Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

The Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve is a protected area of 2,002 hectares in the municipality of Farnese, province of Viterbo, right on the border between Lazio and Tuscany. It was established in 1994 by regional law and its management is entrusted to the Municipality of Farnese, with its operational office in the locality of Bottino. It's not a park with a ticket office and turnstiles: it's a real forest, which grows on top of a lava flow from the Latera volcano and which for centuries was considered no man's land, good for charcoal burners, for shepherds and for anyone with serious reasons not to be found. Anyone who arrives here expecting a landscaped garden is thrown off in the first 10 minutes. The ground is a chaos of basalt boulders covered in moss, the gaps between one stone and the next are deep and hidden by leaves, and the visual landmarks disappear as soon as you go in under the canopy. 90 percent of the surface is forest, and the remaining 10 percent is farmed, among pasture meadows, a few olive groves and a few vineyards. In 2005 the Selva del Lamone and the adjoining area called Il Crostoletto were proposed as Sites of Community Importance by ministerial decree of March 25, 2005, and today three Natura 2000 network perimeters lie over the area. Inside the reserve there are an Etruscan fortress, a Bronze Age village, a restored Cistercian abbey, two waterfalls and 21 marked trails. Outside, a few kilometers away, are Farnese, the Olpeta, the Lazio Maremma and Lake Bolsena. These notes are meant to help you understand where to put your feet, what to look at and what to avoid.

Where the Selva del Lamone (VT) is and how to really get there

The reserve occupies the northwestern corner of the province of Viterbo, in the strip that geographers call the Lazio Maremma and that the locals simply call the border Tuscia. The reference town is Farnese, a little over 1,600 inhabitants, perched on a tuff spur above the Nova stream. From Farnese the forest begins practically at the edge of town, toward the north, and extends until it touches the Olpeta river to the south and the slopes that descend toward Ischia di Castro and Valentano. The administrative border with Tuscany is a few kilometers away: Pitigliano and Sorano are on the other side of the ridge, and the tuff landscape that everyone associates with the Grosseto Maremma has already begun here.

The distance from Rome is about 140 kilometers, which translates to two hours or a little more of driving. From Viterbo it drops to about 50 kilometers, from Grosseto to about 70. These are figures to take for what they are: the Selva del Lamone is not a half-day trip starting from the capital, and anyone who tries goes home having seen a parking lot and 300 meters of trail. It's a full-day destination or, better, a weekend with a base in Farnese, Ischia di Castro or on the lake.

By car: the roads that matter

There are no serious alternatives to the car. From Rome the fastest route is the A12 motorway to Montalto di Castro, then you go up toward the interior via Canino and Ischia di Castro and reach Farnese. The variant is Via Cassia to Montefiascone or Viterbo, then the cross road toward Valentano and Farnese, which is slower but much more beautiful, because it runs alongside Lake Bolsena and crosses the villages of the crater. Those coming from the north exit at Aurelia south or come down the Cassia through Acquapendente.

Once in Farnese, the access points to the reserve are more than one and they are not equivalent. The most used is the one at Pianetti, on the road to Pitigliano, where there is an area to leave the car and several trails start. Other entrances can be reached along the provincial road toward Ischia di Castro and from the dirt roads that descend toward the Olpeta. The unpaved roads inside the reserve can be driven only by authorized vehicles: whoever drives in thinking to shorten the trip finds themselves maneuvering on a surface that ruins the rims and, in the best case, gets an unfriendly explanation from the first officer who passes.

The operational advice is banal but decisive: fill up first. Between Farnese and the nearby towns the gas stations are few and on Sunday afternoon quite a few are closed. The same goes for cash: there is an ATM in Farnese, but if it breaks down the nearest is in Ischia di Castro or Valentano.

By train and bus: the uncomfortable truth

The nearest useful railway station is Montalto di Castro, on the Tyrrhenian Rome-Grosseto line. From there it's still about 40 kilometers and the public connection is a Cotral service designed for commuters and students, with runs concentrated in the early morning and early afternoon on weekdays and practically absent on Sunday. Anyone who gets off at Montalto without having arranged a ride risks being stuck for hours.

Public transport is not a workable way to visit the Selva del Lamone. If you don't have a car, the only realistic solution is to rely on a guided excursion organized by the reserve or by an association, which normally starts from Farnese and often includes a meeting point reachable with an agreed ride. It's a real limitation and it's worth saying it first, not afterward.

What you need to wear

Hiking boots with a lugged sole, not sneakers: wet basalt is slippery and the gaps between the boulders are hard to see. Long pants, because brambles and blackthorn here are not a figure of speech. Water in quantity, at least a liter and a half per person in summer, since there are no drinking fountains inside the forest. A flashlight, even for a daytime outing, because if you lose time the darkness under the canopy arrives earlier than in the open. And tick repellent, since ticks in this area are a normal presence from April to October and must be looked for on your body the same evening.

What the Selva del Lamone (VT) really is: a lava flow, not just any forest

The point that explains everything else is geological. The Selva del Lamone doesn't grow on good soil: it grows on top of a lava flow emitted by the Latera volcanic complex, one of the eruptive centers of the Vulsini district, in a period that reconstructions place between 158,000 and 145,000 years ago, and more generally in the window between 150,000 and 50,000 years ago that the reserve's information sheets have long reported. On the geological scale it's a young lava. Young means it hasn't yet had time to crumble into deep, regular soil: under the moss and under the layer of leaves the rock is still there, with all its original irregularities.

From here come the two words that anyone who frequents this place learns right away. The first is murce, a dialect plural that indicates the accumulations of lava boulders, often raised above the surrounding ground, covered in vegetation and impossible to cross except on already trodden paths. They are old scoria cones and heaps of blocks that the flow left where it stopped. The second is collapse craters, inverted-cone depressions that open in the forest like amphitheaters, generally cooler and damper than the rest because cold air stagnates in them. The most cited is the one they call Rosa Crepante. Walking, you pass from one environment to another in a few minutes: above the boulders the vegetation is dry and Mediterranean, inside the craters it becomes that of an Apennine hill forest.

Why the forest remained

A terrain like this can't be plowed. This is, before any environmental consideration, the reason the Selva del Lamone still exists: nobody ever managed to turn it into fields. Around it, where the lava ends and the tuff begins, the countryside has been farmed for millennia. Inside, the forest survived because it was the only thing the terrain allowed. People exploited it in other ways, cutting wood, making charcoal, gathering brushwood for livestock and bringing pigs to graze there, but they never converted it.

This exploitation was intense until the 1950s and 1960s, then collapsed quickly with the depopulation of the countryside. In the 1960s and 1970s farmland and marginal pastures were abandoned en masse, and on those lands first shrublands and then newly formed woods grew, which are intermediate stages of a succession still under way. Whoever walks here today sees two different forests overlapping: the ancient one on the lava, with enormous stumps and twisted trees, and the young one on the old farmland, more regular and denser.

Today the use of wood is regulated by the reserve's Forest Management and Planning Plan and by the Municipal Regulation for Civic Uses. Civic uses are not a formality: in Farnese they are a right that families really exercise, and in the authorized months you meet local people gathering firewood with a permit in their pocket. It's one of the few places in Lazio where a medieval institution still works as an ordinary management tool.

The trees: what you can recognize

The dominant species is the Turkey oak, which here forms pure or mixed oak woods. Depending on exposure and humidity the accompanying species change. In cool situations, so in the collapse craters and in almost all of the eastern sector of the reserve, the Turkey oak is joined by hop hornbeam, hornbeam and hazel. In warm situations, on the tops of the boulder accumulations and in the western sector, holm oak, downy oak and broadleaf mock privet appear. Ubiquitous, that is present more or less everywhere, are field maple, Montpellier maple and manna ash.

To this picture are added patches of beech at altitudes much lower than usual for the species, favored precisely by the stagnation of cold air in the hollows, and remnants of holm oak woods on the drier ridges. Among the herbaceous plants the reserve conserves species that are rare at the regional level, including a fern of the spleenwort group and the Greek lupine, reported in one of the very few sites in Lazio. They are details that say nothing to a distracted visitor and that make a botanist drive three hours.

Spring is the moment when the understory becomes spectacular. Between March and May the ground is covered with cyclamens, anemones and violets in quantities that local guides describe as millions of flowers, and that actually make it hard to walk without stepping on them. It's also the period when the forest is brightest, because the Turkey oak leaves haven't yet closed the canopy.

The animals: numbers, not anecdotes

The reserve's official sheets count about 40 species of mammals, 124 species of birds of which 75 are confirmed nesting, nine species of amphibians, 15 of reptiles and six of fish. These are high numbers for an area of 2,000 hectares and they say something precise: the forest is continuous, has a lot of dead wood standing and on the ground, and this supports food chains that have broken elsewhere.

Among mammals, the reserve hosts the roe deer in two subspecies, the continental and the Italian, along with wild boar, squirrel and dormice. The most interesting case is the hazel dormouse, the small tree-dwelling rodent that here has the most substantial population and the highest survival rate in the whole regional context, so much so that it makes the Selva del Lamone a source population from which individuals spread toward the surrounding areas. It's a technical fact that is worth more than many adjectives: it means the forest works.

For birds the symbol of the reserve is the great spotted woodpecker, joined by the green woodpecker, the hoopoe and, at night, the tawny owl and the barn owl. Over the open areas buzzard and kestrel hunt. Amphibians breed in the lacioni, the temporary pools that form in the depressions: there you find newts, tree frogs, toads and the spectacled salamander, an Italian endemic. Among reptiles, Riccioli's snake is reported, a discreet and uncommon species. Among invertebrates the saproxylic beetles count most, those tied to dead wood, which are an indicator of mature forests.

An honest clarification: the wolf is present in the northern Maremma and Lazio area and is reported regularly in the zone, but a stable presence inside the perimeter is not verified from an official source of the reserve, and I don't give it as certain. The same goes for the wildcat, often cited in local stories. If you're interested in the fauna at this level of detail, the right question should be asked directly to the reserve's office, which keeps its monitoring up to date.

The forest of the Selva del Lamone (VT): what is accessible and what is not

This is the part that generates the most misunderstandings, because the word reserve suggests an enclosure with an entrance and opening hours, and here it isn't so. Access to the Selva del Lamone is free and without charge along the network of marked trails. There is no ticket, no gate, no closing time. This doesn't mean, however, that you can go anywhere.

The official network counts 21 documented routes: 15 hiking trails numbered 1 to 15, variants included, six mountain bike itineraries and the brigands' trail with the CAI mark, which can be done on foot, by bicycle or on horseback. Outside these routes the forest is formally passable in many places but practically hostile, and the reserve itself, in its information material, recommends the guided visit precisely because the landmarks are few and orientation is difficult.

Why people really get lost

It's worth explaining, because it sounds like a routine warning and it isn't. In a normal forest you orient yourself by the slope, by the sun, by the ridges. Here the slope changes every 20 meters because of the murce, the sun filters through little and irregularly, and ridges don't exist because the flow left an irregular surface without a dominant direction. The result is that you walk believing you are going straight and you describe a curve. Animal tracks and the old charcoal burners' paths complicate things, because they look like real trails and end in a clearing with no exit.

The phone helps less than you'd think. Cell coverage inside the reserve is patchy, and in some hollows it disappears altogether. If you use a navigation app, download the offline maps before leaving: taking them for granted is the most common mistake I see people make.

The rules worth knowing

You walk on the marked trails. You don't pick flowers, you don't take plants, you don't move stones from the walls and the accumulations, which often have archaeological value as well as ecological. You don't light fires under any circumstances or in any season: this is a forest with enormous quantities of dead wood and a windy July day makes it a perfect tinderbox. The gathering of mushrooms and truffles follows regional and municipal rules, so you need to find out beforehand from the Municipality of Farnese and not rely on bar gossip.

Dogs are allowed on a leash on the routes. Free camping is not permitted. Bivouacking is a delicate matter and I don't take for granted that it's allowed: if your plan includes a night in a tent, the phone call to the reserve should be made before, not after.

The right contact and who to ask

The reserve is managed by the Municipality of Farnese and has its office in the locality of Bottino, in Farnese. The contacts published on the Lazio regional portal of protected areas are the landline 0761 458861, a mobile number 331 2346429 and the email address rnselvalamone@regione.lazio.it. Calling before you leave is the most useful thing you can do, for three reasons: to know whether a trail is closed for works or for the risk of falling trees, to know whether there are guided visits scheduled on the dates you're interested in, and to know whether an excavation campaign is under way, because when the archaeologists are working access to some areas changes.

Office opening hours and guided visit fees are not given here: they are information that changes from season to season. Ask for them by phone.

A curiosity about the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

The name. Lamone has nothing to do with the Romagna river of the same name nor with lama meaning a blade. In the place names of central Italy the root lama indicates a depressed, damp, difficult terrain, often marshy or in any case impassable. The Lamone, in this sense, is the ugly place: the one that's no use, that isn't farmed, where you go only if you're forced. An entire forest called for centuries by a name that means awkward ground says a lot about the relationship the local communities have had with this selva.

There is a second curiosity tied to this, and it concerns the word murce. It's a local term, not a national geological technicality, and you find it in the scientific literature precisely because scholars adopted the word used by the people of Farnese. The murce are heaps of lava blocks that form rises over dark depressions, and they are exactly what makes the forest impenetrable. When a dialect word of the Tuscia appears in a university publication it means that the phenomenon had no better name: the place imposed its vocabulary on science, not the other way around.

Third thing, smaller but verifiable by walking: many of the dry-stone walls you meet in the forest are not recent farm boundaries but structures of different eras superimposed, from livestock enclosures to the boundaries of civic uses to much older remains. It's not always easy to tell them apart by eye, and this is one of the reasons the regulation forbids moving stones. A wall that looks like the remains of a sheepfold can be, and in some cases is, a stretch of an ancient route.

The archaeological area of the Selva del Lamone (VT) and the fortress of Rofalco

Inside the perimeter of the reserve, archaeology covers a span that runs from the Late Bronze Age to the Middle Ages, without a break. It's an unusual concentration and it always depends on the same reason: a terrain that isn't plowed doesn't get plowed, so it doesn't destroy what it contains. The sites that the reserve's sheets list include the springs of the Nova, inhabited in the Late Bronze Age, the late Etruscan fortress of Rofalco, remains of necropolises, the Tomba del Gottimo, Roman farms and roads, rural parish churches and the huts of shepherds and charcoal burners still in use in the 1950s.

Rofalco, the fortress that resisted Rome

Rofalco is the most spectacular site and the easiest to tell about. It is a fortified Etruscan settlement datable between the fourth and third centuries BC, in the full early Hellenistic phase, built on a lava spur in the heart of the forest. The dimensions are those of a military stronghold, not of a city: the enclosed area is about a hectare and a half, in some reconstructions reported as two hectares.

The circuit wall describes a semicircular arc of about 330 meters and is built in rough polygonal masonry with blocks of hard local volcanic stone, that is with the same stones the terrain offered on the spot. In some points the wall reaches six meters in thickness and preserves a height close to four meters. On the outside at least three square-plan towers protrude. Anyone who has the school idea of the Etruscans as a people of painted tombs and banquets finds here something very different: a work of military engineering designed by people who knew they were at war.

The excavations have brought to light an eastern gate organized in two rooms in succession, a large circular cistern four meters in diameter lined with hydraulic plaster, a storehouse building of five rooms with traces of storage containers and a textile working area recognized from loom weights. These are elements that give back the daily life of a garrison: water, supplies, the work of the women, defense.

The end is documented with rare clarity. The layers show widespread fire, and near the gate nine clay sling bullets were recovered. The destruction is placed around 280 BC, coinciding with the Roman conquest of the territory of Vulci, the great Etruscan city of which this fortress was, in all likelihood, a frontier garrison. Rofalco is therefore the material testimony of the last act of Etruscan independence in this part of Etruria.

The excavations were carried out by the Gruppo Archeologico Romano together with the reserve and professional archaeologists, with campaigns that followed one another for years and with dedicated scientific publications. In some phases the investigations were interrupted and the excavated floor levels were protected with coverings. This means that what you see on the spot depends on the moment: in certain periods the structures are visible, in others they are covered for conservation. It's another good reason to phone beforehand.

On the practical side, Rofalco is reached by a route of about two kilometers, mostly flat, along mule tracks, of medium-low difficulty, which takes roughly two hours including the visit. The organized excursions normally start from Farnese, from the main street, with a morning meeting, and are accompanied by archaeologists and volunteers. Hiking shoes and water are needed. I don't give dates or fees because they change every season.

Sorgenti della Nova, 50 years of excavation

The second major site is Sorgenti della Nova, a tuff plateau between 217 and 305 meters above sea level, identified in 1938 by Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller and attributed with certainty to the Late Bronze Age after the exploratory soundings of 1968. The story of the site is also a story of damage: between 1973 and 1975 a pozzolana quarry destroyed a substantial part of it, reducing the original extent from about 15 hectares to the present six, equal to a rectangle of about 400 meters by 150.

After the quarry closed, in 1975, systematic excavations began, first under the direction of Rittatore Vonwiller and then under that of Nuccia Negroni Catacchio. The research has continued for about 50 years and has divided the plateau into sectors numbered I to XIII, distributed all around the promontory and on the summit. The picture that has emerged is that of a settlement organized on artificial terraces according to a genuine master plan, with houses, service structures and places of worship deliberately placed. In sector IX three large elliptical-plan huts with trench foundations have been identified.

There is then a second life of the site, medieval, with cave dwellings dug into the tuff, a single-nave church and a castle of which the remains of a tower survive. The plateau was therefore reoccupied after 2,000 years, and for the same reasons: a defensible position, nearby water, tuff that's easy to dig.

A clarification of administrative geography: Sorgenti della Nova is in the territory of Farnese, about three kilometers from the town, and is commonly presented together with the reserve. It is not verified whether it falls exactly inside the protected perimeter or immediately next to it: the official cartography should be consulted before taking it as certain.

The Tomba del Gottimo, the necropolises and the Roman remains

The Tomba del Gottimo is an Etruscan burial that local sources date between the sixth and fifth centuries BC. It is one of the points touched by the so-called Etruscan trail, the route that leads from the town to the ancient sites. Around it, the reserve preserves remains of necropolises of different eras, not all excavated and not all marked on the ground, which is a further reason not to leave the routes.

From the Roman era there remain traces of farms and roads. Don't expect monumental paving: they are mostly cuttings, terrace walls and foundation structures recognizable to those who know what to look for. The value of these remains is above all in reading the landscape. They show that, once Rofalco had fallen, the territory was reorganized into scattered agricultural estates, that is according to the Roman model, and that the edges of the lava continued to mark the limit between what was cultivated and what remained forest.

Santa Maria di Sala, the abbey in the forest

Among the reserve's cultural assets the most significant is Santa Maria di Sala, a Cistercian abbey whose origin is traced back to the Lombard era and which then passed to the Cistercians. It was restored in 2013 and 2014 at the initiative of the reserve, thanks to POR FESR Lazio funding. Some local sources describe it as a Templar church: it's an attribution widespread in popular writing but not confirmed by scientific studies, and I report it as local tradition, not as historical fact.

What you see today is a building recovered in an isolated rural context, with the original layout readable and without tourist superstructures. It's the kind of place that doesn't appear in general guidebooks and that those who get there tend to remember more than expected, precisely because of the contrast between the orderly architecture of the Cistercians and the geological disorder of the forest around it.

Something nobody tells you about the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

The forest is not a panoramic experience. This is the thing nobody writes and that is worth knowing before getting in the car for two hours. Inside the Selva del Lamone there are no viewpoints, no ridges from which you take in the landscape, no point where you stop and say you've understood the place. You walk inside, with your view closed off at 20 or 30 meters, and for hours the scenery is always the same: boulders, moss, twisted trunks, foliage. Whoever arrives looking for the postcard shot is disappointed, and this disappointment is the reason the Selva del Lamone has very polarized reviews.

The second thing that isn't said concerns noise, or rather its absence. The murce absorb sound in a strange way: footsteps become muffled, voices don't carry, and at 50 meters' distance two people in your group can call you without you hearing them. From a practical point of view it means a group scatters quickly and finding each other again is more complicated than in a normal forest. From the point of view of the experience it means the silence here is more absolute than almost anywhere in Lazio.

The third is that the ground is hard to walk on even where the trail is well marked. There is no significant elevation change, most routes stay around 100 meters of total elevation gain, and yet you end up more tired than expected, because the foot never finds two equal footholds. Anyone with delicate ankles needs to know. Anyone bringing small children should choose the shorter routes and give up the idea of the long loop.

Last note, and it concerns expectations about brigandage. The brigands' trail is a beautiful long-distance route, but on the ground there are no hideouts to visit, no outfitted caves, no signs saying Tiburzi slept here. The memory of brigandage in this area is documentary and museum-based, not monumental. If that's what interests you, the place to go is the brigandage museum in Cellere, outside the reserve.

The advice I give you for visiting the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

Take a guide, at least the first time. I say it knowing it sounds like a service recommendation and that many readers will skip it, but it's the difference between going home having walked in a confusing forest and going home having understood why that forest is the way it is. A murcia without explanation is a pile of stones. An explained murcia is the front of a flow that stopped there 150,000 years ago. A wall without explanation is a wall. A carbonile without explanation is a clearing a bit flatter than the others.

The second piece of advice is to build the day in two parts and not one. Morning in the forest, with a medium route and a precise goal, which can be Rofalco or the Strompia. Afternoon outside the forest, among Farnese, the Olpeta and the waterfalls. The reason is simple: after three or four hours under the canopy the head stops registering differences, and insisting adds nothing. The afternoon in the open, with the long light on the Maremma landscape, is what stays in your mind.

The third is to choose a short itinerary and do it well instead of a long loop done halfway. The Strompia trail is the best example for a first visit: tourist-level difficulty, about an hour and a half one way, total elevation gain around 100 meters, starting from Farnese with the possibility of arriving by car or bus at Pofinocchieto. It crosses the murce, passes through charcoal burners' clearings and shepherds' huts, and touches the formation called Murcia Strompia. In spring it's the route of the flowers.

Fourth and last: bring a change of clothes. Even without rain the forest is damp, the moss soaks you, and the drive back with soaked pants and the temperature dropping is the worst part of the day. Those who frequent the area always keep a dry sweatshirt in the trunk, and it's not fussiness.

The greenery, the trails and the waterfalls of the Olpeta

The Olpeta river marks part of the southern edge of the reserve. It rises from Lake Mezzano, the small crater just a little to the north, and descends toward the Fiora through a succession of gorges and flats. Along its course the forest changes nature: in place of Turkey oak and holm oak appears riparian vegetation, with willows, alders and poplars that close over the riverbed forming continuous galleries. The interplay of water, rocks and light passing in patches is what brings nature photographers here, and it is, to say it without exaggeration, the only context in the reserve where the landscape opens enough to make readable images.

The two waterfalls

Next to the reserve the Olpeta forms two drops: the Pelicotonno waterfall and the Salabrone waterfall. Both can be reached by routes that start from the dirt roads of the area and that present no technical difficulties, but that must be approached with care on the final stretch, where the wet rocks covered in algae are very slippery.

The Salabrone Waterfalls are the best known and the most photographed, with a drop that plunges into a pool between walls of volcanic rock. The Pelicotonno is less visited and for that reason, on certain days, more interesting. For both there is a seasonal observation worth taking seriously: the flow depends on the rains, and in July and August it can shrink to the point of making the drop little more than a trickle. Anyone planning the trip around the waterfalls should go between November and May, or after a rainy period.

On swimming there are no certainties: the pools are frequented, but on bans, ordinances or updated water quality data there is no verified information, and a swim in a watercourse isn't recommended on the basis of what you see in other people's photos.

The brigands' trail

The brigands' trail is a CAI-marked itinerary that links the Selva del Lamone Nature Reserve to the Monte Rufeno Nature Reserve, in the upper Viterbo area toward Acquapendente, also passing through Tuscan territory. It can be done on foot, by mountain bike and on horseback, and in the stretch inside the Selva del Lamone it enters environments that the short routes don't touch.

It's a multi-day walk, not a stroll, and it has to be approached with the logistics of a trek: planned stages, booked overnight stops, calculated water. Inside the Lamone the signage is there but it requires attention, and the stretches between one town and the next can be long. Anyone doing it by bicycle has to count on sections to push the bike, because the surface on the murce is not rideable under any optimistic interpretation of the term.

The network of the other routes

Besides the brigands' trail, the reserve publishes 15 numbered hiking trails, variants included, and six mountain bike itineraries. The names that recur in signage and documentation are those of the Strompia trail, the Etruscan trail toward the ancient sites, and the routes that descend toward the Olpeta. I don't list them all with lengths and times, because the numbering and the layouts get updated and a wrong list is worse than no list: get the updated map at the reserve's office or on the regional portal before leaving.

A recommendation on mountain biking: six marked itineraries do not mean six flowing routes. The lava surface is technical, and the idea of covering kilometers easily doesn't hold up here. Anyone who comes with a bicycle should think of the Selva del Lamone as terrain for a slow technical outing, not for grinding out distance.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

Everyone knows that brigands took refuge here. What is cited less is the reason the Lamone band was able to operate for 25 years: not the wildness of the forest, but the social network that supported it. Domenico Tiburzi, born in Pianiano in the municipality of Cellere on May 28, 1836 and called Domenichino because of his height, came into contact in January 1873, hiding in the very woods of the Lamone, with the fugitive Domenico Biagini known as il Curato: from there came what the sources call the Lamone band.

The part that matters is that this band worked as a private police force for the big landowners, operating between the upper Viterbo area and the lower Grosseto area, and financed itself with a brigandage tax, a tribute paid in money or in kind. It was not, therefore, a band at war with the territory: it was a piece of the local economic system, tolerated and partly wanted by those with an interest in a parallel order in the countryside. The Viterbo trial of 1893 had national resonance, attracted observers including foreign ones and gave material to the first modern newspaper reportage, among them that of Adolfo Rossi. Tiburzi died between October 23 and 24, 1896 at a farmhouse in the locality of Forane, in the Capalbio area, wounded in the legs and then finished off with a shot to the head during an operation by the carabinieri.

The forest, in this story, is the backdrop and not the protagonist. It served because it was impassable for those who didn't know it and perfectly readable for those who had grown up in it: the same geology that today makes hikers lose their bearings back then guaranteed an advantage to those who knew where to pass. It's a detail that changes the way you look at a murcia.

The right photo to take at the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

Inside the forest photography is difficult for a precise technical reason: contrast. The Turkey oak canopy lets light through in patches, so in the same frame you have deep shadows and blown-out spots, and the result is almost always an unreadable image. The solution is not the tripod, it's the time of day and the weather. The best photos in the Lamone are taken under an overcast sky, which works as a giant diffuser and flattens the contrast, or in the first hour after dawn, when the light enters at a low angle and the vapor among the trunks becomes visible.

The subject that works best is not the panorama, which doesn't exist, but the close-up detail: a moss-covered boulder with the rock showing through, a Turkey oak stump with the shoots starting up again, the irregular surface of the murcia with a dry leaf wedged between two blocks. These are images that convey the nature of the place better than any attempt to frame the forest as a whole.

If you're looking for the striking shot, the place is the Olpeta. The galleries of willows and alders above the water give depth and a direction to the eye, and the two waterfalls, Salabrone and Pelicotonno, are the only points in the area where the landscape organizes itself into a composition. Long exposures on water work, but in moderation: a one-second exposure gives you silk, 10 seconds give you a white blur.

At Rofalco the right photo is the one that shows the thickness of the wall. Put a person next to the polygonal masonry facing and the scale of the work becomes immediately understandable: six meters of thickness can't be read in a photograph without a human reference. Check, though, that at that moment the structures are visible and not protected by the site covers.

Last recommendation, a serious one: the drone. Over a protected area its use is subject to specific rules and possible authorizations, and the breeding season of the birdlife makes the disturbance anything but theoretical in an area with 75 confirmed nesting species. Ask the reserve first, and if the answer is no, accept it.

Some important events that happened here in history

Around 280 BC the fortress of Rofalco is taken and destroyed. The fire layers and the sling bullets found near the eastern gate are the direct archaeological testimony of that assault. It's the episode that closes the independent Etruscan history of this territory and that coincides with the Roman conquest of the Vulci area.

In January 1873 Domenico Tiburzi, hiding in the Selva del Lamone, makes contact with Domenico Biagini: the Lamone band is born, which will operate for about 25 years between the upper Viterbo area and the lower Grosseto area. The cycle ends in October 1896 with the killing of Tiburzi in the locality of Forane, in the Capalbio area.

In 1938 Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller identifies the site of Sorgenti della Nova. 30 years later, in 1968, the exploratory soundings confirm its attribution to the Late Bronze Age. Between 1973 and 1975 a pozzolana quarry destroys much of the plateau, reducing it from about 15 to about six hectares: it's the most serious damage suffered by the archaeological heritage of this territory in recent times. From 1975, once the quarry closed, the systematic excavations begin, which have continued for about 50 years under the direction of Nuccia Negroni Catacchio after that of Rittatore Vonwiller.

In the 1960s and 1970s of the 20th century the abandonment of farmland and pastures and the collapse of the exploitation of the forest for charcoal, timber, brushwood and grazing radically change the landscape: the secondary succession begins that has produced the shrublands and newly formed woods seen today.

In 1994 the Lazio Region establishes the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve by regional law, entrusting its management to the Municipality of Farnese. In 2005, by ministerial decree of March 25, the Selva del Lamone and the adjoining Crostoletto area are proposed as Sites of Community Importance. Between 2013 and 2014 the Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria di Sala is restored at the initiative of the reserve with POR FESR Lazio funding.

Who has passed through the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

The first for whom we have collective names and not individual ones are the Late Bronze Age inhabitants of Sorgenti della Nova, who around the eleventh century BC organized a terraced settlement according to a planned layout. Then the Etruscans, who at Rofalco kept a frontier garrison dependent on Vulci until the destruction of the fortress. Then the Romans, who after the conquest reorganized the countryside into farms and roads, leaving traces that today can be read only with an expert eye.

In the Middle Ages the forest was a land of rural parish churches, rock settlements and castles, as shown by the medieval reoccupation of the Sorgenti della Nova plateau with dwellings dug into the tuff, a single-nave church and the remains of a tower. The Cistercians left Santa Maria di Sala. Not far away, the story of the Duchy of Castro and of the city razed to the ground in 1649 by order of Innocent X is the great event of this corner of the Tuscia, and the memory of the destruction of Castro is still alive in the towns around.

In the 19th century the brigands pass through, and so do the men who chase them. Domenico Tiburzi remains the reference figure, with a fame that became national in 1893, at the Viterbo trial, and that the journalism of the time, Adolfo Rossi at the head, helped to build.

In the 20th century and until the 1950s the charcoal burners and shepherds pass through, who had huts in the forest still in use at that date. They are the last permanent inhabitants of the selva, and the flat clearings you meet on the trails are the charcoal-burning platforms where they worked. From 1975 onward the archaeologists pass through, from Rittatore Vonwiller to Negroni Catacchio to the volunteers of the Gruppo Archeologico Romano who excavated Rofalco. It is the latter, more than anyone else, who made legible what the forest had hidden.

When to go to the Selva del Lamone (VT) and when to avoid it

The best season is spring, by a wide margin. Between the second half of March and the end of May the understory is covered with cyclamens, anemones and violets, the canopy is not yet closed so the light reaches the ground, the temperatures allow walking for hours and the Olpeta still has enough flow for the waterfalls to be worth the trip. If you have to choose a single window, it's April.

Autumn is the second choice and it's quieter. From mid-October to mid-November the forest changes color, the ground is damp but not prohibitively muddy, and the clear days after a weather front give a quality of light that spring doesn't have. It's also the mushroom season, with everything that implies in terms of rules: find out from the Municipality of Farnese beforehand and don't improvise.

Summer is the season to handle with care. Under the canopy the temperature is lower than in the open, so July and August are not impossible, but the waterfalls shrink, the humidity makes the walk tiring, and above all the fire risk in a forest full of dead wood is real. On windy days and alert days access can be limited. If you go in summer, start early, finish by noon and light absolutely nothing, cigarettes included.

Winter is the season I advise against for anyone who doesn't know the place. The days are short, the darkness under the canopy arrives well before sunset time, the dirt access roads can be impassable after days of rain, and wet basalt is the most slippery surface imaginable. For those who know the trails, on the other hand, there is a bare forest that lets you see the geological structure as at no other time of the year.

Ticks, vipers and other concrete things

Ticks are a real presence from April to October across this whole strip of the Maremma. Long pants tucked into your socks, repellent, and a careful check in the evening: it's not alarmism, it's routine for anyone who frequents the area. Vipers exist as in the whole Apennines: they shouldn't be sought out, they shouldn't be bothered, and walking while making noise is almost always enough not to meet them. High boots reduce the problem to almost zero.

Wild boar are abundant. A normal encounter ends with the animal running away. The situations to avoid are a female with piglets and a dog off the leash: both are handled with the leash and a bit of distance.

What is around the Selva del Lamone (VT)

Farnese is the obligatory starting point and deserves more than the 20 minutes it usually gets. It's a village of medieval layout on a tuff spur, tied to the name of the family that took its own from here, with a compact historic center and a civic archaeological museum that gathers the materials of the territory, Sorgenti della Nova and Rofalco included. Seeing the objects before or after walking the sites changes the day completely.

A few kilometers away are Ischia di Castro, Canino and Valentano, three towns that tell different stories: the first preserves the memory of the Duchy of Castro, the second is the olive oil capital of this area, the third overlooks the Bolsena crater. The city of Castro, razed to the ground in 1649, lies in ruins in the forest and can be visited on dedicated routes, but it is outside the perimeter of the reserve.

To the south is Vulci, the archaeological and nature park of the great Etruscan city on which Rofalco depended, with the Devil's Bridge and the Abbadia castle. It's the visit that completes the Etruscan story begun in the forest, and if you have two days it's the pairing I recommend without hesitation. Also toward the sea, Tarquinia with its painted tombs and Tuscania with San Pietro and Santa Maria Maggiore are within reach in half a day.

To the east you quickly reach Lake Bolsena, the largest volcanic lake in Europe, with the village of Bolsena, Montefiascone on its fortress and the islands of Bisentina and Martana. It's the most convenient logistical base if you're looking for hotels and restaurants in quantity, which you won't find in Farnese. Farther north, toward Acquapendente, is the Monte Rufeno Nature Reserve, connected to the Lamone by the brigands' trail.

Beyond the border, in Tuscany, Pitigliano, Sorano and Sovana form the tuff triangle with the Etruscan sunken roads: they are half an hour away by car and belong to the same cultural landscape. Finally Viterbo, about 50 kilometers away, with the San Pellegrino quarter and the Papal Palace, if you want to end the weekend in a city.

Quick questions about the Selva del Lamone (VT)

Do you pay to enter the Selva del Lamone?

No. Access to the marked trails is free and without charge. You pay only for guided visits and organized excursions, with fees that change and that should be asked of the reserve.

How big is the reserve?

2,002 hectares, in the municipality of Farnese in the province of Viterbo. Established in 1994 by regional law, managed by the Municipality of Farnese.

Can you visit without a guide?

Yes, staying on the marked trails. The reserve itself, however, recommends the guided visit because of the difficulty of orientation, which here is not a ritual formula: the landmarks are very few and the false tracks are many.

How long does a typical excursion last?

It depends on the route. The Strompia trail takes about an hour and a half one way, with a total elevation gain around 100 meters and tourist-level difficulty. The excursion to Rofalco covers about two kilometers, mostly flat, on mule tracks, and takes about two hours including the visit to the site.

How many trails are there?

21 documented routes: 15 numbered hiking trails including variants, six mountain bike itineraries and the brigands' trail with the CAI mark, which can be done on foot, by bicycle and on horseback.

What shoes do you need?

Hiking boots with a lugged sole, preferably ankle-high. The ground is irregular lava boulders and sneakers are the most frequent cause of sprains.

Can you bring children?

Yes, on the short routes and taking it easy. The rough terrain tires you more than the elevation gain, which is minimal, so it's best to give up the long loops and choose a nearby goal.

Are dogs allowed?

Yes, on a leash. It's a rule that here has an evident practical reason: the density of wild boar and the nesting wildlife.

How do you reach Rofalco?

By a route of about two kilometers on mule tracks, medium-low difficulty. The organized excursions normally start from Farnese and are accompanied by archaeologists and volunteers of the Gruppo Archeologico Romano. It's best to book through the reserve's contacts.

Are the waterfalls worth the trip?

It depends on the season. The flow of the Olpeta depends on the rains, so between November and May yes, in high summer often no.

Is there phone signal?

In patches. Coverage is intermittent and in some hollows it disappears. Download the offline maps before going in.

Can you camp or bivouac?

Free camping is not permitted. For bivouacking, ask the reserve before making plans, because I don't take for granted that it's allowed.

Where do you sleep?

In Farnese and in the nearby towns the offer is mostly farm stays, bed and breakfasts and vacation homes. Those who want more choice base themselves at Lake Bolsena.

What is the reserve's contact?

Office in the locality of Bottino, Farnese (VT). The contacts published by the regional portal of protected areas are the phone 0761 458861, the mobile number 331 2346429 and the address rnselvalamone@regione.lazio.it.

What not to expect

Panoramas. Inside the forest the view is closed off and there are no viewpoints. Anyone looking for a view has to head out toward the Olpeta, toward Farnese or toward the lake.

Frequently asked questions about the Selva del Lamone Regional Nature Reserve

Do you pay to enter the Selva del Lamone?

No, access to the marked trails of the Selva del Lamone is free and without charge, with no ticket and no gate. You pay only for guided visits and organized excursions, with fees that should be asked of the reserve directly.

How big is the Selva del Lamone Nature Reserve?

The Selva del Lamone Nature Reserve extends over 2,002 hectares in the municipality of Farnese, in the province of Viterbo. It was established in 1994 by regional law and is managed by the Municipality of Farnese.

Can you visit the Selva del Lamone without a guide?

Yes, the Selva del Lamone can be visited without a guide along the network of the 21 official marked routes, but for the first time it's still best to take a guide. Without explanation the forest remains a confusing landscape, while with a guide it becomes readable, for example by recognizing a murcia as the front of an ancient lava flow instead of a simple pile of stones.

How do you get to the Selva del Lamone?

The reference town for reaching the Selva del Lamone is Farnese, a village of a little over 1,600 inhabitants in the province of Viterbo, perched on a tuff spur above the Nova stream. The forest begins practically at the edge of town, toward the north.

Does the Selva del Lamone have scenic points or viewpoints?

No, the Selva del Lamone does not offer a panoramic experience: inside the forest there are no viewpoints or ridges from which to take in the landscape. You walk with your view closed off at 20 or 30 meters, immersed in the vegetation, and this should be kept in mind before planning the visit.

What is the best time to visit the Selva del Lamone?

The best time to visit the Selva del Lamone is spring, in particular between the second half of March and the end of May, with April as the ideal month. In that window the understory is covered with cyclamens, anemones and violets, the light still reaches the ground and the Olpeta waterfalls have enough flow to be worth the trip.

What is there to see inside the Selva del Lamone besides the forest?

Inside the Selva del Lamone there are archaeological sites that run from the Late Bronze Age to the Middle Ages, among them the springs of the Nova and the Etruscan fortress of Rofalco, destroyed around 280 BC. The territory has remained intact precisely because the lava rock was never plowed.

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