and stills from the film. At Via Circonvallazione 21 is the house that appears at Mangiafuoco's arrival, decorated with a mural portraying Comencini. At Corso Vittorio Emanuele 10 is the wash house, now restored in the outer walls, where Pinocchio is arrested for the theft of the fish, and next to it the building from which a basin of dirty water is dumped on him instead of food. The Palazzo Ceccarini Chigi at Colle San Martino 10 is the school the puppet doesn't enter. The Rocca Farnese, in Via Principe Amedeo, served as the carabinieri barracks and as Geppetto's jail, with the courtyard and the ground floor. A downhill street of the village is the one where Pinocchio, now a boy, runs barefoot up the slope. Via del Forte has been painted with murals dedicated to the character, and in town you can visit Geppetto's house with installations. In 2024 the director's daughter, Francesca Comencini, came back to Farnese to shoot part of Il tempo che ci vuole, the film about her father starring Fabrizio Gifuni, which received four David di Donatello nominations. If you have kids, count on the route being the thing they'll remember most. For adults who grew up with that Pinocchio, Manfredi's climb with the puppet on his shoulders is a punch to the heart.

A Curiosity About Farnese (VT)

The six fleurs-de-lis of the Farnese are one of the most seen coats of arms in Italy: they're on Palazzo Farnese in Rome, on the facade of the Gesù, on half of Parma, on the ceiling of the Sala Regia in the Vatican. Few know that in Farnese that coat of arms is found above all on broken plates. In the refuse pits of the historic center, archaeologists have recovered majolica painted with the Farnese lily, that is, the tableware made for the family and its court, which ended up in the trash along with the peasants' dishes. The curious thing is the reversal of perspective: in the big cities the coat of arms is on the facades, where everyone sees it. In the town of origin it's buried in household garbage, where no one was looking for it. I'll add a second curiosity tied to the name. The oak grove that gives its name to the Farnese and to the town no longer exists. The farnia oaks, which love damp, deep soil, have been replaced over the centuries by Turkey oaks, holm oaks and olive trees, and the forest that surrounds Farnese today, the Lamone, is a Turkey oak wood on lava, not a farnia oak grove. The most powerful family of sixteenth-century Italy thus bears the name of a tree that has almost disappeared in its town of origin.

Something Nobody Tells You About Farnese (VT)

Guides describe Farnese as the town of the Farnese and as the town of Pinocchio, and almost none says that the municipal territory is one of the densest in prehistoric archaeology in all of central Italy. Sorgenti della Nova is a site excavated without interruption for 50 years by the University of Milan and the Centro Studi di Preistoria e Archeologia, and handbooks of European protohistory cite it as the model of a Late Bronze Age village, with its sunken huts, elliptical houses and artificial caves. Roccoia, discovered in 2007, pushed back by centuries the birth of chamber tombs in Etruria. Rofalco is the best-preserved Etruscan fortress in the Fiora valley. All of this is a few kilometers from the town, inside or on the edge of the Lamone, and you can read about it in the civic museum. The practical thing nobody says is this: the sites aren't equipped like an archaeological park, there are no ticket offices or opening hours, and to really see them you have to go with the Reserve's guides or with the museum, which organize the outings. Anyone who shows up alone with the GPS finds a forest. Anyone who shows up with a guide finds the prehistory of Italy. The difference is all in one phone call made before leaving.

My Advice for Visiting Farnese (VT)

Farnese isn't a half-day trip like Civita di Bagnoregio: you can walk the town in an hour, but the sense of the place is outside, in the Lamone, and the forest asks for time and legs. It's best to organize the visit this way. Arrive early in the morning, in autumn or spring, never in midsummer, when the tuff is scorching and the forest is closed in by vegetation. Start with the civic museum, which opens at 9:30, because everything you'll see afterward, the murci, Rofalco, the refuse pits, makes sense only if you've seen it explained first. Then the walk through the village, with the Pinocchio route if you have kids and the parish church of the Salvatore if you have an eye for paintings. Lunch in town, with acquacotta, the Maremma bread and vegetable soup, or homemade fettuccine, and the local olive oil, which falls under the Canino DOP designation recognized in 1996. The afternoon in the Lamone, with a Reserve guide booked in advance: the Salabrone waterfall if you're short on time, Rofalco or Santa Maria di Sala if you have more. A mistake I often see is going into the forest at three in the afternoon in winter thinking it's a stroll. Darkness in the Lamone comes early and the murci are not a place to find your way back at dusk. If you're sleeping in the area, the Poor Clares monastery with its guesthouse is a serious alternative to the lake hotels, for those looking for silence and no pretensions.

Another Well-Known Fact, Yet Rarely Cited

Everyone knows that Farnese belonged to the Farnese. Much less cited is the fact that the Farnese lost it early, and that the town has changed masters four times in three centuries. In the mid-12th century the territory belonged to Count Ranieri di Bartolomeo and then passed to the county of the Aldobrandeschi, the great lords of the Maremma. The Farnese held it as a feudal possession through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with the best period in the sixteenth century, when the Duchy of Castro made these towns a small state. But barely a century later, with the ruin of the duchy and the destruction of Castro in 1649, the fief entered the possessions of the Chigi, the Sienese family of Pope Alexander VII, who built the palace that is now the seat of the Comune. In the nineteenth century Farnese passed first to the French marshal De Boumont and then to Alessandro Torlonia, the Roman banker who bought fiefs and titles with the profits of lending to the Papal State. The Torlonia held it until the twentieth century. The name of the town has stayed fixed, the masters haven't. And there is a second well-known fact that gets forgotten: until 1927 Farnese was in the province of Rome. The move to the province of Viterbo was decided by the Fascist reorganization of the provinces, and the municipal coat of arms and banner were recognized by decree of December 8, 1942. Whoever writes Farnese as a town of the Tuscia tells the truth, but for centuries it was, administratively, a town of the Patrimony of Saint Peter and then of Roman Lazio.

The Right Photo to Take in Farnese (VT)

The photograph of Farnese is just one and it's taken from outside: the profile of the town on the tuff rock, with the houses continuing the rock wall without a break. There are two best spots. The first is the viewpoint of the Poor Clares monastery, on the eastern edge of the rock, from which you take in the village and, behind it, the hills of Valle Cupa. It's the perspective of the opening photo, and the right light is morning light, with the sun behind you. The second is the ring road below the town, from which the tuff is seen from below, with the gullies of the ditches and the consolidation works. It's a less beautiful photo and a truer one. In the forest the photo to take is the moss-covered murci with the roots of the oaks between the boulders, and the season is winter, when the trees are bare and the black lava comes out into the open. In summer the green covers everything. At the Salabrone waterfall you photograph in spring, with the river full. Those who do the Pinocchio route usually shoot in front of the Comencini mural at Via Circonvallazione 21 and in the courtyard of the Rocca, where Manfredi acted out the prison. One tip: don't look for the wide-angle lens in the village alleys, they're too narrow. The long lens, from the road below, better captures the layering of rock and houses.

Some Important Events That Happened Here in History

The history of Farnese has three moments of fire. The first is 280 BC, when the fortress of Rofalco was taken and burned in the Roman campaign against Vulci and Volsinii that earned the consul Tiberius Coruncanius his triumph. The territory passed to Rome, which in the centuries of the empire covered it with rustic villas, paved roads and aqueducts. The second is 1649, with the destruction of Castro and the end of the Farnese duchy: Farnese lost its capital and its dynasty in one blow. The third is the nineteenth century, the century of the brigands and the Garibaldians.

Brigandage and Domenico Tiburzi, the King of the Lamone

In the mid-nineteenth century brigandage was exceptionally widespread in Farnese, for two reasons that the landscape explains by itself: the structure of the village, closed on a rock between the ditches, made life as a fugitive easy, and the brigands born here knew the Lamone better than any carabiniere. There are three names: Domenico Biagini, a Farnese native known as il curato, Giuseppe Basili and, above all, Domenico Tiburzi. Tiburzi was born in Cellere on May 28, 1836. In 1867 he killed a guard of the Marquis Guglielmi, was sentenced to 18 years in 1869, escaped in 1872 and for 24 years lived in hiding between the Lazio and Tuscan Maremma, with Biagini as his constant companion. They called him Domenichino, the King of the Scrub, the King of the Lamone, the Hawk of the Maremma, the Leveler. He extorted the big landowners, helped the poor, avoided direct clashes with the carabinieri, whom he considered poor mama's boys, and eliminated the brigands who sold out, like Basili and Pastorini. The population of Farnese, crushed by the lords' taxes, protected him. Many people of Farnese ended up on trial as accomplices, among them the mayor Pietro Castiglioni. Tiburzi died in Capalbio on October 24, 1896, killed by the carabinieri of Captain Michele Giacheri, and was buried in the Capalbio cemetery half inside and half outside, with the grave on the threshold, as a compromise between the parish priest who didn't want him in consecrated ground and the people who demanded it. His hideouts in the Selva are still legendary today, and the Sentiero dei Briganti bears his name. The page on Capalbio tells the end of the story.

October 19, 1867: The Garibaldians in Farnese (VT)

In the autumn of 1867 Garibaldi tried to take Rome with the Agro Romano campaign, which ended with the defeat at Mentana. Farnese was one of the peripheral theaters of that campaign. On October 19, 1867 about 150 volunteers of the Garibaldian columns led by Andrea Sgarallino, the Livorno column, and by Nicola Guerrazzi, the Maremma column, clashed with 500 papal soldiers in a battle that lasted about three and a half hours. Three volunteers from Massa Marittima were left on the field, Ettore Comparini, Natale Capannoli and Rocco Grassini, and there were many wounded. Documentation of the clash is kept at the National Museum of the Agro Romano Campaign for the Liberation of Rome, in Mentana. It's an episode the town remembers with pride, also because it overturns the stereotype of a passive papal Maremma: here the Garibaldians were Tuscans and the people of Farnese helped them.

September 25, 1887: Water Reaches Farnese (VT)

20 years after the battle, the town celebrated a more peaceful but decisive event: the arrival of the water from the La Botte spring, brought to Farnese in 1887 after several failed attempts in earlier eras. The inauguration of September 25, 1887, with religious services, civil ceremonies and the monumental fountain in Piazza del Comune, definitively closed the era of the cisterns dug into the tuff. From then on the twentieth century is the story of a slow depopulation, common to all small centers in marginal areas, which since the postwar period has taken the people of Farnese toward the cities. In 2015 the Comune counted 92 businesses and 189 employees, 0.39 percent of the provincial total. And yet the adjective that best describes Farnese today isn't abandoned: it's tenacious.

Who Has Passed Through Farnese (VT)

The greatest figure this town produced never lived in it: Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III from 1534 to 1549, the pope of the Council of Trent, of Michelangelo and the Last Judgment, who bore the name of the village and who in 1537 created for his son Pier Luigi the Duchy of Castro with Farnese inside it. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century came the painters of the Farnese patronage: Antonio Maria Panico, who settled here and worked at the Salvatore, at Latera and on the Isola Bisentina, where he painted for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese a Crucifixion with Saints Francis and Anthony now in the National Gallery in Dublin. And, according to the tradition reported by regional sources, Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Lanfranco. In the seventeenth century the architect Ettore Smeraldi, author of Porta Nuova in 1613, passed through Farnese, and then the Chigi. In the nineteenth century the town saw the Garibaldians of Sgarallino and Guerrazzi in 1867 and, in hiding, Domenico Tiburzi and Domenico Biagini. In 1971 the crew of Luigi Comencini arrived with Nino Manfredi, Andrea Balestri, Gina Lollobrigida, Vittorio De Sica, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. For a few weeks Farnese was Geppetto's town and it has never stopped being so. In 2024 Francesca Comencini came back, with Fabrizio Gifuni playing the father. And from 1968 to today the archaeologists have passed through with shovels and sieves: Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller, after whom the museum is named, and Nuccia Negroni Catacchio, who directed the Sorgenti della Nova excavations for almost half a century, and the hundreds of volunteers who dig at Rofalco every summer. If I had to choose the most important presence, I'd choose them: the Farnese gave the name, the archaeologists gave the town its past.

Farnese (VT) with Kids

Farnese is one of the best towns in the Tuscia for children, for one precise reason: the Pinocchio route. Five stops with stills from the film, a mural, the wash house of the arrest, the school, Geppetto's prison in the Rocca: it's a ready-made treasure hunt, and it works even with kids who have never seen the miniseries, if an adult tells the story. The civic museum is small and concrete, with vases and objects you understand without explanations, and the Salabrone waterfall is reached in 10 minutes on a trail suitable for everyone. The real Lamone, with the murci and Rofalco, is for kids from age 10 up, with closed shoes and a guide. The gullies around the town are steep and without railings in many places: strollers stay in the car and small children should be held by the hand along the ring road.

Accessibility and Getting Around Farnese (VT)

The historic center is on a rock and is reached uphill. The main street is passable, but the side alleys have stairs, arches and paving of irregular blocks. The civic museum is in a ground-floor building, the Magazzino dell'Ammasso, and for specific needs it's best to call first. The Poor Clares monastery can be visited by reservation only and the Rocca depends on the private owner. In the Selva del Lamone the trails are natural, on lava and roots, and there are no routes equipped for wheelchairs. The stretch to the Salabrone waterfall is the easiest. You leave the car at the edge of the town. If you arrive by bus you get off in Piazza Umberto I and you're already at the starting point.

The Festivals of Farnese (VT)

The town's calendar follows the seasons of the countryside. In mid-May the Reserve organizes the Festa di Primavera, with guided hikes, tastings and music: it's the best time to enter the Lamone accompanied. At the end of June there is Farnesiam Mensam, at the Farnese Table, a gastronomic event in the historic center with products of the ancient duchies of Castro and Latera. In July the craft beer festival and, in the middle of the month, a street food festival with music. At the beginning of August the Festa del Cacciatore, with game. In mid-August the Festa dell'Assunta, with historical processions, music and tastings. At the end of August the Farnia d'Oro literary prize and the Sagra della Pastorizia, which celebrates the cheeses and the mutton of the Maremma. Dates change from year to year and should be checked on the Comune's website before planning the trip.

What's Around Farnese (VT)

Farnese is an excellent base camp for an area that deserves two or three days. To the east is Lake Bolsena, the largest volcanic lake in Europe, with the villages of Bolsena, Capodimonte, from which you look at the Farnese family's Isola Bisentina, Marta, Gradoli and Grotte di Castro. Valentano, on the road to the lake, was the other residence of the Farnese of Castro and Latera. To the northwest, beyond the Tuscan border, is Pitigliano, the tuff town par excellence, which is a few kilometers by road from the Salabrone. To the south, toward the sea, Vulci with the archaeological park and the Abbadia castle, and Tuscania with its Romanesque basilicas. For those who want to widen the loop to the Tuscia of gardens and wonders, the Monster Park of Bomarzo, Civita di Bagnoregio, the gardens of Villa Lante at Bagnaia, Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, the family's other masterpiece, Calcata with its museum of art in nature, the ancient village of Chia at Soriano nel Cimino and Sant'Angelo di Roccalvecce, the fairy-tale town. In the Tiber valley, Graffignano and Civitella d'Agliano, where the Swiss artist Paul Wiedmer bought a valley in 1997 to turn it into La Serpara, a garden of sculptures and installations that blend into the vegetation, open to the public only on certain days of the year.

Quick Questions About Farnese (VT)

Where is Farnese (VT)?

In the province of Viterbo, in the upper Tuscia, west of Lake Bolsena and on the border with Tuscany, at 343 meters above sea level on a spur of tuff. It's 42 kilometers from Viterbo, 15 from the lake and 152 from Rome.

How do you get to Farnese (VT) by public transportation?

With Cotral buses from the Riello station in Viterbo, which stop in Piazza Umberto I. From Rome you first reach Viterbo by train or bus and then continue with Cotral. The total time is more than three hours, so the car remains the most practical choice.

Do you pay to visit Farnese (VT)?

No. The village can be visited freely. You pay only for the civic museum, and for any guided hike in the Selva del Lamone.

How much does the Museo Civico Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller cost?

The fee should be asked directly at the museum, which also indicates special openings for groups of at least 15 people.

What are the opening hours of the museum of Farnese (VT)?

In summer from Tuesday to Sunday from 9:30 to 13:00, on Saturday and Sunday also from 15:30 to 19:00. In winter the opening is reduced to a few days a week and weekends. Closed on Monday, on December 25, and on January 1 and 6. It's best to call before leaving.

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

One hour for the village, one hour for the museum, half a day if you add the Selva del Lamone with the Salabrone waterfall or Rofalco. A full day is the right measure.

Can you visit the Rocca Farnese?

It's privately owned and has no regular opening hours. Anyone who wants to go in must ask at the Comune before the trip.

Can you visit the Poor Clares monastery of Farnese (VT)?

Only by reservation. The guesthouse hosts up to 30 people for stays of silence and sharing, open to believers and non-believers.

Why is Farnese (VT) called that?

From the Castrum Farneti, the castle of the farneto, that is, of the wood of farnia oaks that covered the area. The lords of Farneto, later Farnese, took their name from the town, not the other way around.

What are the refuse pits of Farnese (VT)?

Cylindrical or flask-shaped pits dug into the tuff under the houses, used as silos for grain and cisterns for water and then as dumps. The ceramics recovered from the 14th to the 17th century are displayed in the civic museum.

Where was Pinocchio filmed in Farnese (VT)?

At Via Circonvallazione 21, at Corso Vittorio Emanuele 10, at the Palazzo Ceccarini Chigi at Colle San Martino 10 and at the Rocca Farnese in Via Principe Amedeo. A marked route in five stops links the locations of the 1971 set.

What Is the Selva del Lamone?

A regional nature reserve of 2,002 hectares established in 1994 on a lava flow of the Latera volcano, covered by Turkey oak woods and characterized by the murci, the masses of lava boulders. You visit it on the marked trails, better with a guide.

What are the murci?

The piles of lava blocks, sometimes several meters high, that rise in the Lamone forest: the remains of the volcanic flow on which the forest grew.

How do you get to the Salabrone waterfall?

From trail no. 8 of the reserve, starting from the road to Pitigliano about one kilometer from Farnese: 600 meters and 10 minutes on foot, suitable for everyone.

What is Rofalco?

An Etruscan fortress of Vulci from the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century BC, inside the Selva del Lamone, destroyed by the Romans in 280 BC and excavated every summer by the Gruppo Archeologico Romano since 1996. You reach it by trails 4 and 5.

What is Sorgenti della Nova?

A Late Bronze Age village, between the 11th and 10th century BC, among the most important in Italy, excavated since 1974 by the University of Milan and the Centro Studi di Preistoria e Archeologia. The finds are in the civic museum of Farnese.

Where are the ruins of Castro?

In a forest in the territory of Ischia di Castro, a few kilometers from Farnese. The city, capital of the Farnese duchy, was razed to the ground by order of Innocent X on September 2, 1649.

Who was Domenico Tiburzi?

The most famous brigand of the Maremma, born in Cellere in 1836 and killed in Capalbio in 1896, a fugitive for 24 years in the Lamone with Domenico Biagini of Farnese. They called him the King of the Lamone.

When to go to Farnese (VT)?

In spring, for the full waterfall and the Reserve's Festa di Primavera, or in autumn, for the forest. Winter is the season of the exposed murci. Summer is hot and the Lamone is closed in by green, but it's the season of the town festivals.

Is Farnese (VT) good for kids?

Yes, for the Pinocchio route, the museum and the Salabrone waterfall. The deep Lamone and Rofalco are for older kids, with a guide.

What do you eat in Farnese (VT)?

Acquacotta, egg fettuccine, game, pecorino and mutton at the Sagra della Pastorizia, extra virgin olive oil of the Canino DOP designation.

What is the difference between Farnese (VT) and Pitigliano?

Pitigliano is a monumental tuff city, with the Jewish ghetto, the Orsini palace and structured tourism. Farnese is a quiet farming village, without crowds, with the forest and prehistoric archaeology as the main reason to visit. They're a few kilometers apart and can be visited well on the same day.

Can you take photographs in the museum and churches of Farnese (VT)?

In the museum, ask the staff. In the churches, photographs without flash are normally tolerated outside services. At the Poor Clares monastery, the nuns' instructions apply.

Farnese (VT), the Last Word

One precise thing can be said of Farnese: it's a town worth more for what it has underneath and around it than for what it shows. The village is modest and this can disappoint anyone who arrives with the Farnese of Caprarola in mind. But under the houses are the refuse pits with the ducal majolica, around it there is a lava forest with an Etruscan fortress burned by the Romans, a village of 3,000 years ago and the oldest tombs of Etruria, and in a town church there is, so they say, a Gentileschi. I don't know many places in Lazio where so much history sits in so little space and with so few people. Go with a guide, early in the morning, and bring hiking shoes.

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

Planning a trip to Rome? The English guides for visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com. For the lake and the Tuscia there is the English guide to Lake Bolsena.