Ancient Spirits

Day 1: Arrival at hotel: unpack, acclimatize. We meet for the afternoon passeggiata around town. We’ll have a prosecco cocktail then dinner together to get acquainted and discuss our plans for the week.

Day 2: After breakfast we’ll explore Tarquinia, including the National Museum in Palazzo Vitelleschi and the Ara della Regina monumental temple base at the site of the original Etruscan city nearby. Lunch will be classic. Afterwards, we’ll go on to Tuscania where we’ll see the town’s ancient, medieval and modern structures. We return to the hotel, with ample time before cocktails and dinner in the center of San Pellegrino, the medieval core of Viterbo.

Day 3: After breakfast, we visit the Rocca Albornoz museum near the hotel then go to the top of the nearby volcanic peak, Monte Cimino, through the Faggeta beech forest near Soriano. Harvested for its big game in Coliseum heydays, the high green canopy and loamy forest floor now is a muted oasis in all seasons,. We’ll have a picnic lunch here before proceeding around suggestive Lago di Vico and then on to the ruins of the Roman town at Ferento, outside of Viterbo, before returning to the city for cocktails and dinner.

Day 4: We set out from Viterbo early to see the Etruscan tombs at Norchia as well as the archaeological marvels at Grotta Porcina and San Giuliano or, if feeling energetic, we walk the trail in the Parco Suburbano Maturanum from Blera to Barbarano Romano. We lunch in a restaurant famous for mountain cuisine before a beautiful drive to Vetralla, then Sutri and see a tufo carved Roman amphitheater and the ancient church of Santa Maria del Parto on our way to our accommodation in Civita Castellana.

Day 5: Civita Castellana, the capitol of the Faliscan empire, was abandoned after Roman conquest in 241 BC,. We visit a spectacular collection of Etruscan objects in one of the Borgia Castles designed by Sangallo at the very beginning of the Renaissance. An hour later, we will walk a length of the ancient Via Amerina, crossing the even older bridges and prehistoric tombs. Stopping for a light lunch en route, we’ll see the Romanesque basilica at Castel Sant’Elia above the stunning Treja river valley, on our way to quirky Calcata and Opera Bosco sculpture park.

Day 6: After breakfast, we visit Rome’s northern port on Tiber River, the transfer point from boat to cart for produce sent down the Via Flaminia to the million residents of Republican Rome. We are invited to visit a local vineyard and to have cocktails on a medieval rooftop overlooking the valley. You might be hungry again five days after our farewell dinner.

Day 7: After breakfast we’ll leave the hotel at 9 a.m. for return travel to your airport or train station.

For availability, contact us here.

The continuity with ancient civilization can still be found in Italy close to tourist meccas, in Northern Lazio. Tuscia’s nature reserves, small towns and archaeological sites have a palpable, powerful sense of perpetuity and place.

In this area north of Rome and south of Florence, the sites of the ancient cities of the Etruscans, Faliscans, Greeks and Romans people were chosen either for their usefulness or for their beauty. These places which in ancient times were sacred, strategic, or both, were either absorbed into the next generation of cities, towns or holy sites, or were abandoned, undeveloped.

On this seven-day tour we will show you some of these archeological, unspoiled and stirring places where you enter history. We wander, contemplate, meander, observe, eat well and sleep comfortably. We walk or take carriages to many of the ancient sites that are now otherwise inaccessible on the outskirts of modern towns, hidden deep in woods and near ancient rivers. The romantic beauty of ancient natural places is an opportunity to transcend the stresses of modern life.

We’ll stay in two different towns in the week: Viterbo, the provincial capitol, and Civita Castellana, the second largest town in the province. During our tour we hope to visit most or all of the following places, depending on circumstances, scheduling and allowing for the unforeseen: Tarquinia, Tuscania, Viterbo, Monte Cimino, Ferento, Lago di Vico, Norchia, Grotta Porcina, San Giuliano, Parco Suburbano Maturanum, Blera, Barbarano Romano, Vetralla, Sutri, Civita Castellana, Otricoli, Calcata and Castel Sant’Elia.