The best hidden hill towns that eat well in the province of Viterbo
Upper Lazio is volcanic country, and the food follows the rock. Towns sit on tufo spurs above wooded gorges, the houses cut from the same grey-brown stone as the cliffs they stand on, and the kitchens work with what the crater soils give: hazelnuts from the Cimini hills, chestnuts, lentils, ricotta and pecorino from the sheep on the plateau, wild boar through the autumn. Winter brings acquacotta, bread soaked in broth with wild greens and an egg broken over it. Spring brings artichokes, and the Est! Est!! Est!!! whites from around Lake Bolsena turn up on every list. It is inland eating, unshowy and heavy on bread.
Most people who come to the province go to Viterbo itself, and reasonably so: the papal palace, the San Pellegrino quarter, the thermal pools outside the walls. In high season the medieval centre and the free hot springs at the Bulicame absorb almost every visitor the region gets, and the coach parties on the Rome day-trip circuit stop for lunch there before turning back. It is a fine city. It is also where the crowd already is.
The tufo and the hazelnut groves do not stop at the city gates. The same country runs north towards Acquapendente and the Bolsena shore, east above the Tiber, and south through the Cimini woods towards Sutri and the old Etruscan road cuts, and the towns along it keep the same cellars, the same butchers and the same cooking, with fewer people at the tables. These are the smaller places in that landscape where a dining guide has singled out somewhere to eat, worth a detour on the way between Rome and Umbria.
Of the 16 communes we have mapped in the province of Viterbo, 7 qualify as hill towns that eat well: each is an inland hill settlement, and a dining guide has named a table in each. This list is the hidden ones, 6 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Calcata, has 905 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best towns that eat well in the province of Viterbo and The 9 best hidden hill towns that eat well within 90 minutes of Terni.
Calcata
Why visit Calcata
Calcata sits on a tufa cliff above the Treja valley, forty kilometers north of Rome. The Anguillara family walled and castled it in the 13th century.
In 1935 the Italian government condemned the village as structurally unsafe and ordered residents to move down to the new town in the valley below. Most did.
The empty houses on the cliff were re-occupied by artists, hippies and a small bohemian community from the late 1960s onward; they cleared the alleys, opened studios and bars, and turned an officially uninhabitable village into one of Lazio's strangest functioning settlements. The Holy Foreskin relic of Jesus was kept in the parish church here from 1527, taken from the Sancta Sanctorum during the Sack of Rome, and was an active object of pilgrimage until the relic was stolen in 1983 and the Vatican suppressed its cult.
Calcata Vecchia is now a single street of workshops on a cliff edge above the Parco della Valle del Treja.
La Piazzetta have been named by a guide.
What to see in Calcata
- Calcata Vecchia. Medieval village on a tufa cliff, condemned in 1935 and re-occupied from the 1960s by artists and craftspeople.
- Castello Anguillara. 13th-century baronial castle of the Anguillara family, partially restored, now owned by the Treja Valley park.
- Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Gesù. Parish church that held the Holy Foreskin relic from 1527 until its theft in 1983.
How to get to Calcata
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 66 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are when Calcata works. The Treja valley below is in leaf, the cliff in sun, the workshops and bars in the old village all open. July and August push past thirty degrees and the artist community thins out.
Bassano in Teverina
Why visit Bassano in Teverina
Bassano in Teverina sits at 304 meters on a tufa spur on the eastern offshoots of the Cimini hills, where Lazio meets Umbria above the Tiber valley. It is the smallest commune in the Tuscia Viterbese: 1,260 residents on a hill above the river.
The town is built around the Torre dell'Orologio, a twenty-five-meter peperino tower with a hand-painted majolica clock from around 1700 on its face. Inside it, walled into the structure, stands the Romanesque bell tower of the older church of the Madonna dei Lumi, built around 1100 and embedded within the new tower between 1559 and 1571 by the Madruzzo family.
The inner bell tower is one of the rare Italian campanili animati, with anthropomorphic figures carved into its peperino columns. The Madonna della Quercia chapel, built 1674-1678, stands around the oak where a tile of the Madonna and Child was found.
Bassano is a Borgo più Bello and a Città della Nocciola of the Tonda Gentile Romana DOP.
Olivo Ristorante dell'Olivo Country Club have been named by a guide.
What to see in Bassano in Teverina
- Torre dell'Orologio. Twenty-five-meter peperino tower of around 1500 with majolica clock face from 1700, built around an older Romanesque bell tower by the Madruzzo family.
- Campanile Animato (Madonna dei Lumi). Eleventh-century Romanesque bell tower walled inside the Torre dell'Orologio, with anthropomorphic figures carved into its peperino columns.
- Santuario della Madonna della Quercia. Built 1674-1678 around the oak where a tile of the Madonna and Child was found, on the road below the centro storico.
How to get to Bassano in Teverina
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 36 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the months for Bassano. Hazelnut groves leaf out in late April, harvest comes in late August into September, and the Tiber valley clears of haze in autumn. July and August touch the mid-thirties; the small centro storico empties in the afternoon heat.
Caprarola
Why visit Caprarola
Caprarola stands at about 510 meters on the volcanic slopes of the Cimini, six kilometers east of Lago di Vico. The town is built on a single axis that climbs from the lower village to the Villa Farnese, the pentagonal Renaissance palace that organises everything below it.
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger designed the original fortress in 1530; after Sangallo's death the work was suspended, and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese the Younger reassigned it to Vignola in 1559. Vignola kept the pentagonal plan but turned it from a fortress into a Mannerist residence, with a circular colonnaded courtyard at its center, a scala regia spiraling between floors and the fresco cycles of the Zuccari brothers.
The plan was the model later copied for the Pentagon in Washington. Behind the villa, the Giardini Farnese climb into the chestnut and beech woods of the Cimini.
Caprarola is part of the Città della Nocciola and Città del Castagno networks, a recognition of the volcanic soils that produce both.
Trattoria del Cimino, Vineria Vignola Salumeria e cucina have been named by a guide.
What to see in Caprarola
- Villa Farnese. Pentagonal Mannerist palace by Vignola, built 1559-1573 on Sangallo's earlier fortress plan, with a circular colonnaded courtyard.
- Giardini Farnese. Sixteenth-century formal garden and casino di caccia behind the villa, climbing into the chestnut woods of the Cimini.
- Lago di Vico. Volcanic crater lake at 510 meters, one of the highest of the major Italian lakes, shared with Ronciglione.
How to get to Caprarola
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 67 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for the villa and the Cimini woods, when the chestnut canopy holds shade and Lago di Vico is at its clearest. July and August push the lower town into the low thirties; the high ceilings of the Villa Farnese keep visitors cool through the heat. The hazelnut harvest runs late August and September, the chestnut harvest follows in October, and both fill the surrounding sagre. Hazelnut Festival falls in August.
Ronciglione
Why visit Ronciglione
The town stands on a tufa spur at 441 meters, five kilometers from the lake, with the Cimini hills and their hazelnut groves closing in around it on every side. The first record of it dates to 1103.
The Prefetti di Vico held it before the Farnese took it as a Duchy, and the sixteenth-century pontiff who granted the town its Carnival did so during that same passage of rule from prefects to dukes. The fortress's towers control the single natural approach to the historic center, so the medieval town and its defenses are really one structure: whoever held the towers held the road in.
Everything built afterward, the cathedral, the contrade, the Carnival itself, sits inside that same defended perimeter. What the RAI title recognized in 2023 was less a single monument than that whole arrangement still intact: a fortified approach, a walled center, and a lake and hills that have not changed shape around it.
Riva Felice have been named by a guide.
What to see in Ronciglione
- Rocca dei Borgia (I Torrioni). Medieval fortress of the Prefects of Vico, twin round towers guarding the only natural approach to the centro storico.
- Duomo dei Santi Pietro e Caterina. Baroque cathedral of 1671, polychrome marble altar, fifteenth-century triptych by a Viterbo painter, wooden statue of San Bartolomeo.
- Lago di Vico. Volcanic lake ringed by the Cimini hills, its waters filling the crater below the level of the town on its spur.
How to get to Ronciglione
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 64 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Ronciglione
“Suddenly, we weren't running around. Ronciglione has nothing, and I mean zero things to show you. It's a pretty generic medieval town near Rome. It doesn't have a big piazza. There is a gate, a duomo, 2-3 main streets, and pretty much that's it. Yet, it was the center of our attention at that time. After spending just a few days there, we went back to Rome without wrinkles, with an oddly weird smile on our faces.”
Read our piece on Ronciglione →Ronciglione | Baptism into the Other Italy
Our tip
April through June brings the Cimini hills into green, hazelnut groves in flower and Lake Vico cool enough for the morning. September and October are the harvest months, dry, mild, with the air clear enough to see Monte Cimino from the Rocca. July and August touch the upper thirties and fill the lake with Romans on weekends. Palio di Ronciglione falls in July.
Acquapendente
Why visit Acquapendente
Acquapendente sits at the northern edge of Lazio, where the Paglia river marks the boundary with Tuscany. The name first appears in a document of Emperor Otto I dated 964, taken from the small waterfalls that drop the river toward the plain.
The town grew up along the pilgrim road that runs north to south through it, and the church at its center, with its Romanesque crypt and sacellum copying the tomb in Jerusalem, gave the settlement its old nickname, the Green Jerusalem. The built-up center holds the basilica and the streets that carry the floral mosaics each May, while outward from it the town's territory stretches to two very different edges: the frazione of Torre Alfina to the north, with its own restored castle and a listing among the country's most beautiful villages, and the forest of the Monte Rufeno reserve beyond that, nearly 3,000 hectares of oak and beech reached by marked trails.
A river border, a pilgrim route, and a nickname earned by a copied tomb: together they describe a town shaped less by what it produced than by what passed through it and what was built to receive those travelers.
La Parolina have been named by a guide.
What to see in Acquapendente
- Basilica Concattedrale del Santo Sepolcro. Twenty-four columns divide the crypt into nine naves. The sacellum sits carved into the rock at the center, a form pilgrims would have recognized as a copy of the tomb it names.
- Pugnaloni. Panels built from flower petals pressed into wooden frames, carried through the streets by each quarter of the town on the third Sunday of May.
- Castello di Torre Alfina. Neo-Gothic restored fortress in the frazione of Torre Alfina, itself listed among I Borghi più belli d'Italia.
How to get to Acquapendente
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 96 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for walking the Via Francigena and the trails of Monte Rufeno. The Pugnaloni festival fills the streets on the third Sunday of May and is the single best weekend in the calendar. July and August touch the mid-thirties in the Paglia valley; pilgrims start earlier and finish by mid-morning.
Sutri
Why visit Sutri
Sutri sits at 291 meters on a narrow tuff spur, fifty kilometers north of Rome on the old road linking the two. The Etruscans held it before the Romans took it in the fourth century BC, and it was among the colonies that refused further military contributions to Rome during the Second Punic War in 209 BC.
The rock-cut monuments that define the town, the arena, the temple turned sanctuary, the chamber tombs, all come from the same tuff spur the town is built on, so the stone that gives Sutri its ground is also what its Etruscan and Roman residents carved into. The high ground above, where the eighteenth-century villa and its gardens sit, looks down over that older excavated town rather than sitting apart from it.
Local tradition ties the town's beans to Charlemagne, who passed through and was supposedly relieved of an attack of gout by Sutri's variety. What the place adds up to is a settlement where the town and its excavation are the same rock: nothing was built so much as removed.
N'uovo Vino e Cucina have been named by a guide.
What to see in Sutri
- Anfiteatro Romano. Elliptical amphitheater about forty-nine by forty meters, carved directly out of the tuff rock rather than built on it.
- Mithraeum / Madonna del Parto. Roman temple to Mithras hewn into the tuff and reused as a Marian sanctuary, accessed through the medieval rock-cut church.
- Necropoli rupestre. Etruscan necropolis with dozens of rock-cut chamber tombs in the cliff face along the Via Cassia.
How to get to Sutri
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Roma is roughly 57 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the best months in the tuff country, when the amphitheater grass is green and the gardens of Villa Savorelli are open. July and August push afternoons into the mid-thirties; the rock-cut Mithraeum and tomb chambers stay cool and become the part of the visit that doesn't need to be timed. November through March is quiet.
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