Monte Lagusiello

Monte Lagusiello, which is also written Laguscello, is a small crater rise of the Sabatini sector, in the territory of the Municipality of Trevignano Romano (RM), behind the northern shore of Lake Bracciano. Together with the marshy strip of the Pantane di Trevignano it forms the Pantane and Lagusiello Natural Monument, a protected area established in 1997 and covering about 104 hectares, in turn included within the boundary of the Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park. Its particularity is that it is a crater which until 1776 held a lake, drained in that year by Domenico Grillo di Mondragone through an already existing outlet channel, perhaps of Roman date or even older, which poured the water into Lake Sabatino, that is, the present-day Lake Bracciano. From the slopes of the same mountain spring the sources of the Treja, the river that farther downstream cuts the gorge of the Treja Valley Park and that at the Monte Gelato waterfalls takes on the name by which everyone knows it. Anyone arriving here won't find an equipped viewpoint or a ticket office: they'll find a farmed and wooded basin, a piece of Sabatini countryside protected for natural-history reasons, and a landscape that can be read only if you know what you are looking at.

Where Monte Lagusiello is and how to really get there

The first thing to make clear concerns the scale of the place. Monte Lagusiello is not a peak, it is not a mountain in the Alpine or Apennine sense of the word, and anyone setting out with the idea of a climb with a 360-degree panorama will be disappointed. It is a modest rise of the Sabatini volcanic complex, one of the many crater rims that dot the countryside between Lake Bracciano and Via Cassia, and its interest is not in height but in shape: a closed, almost circular basin that the agricultural landscape has filled and masked to the point that many pass right by it without noticing.

The geographic reference to keep in mind is Trevignano Romano, the village overlooking the north shore of the lake. The natural monument includes two distinct and complementary pieces: the wet strip of the Pantane, along the shore, and the crater of the Lagusiello, behind it, toward the interior. Anyone who wants to see both in the same day must allow for moving between the shore and the countryside behind, and doing so with their own vehicle, because public transport here serves the town and not the protected areas.

By car from Rome toward Trevignano and the Lagusiello

The natural road from Rome is the Cassia. You exit at La Storta in the direction of Bracciano and Anguillara, continue toward Osteria Nuova and then follow the lakeside road that circles the basin as far as Trevignano. Those coming from outside Rome can leave the Grande Raccordo Anulare at exit 5, take the Cassia Veientana and then turn off onto Via Settevene Palo. The distance from the center of the capital is around 50 kilometers of road, a little under an hour when traffic cooperates, much more on summer Sunday returns, when the lakeside road becomes a single line of cars.

Once in town, the lakefront is the point from which the gulf of the Pantane is best seen: the semicircular indentation of the shore can be seen from there, bounded on the east by the promontory of Montecchio and on the west by that of the Rocca. The crater of the Lagusiello is instead inland, on the slope of the Sabatini hills that closes Trevignano behind, and it is reached through the local farm roads. Here one thing must be said without beating around the bush: the network of farm roads in this sector is not signposted as a tourist route, many tracks cross private property and there is no official entrance with parking and information panels. Anyone who wants to approach calmly does well to ask the Park Authority or the Municipality's Tourist Information Point for up-to-date directions before leaving, instead of relying on a satellite map and an improvised trail.

By public transport

The connection with Rome is handled by Cotral, which departs from the Saxa Rubra terminus on the line for Manziana and stops in Trevignano at several points, including Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III, Viale Garibaldi and Via Settevene. The ticket costs little and the ride works well for those who want to see the town and the lakefront. It doesn't work as well for those aiming at the crater: the stop leaves you in the center, and from there the countryside behind can be reached only on foot, with an elevation gain and a length that depend on the point where you decide to go up. There is no railway station in town: the nearest is the one at Anguillara Sabazia, about 15 kilometers away, connected by a road service.

The practical advice is to think the opposite way from how a tourist would: don't come here just for the Lagusiello, but come for the lake, the village and the Etruscan Roman museum, and add the natural monument as a half-day deepening. This way the day holds up even if the crater part turns out less spectacular than expected, as almost always happens to whoever expects scenery and finds instead a cultivated field in a basin.

Useful distances

Trevignano is about a dozen kilometers from Anguillara on the other side of the lake and a little less from Bracciano, where the Castello Odescalchi stands. The Lake Martignano, the small twin body of water with no paved roads on its shores, is a few kilometers to the southeast. Toward the north, beyond the watershed, you quickly enter the province of Viterbo and the territory of Sutri and Nepi. The Parco Valle del Treja, where the river that rises here becomes the protagonist, can be reached in about 40 minutes going through Campagnano.

What Monte Lagusiello really is: a drained crater, not a mountain

The name misleads twice. The first time with the word monte, which suggests a climb and a summit, while here the rise is the raised rim of a depression. The second time with the diminutive, Lagusiello or Laguscello, which is in fact the only honest part of the place name: it means little lake, small lake, and keeps the memory of the body of water that occupied the bottom of the basin before the 18th-century intervention. The place name, in short, tells of something that no longer exists. That's why so many visitors arrive, look and don't understand: they look for a lake and find a meadow, they look for a mountain and find the edge of a basin as high as any ordinary hill.

The volcanic origin

This whole portion of northern Lazio belongs to the Sabatini volcanic district, the system that generated the basin of Lake Bracciano and that, smaller and younger in appearance, of Lake Martignano. Lake Bracciano, which exceeds 50 square kilometers of surface, is the second largest in Lazio and is itself a caldera filled with water. Around this great central void the landscape is scattered with minor structures: secondary craters, maars, lateral vents, closed basins that erosion and agriculture have smoothed until they are almost invisible to anyone not looking for them.

The Lagusiello belongs to this family of minor forms. Its basin is a closed depression, that is, without a natural surface outlet, and it is exactly this characteristic that explains its history. A closed basin collects rainwater and groundwater and does not return it downstream, so it tends to become marshy and, when the bottom is sufficiently impermeable, to host a small permanent body of water. That is what happened here for a very long time, until the moment someone decided that the basin could yield more as a field than as a lake.

The draining of 1776

The date is precise and worth fixing: 1776. The operation is attributed to Domenico Grillo di Mondragone, and the method deserves attention because it was not a new excavation. The water was made to flow out through a preexisting outlet channel, that is, a drainage canal already opened earlier, whose origin local scholarly tradition suggests to be Roman or even earlier. That conduit discharged toward Lake Sabatino, the ancient name by which the Bracciano basin was known.

The sentence deserves to be taken apart piece by piece, because it contains more information than it conveys at first pass. If the outlet channel was preexisting, it means someone had already tried, long before the 18th century, to regulate the water level in the basin. This kind of work is characteristic of the ancient hydraulic engineering of Tyrrhenian central Italy: the artificial outlets of crater lakes, the drainage tunnels dug in tuff, the reclamation works on closed basins are a constant of the Etruscan and then Roman landscape, from the outlet of Lake Nemi and of Lake Albano to the tunnels of the Faliscan and Veientine countryside. Attributing a date with certainty to this specific structure, however, requires archaeological documentation that is not easy to find for the Lagusiello, and the conditional used by local sources must therefore be kept.

What is certain is the outcome: since the end of the 18th century the basin has been dry, the bottom has become farmable land and the lake survives only in the name. The landscape seen today is therefore artificial in substance and natural in form, a condition that holds for a good part of the Roman countryside and that here can be read with unusual clarity.

The Pantane and Lagusiello Natural Monument: what is protected and what you can do

The regulatory framework, for once, is easy to summarize. The Pantane and Lagusiello Natural Monument was established in 1997, extends over about 104 hectares in the Municipality of Trevignano Romano and includes two different environments: the marshy area of the Pantane along the shores of Lake Bracciano and the small crater of the Lagusiello. Its management falls within the Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park, the larger protected area that embraces the two lakes and the surrounding territories.

Why it was protected

The reason for the protection is stated explicitly in the documentation of the managing body: it is one of the most important areas in the region for the conservation of aquatic birdlife. The shallows of the lake strip and the lush riparian vegetation create a wetland particularly suited to the breeding and stopover of migratory species. Among the most abundant, the coot, the cormorant, the mallard, the great crested grebe, the black-necked grebe, the pochard and the teal are listed.

The Lagusiello enters this system as a complementary element. It no longer hosts the open water it hosted three centuries ago, but its basin and the small watercourses of the complex maintain moisture conditions that are rare in the rest of the Sabatini countryside. In the lake complex of the Pantane the presence of the spectacled salamander is reported, an amphibian endemic to Italy that is one of the most telling indicators of environmental quality of minor watercourses. The logic of the protection is therefore that of the network: a mosaic of connected environments is protected, not a single scenic point.

What it means for visitors

A natural monument is not an urban park and is not even a park equipped for mass visits. It is a protection tool that places constraints on what can be done inside the perimeter, and the practical consequence for the visitor is that access must be agreed on with common sense and with the rules of the managing body, not taken for granted. In wetlands of this kind nesting periods call for particular caution: approaching the reed bed in spring with a dog off leash or with a drone means doing real damage, not committing a formal discourtesy.

A warning should be added about land ownership. A substantial part of the surface included in the natural monument is privately held and farmed. The protection restriction doesn't turn a field into a freely accessible area, and this is the most frequent misunderstanding among those who read the name of a protected area on a map and assume they can enter. The rule around here is elementary: you walk on public roads and recognized tracks, you look from outside at what is inside a fence and, if you really want to go in, you ask the Park Authority first.

A curiosity about Monte Lagusiello

The best curiosity of this place isn't about the mountain but about the river that rises beneath it, and it concerns the direction in which it flows. The Treja, which has its sources on the slopes of the Lagusiello, in its first stretch does not head toward the sea. It goes in the opposite direction.

Put like that it sounds like a transcription error, and instead it is the consequence of a documented geological story. Until about 600,000 years ago this portion of Lazio was an alluvial plain crossed by the Tiber, which descended toward the coast following a course different from the present one. Then the Sabatini and Vico volcanic systems became active, those that generated respectively the basin of Lake Bracciano and that of Lake Vico. The erupted materials, the pyroclastic flows, the blankets of tuff repeatedly deposited on an already flat surface raised the whole area by at least a hundred meters.

A river doesn't cross a rise that lifts up beneath it: it goes around it. The Tiber was pushed east and found a new way beyond Monte Soratte, where it still flows today. The old bed, the paleochannel, remained as a fold in the ground, an ancient furrow without the river that had dug it. That furrow is what the waters of the Treja began to cut again, this time running through it in the opposite direction from the Tiber's original one. The result is that the river descends from west to northeast, that is, toward the interior, and reaches the Tiber only farther downstream, north of the Soratte.

It is a rare condition, produced by the orographic particularities of the place, and the beauty of it is that you can see it with your own eyes. Anyone looking at a map of the area and following the course of the Treja from the Lagusiello toward Calcata notices that the river turns its back on the Tyrrhenian Sea for dozens of kilometers. In a region where all the watercourses descend toward the west, this is an anomaly worth the trip by itself, and it is also the reason the area is wrapped in a reputation as a strange and mysterious place that is found throughout the local literature on the Treja gorge.

The sources of the Treja and the river that rises beneath the crater

The Treja is the real thread that links the Lagusiello to an important piece of Lazio. Its sources are near Monte Lagusiello, on the Trevignano side of the Bracciano basin, and from there begins a course that crosses environments very different from one another.

From the Fosso del Pavone to the Treja

At the start of its course the river isn't even called Treja: it is known as the Fosso del Pavone, a country-brook name that conveys well the initial flow. A few kilometers downstream the waters of many other brooks join its own, and the watercourse begins to take shape. The name changes definitively at the Monte Gelato waterfalls, in the territory of Mazzano Romano: from there on it is the Treja.

The toponymy of the river is a small gallery of variants: Treja, Tregia, Triglia. The origin of the name is related to the confluence of three ditches, the Pavone, the Maggiorana and the Sarnacchiola, an explanation from established local tradition rather than philological certainty. The overall course is around 30 kilometers and ends in the Tiber, north of Monte Soratte. The drainage basin the river collects is however much wider than its length: it is said to be about 490 square kilometers, with an average elevation of the territory around 200 meters above sea level.

The gorge and the park

The most famous part of the course is the one that crosses the Treja Valley Park, a protected area of about 630 hectares established by regional law in 1982, included in the territories of Calcata, in the province of Viterbo, and of Mazzano Romano, in the province of Rome. There the river runs in a narrow gorge cut into the tuff, under a dense forest cover, and breaks its bed into small cascades that in the Monte Gelato area become the reason thousands of people arrive every summer.

The point to underline is the disproportion between the two ends of this system. Downstream, Monte Gelato is one of the most photographed and most filmed places in Lazio, with a water mill, a small lake and a movie fame that has lasted 60 years. Upstream, where the river rises, there is nothing of the kind: there are a dry crater, a few fields and a name that almost nobody can pronounce with confidence. Yet it is the same river, and the same geological history.

The sparkling water

A hydrochemical feature worth knowing about, because it is the sign of the volcanic nature of the substrate, concerns the springs of slightly sparkling water along the course of the Treja. A few hundred meters after the small lake of Monte Gelato, on the left bank, there are trickles that come out of cracks in the rock with lightly fizzy water, and the area is close to that of a plant bottling natural sparkling water. The gas that makes that water fizzy comes from below, from the now quiescent magma reservoir that built the whole landscape of which the Lagusiello is part. It is a discreet reminder that the volcano is not dead, only asleep.

One thing nobody tells you about Monte Lagusiello

What is almost never said is that the Lagusiello has no view of Lake Bracciano. Or rather: it has one only from a few points on the outer rim, and never from inside the basin. Anyone entering the crater loses the lake completely, even though it is a short distance away, and finds themselves in a closed amphitheater of fields and hedges in which the horizon is the edge of the depression itself.

It seems like a trivial detail and yet it changes the whole approach to the visit. The photographs that circulate of this place are almost always taken from above or from outside, because only from there do you get the image people expect, with the rise in the foreground and the lake water behind. Anyone who arrives on site with those images in mind and goes down toward the bottom of the basin gets the feeling that the place has been swapped for another. It hasn't: it is simply the geometry of a crater, which by definition hides from whoever is inside it everything around it.

The second thing that isn't said concerns the relationship between protection and agriculture. The collective imagination associates the expression protected area with an idea of untouched nature, and here the idea doesn't hold. The bottom of the basin has been farmland for more than two centuries, its present form depends on an 18th-century hydraulic work, and the landscape being protected is one in which the hand of man was decisive. It isn't a flaw, and in fact it is the normal condition of Italian landscapes: but it's something worth knowing beforehand, to avoid the disappointment of those who look for wilderness where there is a rural mosaic.

The third thing, the most practical, is that the natural monument has two souls that almost nobody visits together. Whoever comes for the Pantane stays on the shore, watches the water birds with binoculars and goes back to the lakefront. Whoever comes for the Lagusiello climbs inland and doesn't see the reed bed. Yet the two environments were protected together, with the same measure and for the same underlying reason, and the meaning of the area is grasped only by keeping them together: water that surfaces, water that disappears, water that sets off again toward the northeast in the form of a river.

The advice I give you for visiting Monte Lagusiello

The advice is blunt and won't please those short on time: don't come here for the Lagusiello. Come for Lake Bracciano and put the Lagusiello inside a wider day, as a key to reading the landscape rather than as a destination.

The day that works on the north shore is built like this. Morning in Trevignano Romano: you start from Piazza Vittorio Emanuele III, visit the Museo Civico Etrusco Romano on the ground floor of the town hall, climb toward the Rocca to get the view over the basin, and come down along the alleys to the lakefront. Late morning on the shore, in the direction of the gulf of the Pantane, calmly and with binoculars: that is where the natural monument really lets itself be seen, because the water birds are observed from the water and not from the hill. Lunch in town. Afternoon inland, on the roads that climb the slope, to read the shape of the crater from outside and understand where the Treja rises.

What to bring

Binoculars with modest magnification and a wide field are worth more here than any other item, because everything worth seeing is at a distance: the birds on the water, the shape of the crater rim, the profile of the promontories. Closed shoes with a lugged sole, because the countryside around the basin after rain becomes compact, slippery mud. Water, because you won't regularly come across fountains along the way. A hat in the hot months: the slope is mostly open and shade is patchy.

What to leave at home is the ambition to do everything on foot from the town: the elevation gain is modest but the distance isn't trivial, and on hot days you reach the top with no desire left to look at anything. Better the opposite: drive up high and walk on the flat, along the dirt roads of the plateau.

Respecting local rules

I repeat something already said because it is the only one that can create real problems. The boundary of the natural monument includes private, farmed land. The small roads you see on satellite maps are in many cases farm access tracks, not public trails. Correct behavior means staying on roads open to traffic, not climbing over fences, not entering sown fields, not letting dogs loose near the reed bed during the breeding season and not flying drones over a protected wetland. If you need closer access, the contact is the Bracciano Martignano Park Authority, which has an office and a phone number and answers those who ask.

How much time to give it

For the Lagusiello in the strict sense a couple of hours are enough, including stops to look around. For the natural monument as a whole, Pantane included, a full half day. For an outing that makes sense, a whole day that includes the village of Trevignano, the lake and, for those with energy left in the late afternoon, a detour toward Anguillara Sabazia or toward Lake Martignano.

Greenery, flora and fauna between the crater and the Pantane

The natural component is the very reason this place is protected, and it deserves to be told with the names of the species, not with generic adjectives.

The vegetation of the wetland

Along the lake shore the environment is the classic one of the wetlands of central Italy: reed bed, rush bed, willow grove and alder grove, with a succession of bands going from open water toward land. The most widespread plant species are the common reed, the cattail, the white willow, the alder, the black poplar, the water speedwell, the buttercup, the iris and the black elder. The documentation of the managing body adds the yellow flag and the water mint, and stresses the spring blooms, which in the right season turn the edge of a reed bed into something worth getting up early for.

The most precious sighting concerns an orchid: the marsh helleborine, Epipactis palustris, a very rare species typical of the wetlands of Lazio. It isn't a showy plant, it doesn't have the bright color of the tropical orchids people expect, and for this very reason it is easily trampled. If you walk along the edge of the reed bed in spring, the rule is simple: stay on the tracks and watch where you put your feet.

The birds

The list of birds is long and reflects the strategic position of the site along the migration routes. Among the species reported are the great crested grebe and the lesser grebe, the little grebe, the coot, the kite, the marsh harrier, the little bittern, the pochard, the ferruginous duck, the mallard, the gray heron, the little egret, the moorhen, the snipe, the water rail, the common sandpiper, the black-headed gull and the herring gull, the black tern. The managing body indicates as most abundant the coot, the cormorant, the mallard, the great crested grebe, the black-necked grebe, the pochard and the teal.

The context that helps you understand the weight of this place concerns the park as a whole: the territory of the Bracciano Martignano Park is the second wetland in Lazio for the number of wintering water birds, after the Circeo National Park, with more than 160 species recorded and about half of them nesting. Among the most significant presences on a national scale, the red-crested pochard is cited, a rare diving duck, particularly tied to Lake Martignano.

Amphibians, fish and invertebrates

In the small watercourses of the lake complex of the Pantane the spectacled salamander is present, an amphibian endemic to the Italian peninsula that lives only where running water is clean and plant cover is continuous. Among the bony fish, Salaria fluviatilis is mentioned, the river chub, a fairly rare species. Among the invertebrates there are two names that make the heart beat faster for anyone involved in entomology: the butterfly Endromis versicolora and the longhorn beetle Rosalia alpina, a species tied to mature broadleaf woods and protected at the European level.

The point of the list is only one: the richness of this sector of the lake is not measured in views but in species. It is a place for those who look closely.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

The fact is this: the Treja system, with its tributaries, formed the southern sector of the Ager Faliscus, the territory inhabited in pre-Roman times by the Faliscans, a people under strong Etruscan influence but with a language of their own, related to Latin.

You read it in every archaeology manual of central Italy, so well known it truly is. What is rarely added is the consequence for anyone looking at the landscape. The Faliscans didn't build cities on open plains: they occupied the tuff spurs isolated by river erosion, defended on three sides by the gorges and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The Treja gorge is a factory of those spurs, and in fact the whole valley is an anthology of hilltop settlements: Calcata is the most photographed example, Civita Castellana, ancient Falerii, is the capital of the group, Nepi and Sutri follow the same geological logic.

The Lagusiello sits at the extreme apex of this system, at the point where the water begins its work of digging. It is a different way of looking at an anonymous crater: not an isolated rise, but the head of a drainage basin that produced a civilization. In the territory of the Parco Valle del Treja there are remains of Faliscan settlements, and the rock-cut necropolises dug into the tuff along the valley are the most evident trace of that presence.

Then there is a modern coda worth lining up. The Treja, and above all the Monte Gelato waterfalls, have been used as film sets in a great many movies since the 1960s. The Monte Gelato area, with its mill and its small lake, appears in a number of films that local sources estimate on the order of a hundred, among sword-and-sandal epics, spaghetti westerns and auteur productions. The same landscape that hosted the Faliscans has served as a backdrop to Italian genre cinema, and the water that feeds those falls starts from beneath the Lagusiello.

The right photo to take at Monte Lagusiello

The photograph that works here isn't the one that tries to capture the crater from the inside. Inside the basin the eye has no hooks, the light is flat and the result is an ordinary field with a border of trees. The right photograph is the one that brings together two elements that usually aren't seen in the same frame: the dry basin and the water of the lake.

The shooting point

You need a point on the outer rim of the rise, on the slope facing the basin, with the lake in the background and the depression in the foreground or to the side. It is the only composition that tells the story of the place, because it shows in the same frame the lake that is still there and the lake basin that is no more. Whoever doesn't get it takes home pretty, mute photographs.

The second image that is worth it is the one of the shore, from the Trevignano lakefront toward the gulf of the Pantane: the semicircular indentation of the bank, with the promontory of Montecchio to the east and that of the Rocca to the west, gives the shape of what is interpreted as a further crater structure, this time invaded by the lake water. Placed next to the photo of the Lagusiello, it tells the same geology in two different states.

Light and season

The best light is the late afternoon, when the sun comes from the west and cuts across the slope, bringing out the crater rim that disappears at noon. For the lake the opposite holds: first thing in the morning, with still water, gives reflections that can't be found after 10:00.

There are two best seasons. The end of winter and the start of spring, when the fields are green, the vegetation hasn't yet closed the views and the air is so clear that you can see the Cimini Mountains and, on exceptional days, the profile of Soratte. And the end of autumn, when the broadleaf wood on the crater rim turns red and ocher and the basin gains an outline of color. Summer is the worst season to photograph here: heat haze flattens the lake and the harvested fields become a uniform surface with no information.

A recommendation on drones

The aerial view would be the obvious solution for a crater, and for this very reason it must be said that over a protected wetland, during the nesting season, a drone is a serious disturbance for the birdlife. Besides the general rules on flying, which must be checked every time because they change, a common-sense criterion applies: flying over a reed bed in April goes against the very reason the place deserves a visit.

Some important events that happened here in history

The chronology of this place is short and made of few steps, but each of them has left a readable mark on the ground.

About 600,000 years ago: the landscape flips

The founding event has no witnesses. The activity of the Sabatini and Vico volcanic systems lifts the alluvial plain crossed by the Tiber by at least a hundred meters, forces the river to move east of Monte Soratte and leaves the abandoned paleochannel that the Treja will return to cut in the opposite direction. In this phase the caldera that will host Lake Bracciano and the series of minor structures of which the Lagusiello is part are formed.

Pre-Roman era: the Faliscans and Etruscan influence

The Treja basin becomes the southern sector of the Ager Faliscus. Settlements occupy the tuff spurs of the valley and the necropolises are dug into the walls of the gorge. On the lake shore, the territory of Trevignano yields Etruscan materials in a quantity such as to justify the existence of the Museo Civico Etrusco Romano that can still be visited today in the town hall.

Roman era or earlier: the outlet channel

At a moment that cannot be determined precisely, the outlet channel connecting the basin of the Lagusiello to Lake Sabatino is built. Local sources suggest a Roman or older origin, and the practice of draining closed basins through tunnels dug in tuff is well documented throughout Tyrrhenian central Italy in the Etruscan and Roman ages. The dating of this specific structure remains however a hypothesis and should be presented as such.

1776: the draining

Domenico Grillo di Mondragone has the water of the small lake flow out through the preexisting outlet channel, pouring it into Lake Bracciano. The basin becomes farmland. It is the year that erases the lake and keeps only the name, and it is also the year that explains why today you walk on a dry bottom in a place called little lake. The operation belongs to a season of 18th-century reclamations that affected a good part of the closed basins of inland Lazio, when farmable land was worth more than standing water and marshes were considered a sanitary problem as well as an unproductive area.

1982: the Parco Valle del Treja is born

A regional law establishes the protected area of about 630 hectares between Calcata and Mazzano Romano, protecting the gorge in which the river that rises beneath the Lagusiello flows. The park offices are in the historic center of Calcata, the legal seat in Mazzano.

1997: the Pantane and Lagusiello Natural Monument

The natural monument is established, protecting together the marshy area of the Pantane along the lake shore and the small crater of the Lagusiello, for about 104 hectares in the Municipality of Trevignano Romano. It is the act that gives the rise the formal recognition as a natural asset and ties its fate to that of the wetland below.

1999: the Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park

The Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park is established over a territory of about 202 square kilometers straddling the provinces of Rome and Viterbo, including the two lakes, the areas of Community interest and the natural monuments of the district. The municipalities involved are 10: Anguillara Sabazia, Bassano Romano, Bracciano, Campagnano di Roma, Cesano di Roma, Manziana, Monterosi, Oriolo Romano, Sutri and Trevignano Romano. The surface of the two lakes, about 6,000 hectares in total, alone covers around 40 percent of the protected area.

Who has been through Monte Lagusiello

Honesty is needed here, because the temptation to fill a paragraph with illustrious names is strong and the documentation on this rise is scarce. The people the Lagusiello can claim with certainty are few, and they are those who left a material trace in the landscape.

Domenico Grillo di Mondragone

He is the name tied directly and verifiably to the story of the place. To him is attributed the draining of the small lake in 1776, the operation that changed the look of the basin forever. He belongs to the long history of the families that in papal Lazio invested in reclaiming wet land, and his intervention can still be seen today: the field on the bottom of the crater exists thanks to him.

The Faliscans and the Etruscans

The ancient settlement of the Treja basin and of the northern shore of the lake is documented by archaeological materials. The Faliscans occupied the system of gorges that the river dug downstream. The territory of Trevignano yields Etruscan evidence collected in the town's civic museum. No specific attributions of historical figures identifiable by name tied to the Lagusiello are on record: there is instead a continuous, anonymous human presence, that of those who farmed, grazed and drained this countryside for at least 25 centuries.

The directors and the crews

Farther downstream, along the course of the same river, the story changes completely. The Monte Gelato waterfalls and the Treja gorge have been combed by Italian cinema from the 1960s onward, with a frequency that local sources quantify at about a hundred films. Directors, camera operators, extras and horses worked in that valley for decades. The Lagusiello doesn't appear in those shoots, but it is the point from which the water that played the lead in so many of those scenes starts, and this kinship deserves to be mentioned.

The hikers and the naturalists

Today these places are frequented mostly by bird watchers, nature photographers and local hikers. The gulf of the Pantane is a known birdwatching spot on Lake Bracciano, and rare species like the red-crested pochard on nearby Lake Martignano attract every winter those who follow wintering water birds. It isn't a crowd, and that is why the place works.

When to go to Monte Lagusiello and when to avoid it

The calendar of this place depends on three variables: visibility, vegetation and the presence of birds. The three never coincide perfectly, so it's best to choose based on what you are coming to do.

Winter

It is the best season for water birds. The wintering birds arrive in numbers and the lake becomes the second basin in Lazio for presences after the Circeo. The winter air is the most transparent of the year and the views from the high points open out to the distant ridges. On the other hand the days are short, the countryside around the basin is often muddy and the wind on the lakefront can be unpleasant. Whoever comes in this season should bring layered clothing and plan the day between 10:00 and 15:00.

Spring

It is the period of the wetland blooms, with the marsh lilies and the rare orchids of the reed bed, and it is also the time when the fields of the basin are green and the light is generous. It is however the nesting season, so the one in which disturbance must be kept to a minimum: no dogs off leash, no going off trail along the shore, no drones. April and May are the months when the landscape is at its best and when the visitor must behave best.

Summer

It is the season to avoid, for three concrete reasons. Heat haze erases the distant views and flattens the lake. The harvested fields take away any visual interest from the bottom of the crater. Traffic on the lakeside road, on weekends in July and August, turns 50 kilometers into two hours of queue. Whoever has only summer available should do one thing only: come first thing in the morning, stay on the lake, and skip the climb inland in the middle hours.

Autumn

It is the best season around here. The broadleaf wood that borders the basin changes color, the first rains set the brooks running again, the air becomes crisp again and the vacationers have vanished. October and November offer the best combination of color, silence and free roads. The only precaution concerns footwear, because after the first rains the dirt roads become slippery.

What's around Monte Lagusiello

The Lagusiello alone doesn't fill a day, but it sits at the center of one of the densest districts of things to see in northern Lazio. Here is how I would use it to build itineraries of different lengths.

On the lake

The Pantane di Trevignano are the other half of the natural monument and the natural complementary stop. Trevignano Romano offers the village, the Rocca, the churches and the Etruscan Roman museum. Bracciano is the largest town of the basin and hosts the Castello Odescalchi, one of the best-preserved castles in Italy. Anguillara Sabazia closes the triangle of the three lakeside villages with its promontory over the water. Lake Martignano, with no paved roads on its shores, is the destination for those who want water without the urban surroundings. The overall picture can be read on the page about Lake Bracciano and on the one about the Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park.

Along the Treja

Following the river downstream is the most coherent way of extending the visit. The Treja Valley Park is the obligatory stop, with the Monte Gelato waterfalls and the village of Calcata perched on its tuff spur. Continuing you enter the proper Faliscan area, with Civita Castellana, Nepi and its Monte Calderone solfatara, another testimony of residual volcanism. At the far end of the river's course stands Monte Soratte, the isolated limestone rise that diverted the Tiber and that can be seen from half the province.

Around the Sabatini and the Cimini

To the west the park includes the Caldara di Manziana, a natural monument of 90 hectares established by regional law in 1988, with its sulfur spring and the rare white birch wood, and the Bosco Macchia Grande. A little farther are the Riserva di Monterano with its ghost village, and the Tolfa Mountains. To the north the Oriolo Romano Beech Forest, a site recognized at the international level, and the Mola di Oriolo Romano. Continuing you enter the Cimini district with Sutri and its park of the very ancient city, Ronciglione, Caprarola with Palazzo Farnese and Lake Vico. To the southeast, finally, the Veio Park and, on the coast, Cerveteri with its necropolises.

Quick questions about Monte Lagusiello

Where is Monte Lagusiello?

In the Municipality of Trevignano Romano (RM), behind the northern shore of Lake Bracciano, in the Sabatini sector of the Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park.

Why is it called that if there is no lake?

The name keeps the memory of the small lake that occupied the basin until 1776, when it was drained. Lagusiello and Laguscello mean little lake.

Who drained the lake and how?

Domenico Grillo di Mondragone, in 1776, by making the water flow out through an already existing outlet channel that poured it into Lake Sabatino, that is, into Lake Bracciano.

Is it a protected area?

Yes. It is part of the Pantane and Lagusiello Natural Monument, established in 1997, covering about 104 hectares, which protects the crater and the wetland of the Pantane together.

Can you visit it freely?

The boundary includes private, farmed land and there is no equipped entrance. It's best to stay on roads open to traffic and ask the Park Authority for directions for any closer access.

What is its relationship with the Treja river?

The sources of the Treja are on the slopes of the same mountain. The river rises as the Fosso del Pavone and takes the name Treja from the Monte Gelato waterfalls onward, running about 30 kilometers to the Tiber.

What is the best period?

Autumn and late winter for the clarity of the air and the wintering water birds, spring for the blooms. Summer is the least favorable season.

Monte Lagusiello is a place for people who have already seen everything else. It has no summit, no postcard panorama, no equipped trail. It has a shape that tells 600,000 years of volcanoes, a name that recalls a lake erased by a decision of 1776 and a river that starts from beneath and decides to go the wrong way. Whoever is looking for a spectacle will do better to stop at the Trevignano lakefront. Whoever is trying to understand why this countryside has the shape it has will find here one of the clearest lessons in northern Lazio.

Frequently asked questions about Monte Lagusiello

Where is Monte Lagusiello?

Monte Lagusiello is in the Municipality of Trevignano Romano, in the province of Rome, behind the northern shore of Lake Bracciano, in the Sabatini sector of the Bracciano Martignano Regional Natural Park. It isn't a peak in the Alpine sense of the word, but a modest rise, the rim of an ancient volcanic crater.

Why is it called Monte Lagusiello if there is no lake?

The name Monte Lagusiello keeps the memory of the small lake that occupied the basin until 1776, when it was drained. Lagusiello and Laguscello in fact mean little lake, small lake, and it is the only truly honest part of a place name that misleads with the word monte, suggesting a climb and a summit that don't exist here.

Can you see Lake Bracciano from Monte Lagusiello?

Only in part: Monte Lagusiello has a view of Lake Bracciano only from a few points on the outer rim of the crater, never from inside the basin. Anyone entering the crater loses the lake completely, even though it is a short distance away, and finds themselves in a closed amphitheater of fields and hedges.

What rises beneath Monte Lagusiello?

On the slopes of Monte Lagusiello, on the Trevignano side of the Bracciano basin, are the sources of the Treja river, which in its first stretch flows under the name of Fosso del Pavone. It is a geological curiosity that the Treja, at its birth, doesn't head toward the sea but in the opposite direction, a consequence of volcanic events that took place about 600,000 years ago.

Is Monte Lagusiello worth visiting as a destination on its own?

The blunt advice is not to come specifically for Monte Lagusiello, but to put it inside a wider day on the north shore of Lake Bracciano, for example pairing it with a morning in Trevignano Romano with its square, the Rocca and the Etruscan Roman museum.

What is the best period for seeing birds at Monte Lagusiello?

Winter is the best season for water birds in the area of Monte Lagusiello and the nearby Pantane di Trevignano: the wintering birds arrive in numbers and Lake Bracciano becomes the second basin in Lazio for presences after the Circeo, with clearer air for observation.

What is there to see near Monte Lagusiello?

Near Monte Lagusiello are the Pantane di Trevignano, the other half of the Pantane and Lagusiello natural monument, as well as the village of Trevignano Romano with the Rocca, the churches and the Etruscan Roman museum, and farther on the town of Bracciano.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences. For a day organized on Lake Bracciano and in the natural monuments of the park, with a licensed tour guide, start from the TourLeaderPro contact page. Tour operators building itineraries in volcanic Lazio will find the consulting service in the section dedicated to tour operators.

Planning a trip to Rome? The English-language guides for visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com. For those thinking in terms of days out of town there is the guide to the best day trips from Rome.