SABINA TRAVELOGUE 2013 PART 8 - TUSCANIA, ETRUSCAN TOMBS IN SUTRI & SOCCER ON THE PIAZZA - March 11, 2013

The view from our room at Hotel Tuscania of the medieval churches built above the old Etruscan acropolis outside the walls

Last year we made an excursion into Etruscan country across the Tiber into the Provincia di Viterbo to visit our dear friends Clelia and Daniele who live in Tuscania. Tuscania has deep Etruscan roots. A legend links its founding to Ascanius, one of the sons of Aeneas, the Trojan hero of Virgil's Aeneid. As far as can be ascertained a small city-state centred on an acropolis on a hill now occupied by the Chiesa di San Pietro and Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore was founded sometime in the 8th century BC. The imposing medieval ruins of these two churches are well worth a visit. 

Sadly, both these churches, along with many buildings in the city of Tuscania, were severely damaged in an earthquake in 1971. The earthquake left twenty people dead, over one hundred injured and close to 5,000 people homeless. Looking at the city now it is hard to imagine the terrible damage and destruction of only forty three years ago. 

Luigi Pasquarelli's poem "Tuscania Muta" commemorates the victims of the 1971 earthquake

Here and there along the road leading to the church and arrayed around the churches' walls are stone Etruscan sarcophagi, often with lids that are carved the image of the person who was once laid to rest inside.    

Tourist map of Tuscania showing eleven of the main sites.

But the medieval walled town of Tuscania, with its winding cobbled streets and rustic tufo stone walled palazzi, frescoed churches, and its many fountains, has a charm all its own. 

The beautiful pastel colours of the houses of Tuscania

The walls and the town of Tuscania as seen from our hotel room.

Richard and Daniele walk down the colourful cobbled main street of Tuscania

On Sunday, we joined our friends Daniele and Clelia for a special lunch with some of Clelia's friends from her youth. We had a wonderful multi-course lunch at a restaurant called Sette Cannelle which is named after a landmark seven spouted fountain a few steps away.

Image of the Sette Cannelle Fountain courtesy of Settemuse.it

The natural golden glow of the restaurant interior reflected perfectly our golden mood. What a wonderful lunch!

One of the many fountains we saw in Tuscania. The imposing church of Santa Maria Maggiore looms in the distance

Fountain in one of the main piazzas in Tuscana

Detailed view of the mermen statues on the fountain in the previous image

The day after our big lunch Daniele took us exploring the Tuscania that lay outside its medieval walls. During the morning, we visited the churches of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Pietro. Sadly, as it was a Monday morning, we never got to see inside, but their exteriors were very impressive. One day I hope we can go back and see their interiors... 

Towards noon, we said goodbye to Tuscania and our friends Clelia and Daniele and headed south along the Via Cassia to Sutri, an important Etruscan and later Roman city. The night we drove to Tuscania from Casperia we had noticed what seemed to be the remains of hundreds of Etruscan tombs lining the Via Cassia. We wanted to take a closer look at those, and of course find a place for lunch... But what I was really interested in seeing though was an intriguing rock church in Sutri called Madonna del Parto. 

This rock church with its stunning medieval frescoes seems is located in what once was an Etruscan rock tomb, or possibly even a house, that later on in Roman times was expanded and used as a Mithraeum, or temple of the Mithraic Mysteries. Mithraism, a popular eastern cult adopted by the Romans, came from Persia. One of the best known Roman Mithraeums can be seen beautifully preserved under Rome's San Clemente Basilica near the Colosseum.    

This church and its frescoes first came to my attention through this photo posted online by our friend Giorgio Clementi.

Photo of Chiesa della Madonna del Parto courtesy of Giorgio Clementi

"To Visit the Mitreo, see the staff in charge of the amphitheatre" Unfortunately the amphitheatre was closed on Monday. 

It is easy enough to find the church... Large signs indicating the "Mithraeum" can been seen as you walk along the Via Cassia. A smaller sign to the left of the main sign explaining the history of the church tells visitors wanting to visit the site to ask the staff at the entrance to the Roman Amphitheatre a couple of hundred metres further down the road. We took a leisurely stroll south toward the amphitheatre along the Via Cassia exploring the many Etruscan rock tombs we came across as we went.

Entranceway into the Mitreo, now the Chiesa della Madonna del Parto

The rock wall to the left of the door to the church with windows and other carved notches

Etruscan rock tombs.

Inside on of the Etruscan tombs.

This shot of Richard standing in the entry of a tomb gives you an idea of their scale

The interior of these tombs had an eerie colour. The greens ranged from most to verdigras

Burial niches along the wall of the tomb

Another very large tomb 

Every so often, I get to be in a picture.

Here and there between the doors of the tombs were carved shallow stone niches into the wall. I have no idea what their purpose was... Perhaps there was at one time a statue or some other carving mounted there. 

During the middle ages many of these old tombs were used as cantinas for storage, workshops, even stables for animals. From the chevron shaped incision above the door in this picture it looks like there may have been a wooden portico structure added to keep rain off the door.   

Non of these photos have been retouched.. the eerie colours are as we saw them

Each tomb had a different scale and layout. Some were absolutely massive. We took our time and explored each one. It was great to be there alone during the off season without a lot of other tourists to change the mood. During the Etruscan age, which stretched over eight centuries, innumerable generations of families must have been laid to rest in these tombs. At one time there may have been frescoes and other painted decoration on the walls, like those you see in the more famous Etruscan necropoli at Tarquinia and Cerveteri... and of course, there would have been ceramics, weapons, and other grave goods buried along with them.

Who were buried in these tombs? What were their names? How long did they lay there undisturbed? Did the Romans despoil the tombs, or later invading barbarians? How were these spaces used in the middle ages and later times? If only the walls could talk.

We finally reached the end of the hill to the entrance to the Roman amphitheatre. The entire complex is one piece of rock carved into to hillside. It wasn't built up, it was carved down into the tufo. 

Sadly, it being Monday, there was no one at the amphitheatre office so we not only did not get in to see the mitreo/church, but we could only take pictures of the amphitheatre from outside. 

We continued further south along the Cassia to another hill and more Etruscan tombs. These were even more elaborate than the ones we had seen earlier.

Some of the doors to these tombs seemed impossibly low but we concluded that centuries of rain washing mud, silt and other debris to the valley below must have changed the level of the ground.

By the time we had reached the end of this second set of tombs it was well past noon and we were ready to see what Sutri could provide in the way of a good lunch. 

We had failed to get inside the Mitreo to see the medieval frescoes... I thought the next best thing would be to have lunch in a little eatery across the street with the same name.

The Antica Osteria Il Mitreo turned out to be a great choice. It is a lovely little restaurant. The affable waitress there works hard for her money... Every time she has to go to the kitchen she has to climb up a flight of steps, not to mention descend them carefully when her hands are filled with steaming hot plates of food. 

Long story short, we had one of the nicest restaurant lunches during our trip so far. We started out with some beautiful bruschette topped with tomato and cicoria.

According to Richard, the gnocchi he ordered were some of the best he had ever eaten. 

My plate of Amatriciana was wonderful as well.

I think you can see by the expression on Richard's face that by the end of the meal we were two very happy guys.

When we finally stuck our heads out of the restaurant a light rain had started to fall. With full bellies and happy hearts we headed bad to the car and headed for the road that would take us back to the Sabina.

We arrived back in Casperia during the latter part of the afternoon siesta. Both the Conad Alimentari and Friends were closed... Just as well, we needed to get our luggage up the hill over those stone cobbled steps which we had been missing...

Later in the afternoon we went back down the winding stone stairs to do some shopping at the alimentari then headed back through the Porta Romano up to the piazza to wait for Friends to open for our requisite Negronis. 

Richard wairs for Friends to open

Nicoleta, her famous Negronis, and the usual abundance of snacks that came with each drink order

The sun had set. Everything was calm, silent. The sky was a beautiful peaceful indigo...

Then from somewhere, someone brought out a soccer ball and all hell broke loose as Richard, Nicoleta, Stefano and I played a crazy game with the ball on the piazza.














We were like little kids. 

Richard did a number of amazing head shots...

...and Stefano sent the ball a number of times over the wall...

Stefano coming in through the Porta Romana after retrieving an errant ball

...or sometimes sent it out the town gate. We were all giddy with laughter...  

It was hilarious.

Finally exhausted, we dragged ourselves up the hill to Il Sogno where Richard made a fire while I made a light dinner. 

At dinner we drank wine from Viterbo from replica Etruscan ceramic cups that our friends Clelia and Daniele had given us in Tucania, toasting our good fortune to have found this magic place and feeling grateful for the good friends that we have here.

✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵

We loved Tuscania. We had a great room with a panorama view at the HOTEL TUSCANIA

Click here to learn more about SUTRI, one of the BEST SMALL TOWNS IN ITALY

ANTICA OSTERIA IL MITREO
Via Cassia Sud, 4, 
01015 Sutri, Viterbo
Tel: 0761 659008

CASPERIA'S CANTINAS - The Secret World Behind Those Beautiful Old Doors

Our cat Smokey checking an old cantina on Via Latini in Casperia 

In North America the word "Cantina" means a type of bar or tavern, one that usually has a Mexican or Spanish motif. Here in Italy, however, a cantina is a storage room, more often or not a wine cellar. 

During our first visit to the Sabina in 2009, we were struck by the rustic, often ruined beauty of the doors to these cantinas. We took dozens of pictures of these doors here in Casperia, and also in neighbouring Roccantica. I always thought that someone with a more practiced eye, a better camera than mine, and time to wait for the right lighting could make an excellent calendar of pictures of those doors. 

Photo of Casperia Cantina door courtesy of Richard Rooney. Note entry hole made for cats.

But it has only been in the past little while, during our current stay in the Sabina, that I have had the opportunity to see inside some of these cantine (the proper Italian plural for cantina) and learn about the mysteries that lay hidden behind those doors... and wonder what might lurk hidden underneath their floors... 

A beautiful cantina in Poggio Catino

We have a lovely new friend here in Casperia, Maria Piazza. Her parents were Italians who emigrated from Italy to the UK. Maria's father was from Sicily and her mother was from Frosinone in southern Lazio.  Maria was born in England, but moved to Italy in 1974 where she met and married her Tuscan-born art teacher husband Paolo. She has been living here in Casperia for the past four decades. 

Maria holds the large antique key that opens her cantina. 's key on Via Rivellini

Maria and Paolo have a lovely home on Casperia's Via Rivellini, the road that follows the old ramparts of the outer castle walls of the borgo. Rivellini in Italian actually means ramparts. You can see one of the old defensive towers behind Maria in the photo.

Maria and Paolo's house is a marvel. Maybe I have not seen enough houses in Casperia to realize that it may not be that unusual but to me the interior is absolutely magical. It reminds me a bit of Frodo's house at Bag End in Hobbiton in the movie The Lord of the Rings. The kitchen and dining room area is a dream. According to Maria, this part of the house was at one point stables. The animals lived in the lower floors and people lived above. The twisted, uneven, rustic beams in the ceiling attest to this section of the house's humble origins. 

The venerable, twisted beams in the ceiling of Maria's kitchen. This part of the house was once a stable.

The living area behind the kitchen is cut out of the living rock which still intrudes here and there. The bathroom and office are located in what once was a vicolo, or public alleyway. So much history and tantalizing hints of story packed into such a small charming place! 

A few days back I spent some time with Maria, taking a walk through the vie and vicoli of Casperia, listening to her talk about the way the castle town was built and the connection between the many cantinas (the proper Italian plural is cantine)... 

Cantine doors on the main vie that circle the hill almost always face toward the outer castle walls.

 ...and the houses nearby. 

The houses which are built above the stable and storage areas have doors that face away from the castle walls.

One thing I had not properly noted before Maria explained it to me is that when you walk along a Via or street in Casperia, you are usually walking parallel to the town walls on a road that curves around the hill that Casperia­­‑old Aspra‑was built on. Cantinas are usually on ground level and houses built above them. This means that usually the doors on one side of the Via, the side closer to the top of the hill, is all cantine while the doors on the side closer to the wall are doors to houses that have been built above the cantinas.

Visiting Maria's huge cantina was an eye opener. Previous to being invited in to see her cantina, and the neighbouring cantina of our friends Massimo and Giampiero, I had never imagined that the space behind those old wooden doors could be so huge. 

Our friend Massimetto Romani shows just how large a cantina can be.  

Cantine can often be two storeys high and can be more than a dozen metres deep. The back end of the cantina is almost always the bare living rock. 

The weight of the multi-storey stone house above is distributed and carried by round brick arches that create a classic Roman vault. 

Throughout their history cantine were not only used to store wood, wine and extra furniture, but were often used as workshops. Maria's cantina had a place cut out of the living rock where limestone was worked to create lime, possibly for whitewash. There was even a flume made of terra cotta roof tiles along one wall that brought in rain water or water from an elevated cistern into the work area. 

Terracotta roof tiles used to create a water flume along the wall inside Maria's cantina.

So much history was written in those walls and, in some, secrets lay buried under their floors. Maria and Paolo have two cantinas and in both of them are underground chambers that have been filled in and buried.

Buried under the wood is an ancient chamber... Who knows what secrets it holds

In the smaller of their two cantine I was shown the outlines of a buried chamber or tunnel under the woodpile. In the larger of the two cantinas there is a massive vaulted area that has been filled in. You can clearly see a brick archway forming the roof of the chamber buried beneath the floor. How big a space lays under that brick archway, what is was used for, what it might contain now and why it was buried is all a tantalizing mystery.

What secrets lay under this buried vaulted section of the cantina? Just old wine jugs? 

Visiting Maria's cantina gave me some inspiration and ideas for the murder mystery I am writing while I am here in the Sabina. 

Just a few of the interesting things you will find abandoned inside an old cantina 

With that in mind, today I decided to look for more inspiration and took another tour around Casperia taking pictures of cantina doors with the idea of finally getting down to writing this long overdue post on my Sabina blog.

Of course, all I could hope for today was to photograph the outside of the cantinas, but as luck would have it, I bumped into our friend Massimo Romani outside his house, which is right opposite their family cantina, one of the largest I have ever seen in the Sabina. Massimo very kindly allowed me in to take some pictures. 

This is the more rustic back half of the Romani family cantina 

Grazie infinite Massimo!

Wood for a couple of months in the Romani family cantina. See two other photos of the Romani family cantina above.

A side grotto in the Romani family cantina where wine is made and stored

I did a zigzag walk through Casperia photographing mostly along Via San Rocco, Via Massari and then Via Garibaldi. Here are some of my favourite cantina photos.

Some cantinas and their doors have been beautifully restored...

Some cantinas are in ruins. Note the steel beam supporting the arch holding up the floor of the house above.

I am not sure if the road was raised at one point and stairs had to be made to get from the raised road to the cantina below but this entrance is one of the more unusual I have seen in Casperia.

A better view of the steps down into the cantina.

This magnificent old cantina entrance is on Via San Rocco.

Cantina below a ruined house on Via Massari. The next photo shows the house above.

Here is the house above the ruin. I have been inside. It would make a wonderful little apartment,

Here you can see how the original door of the cantina has been reworked over the years, eventually made smaller. 

Two beautiful cantina doors on Via Massari.

I even found that some of the old castle towers had cantina carved out of them.

The tower over the bastion on Via Nardi-Bruschi. There is the house, but where is their cantina? 

Around the corner at the base of the tower.

Every so often you find some indication of how old the stonework is that you are looking at. Above this cantina just inside the Porta Romana can be seen a brick with a date written on it.

A cantina on the street leading up into the town from the Porta Romana.

  

The monogram above IHS are the first three letters in the Greek name of Jesus. And the date of the work is 1590.

After my walk photographing the cantinas I stopped by Vigna for a glass of wine with our friend Giampiero who is Massimetto's brother. 

Giampero and I cast shadows of the limestone wall of Vigna, formerly Friends Cafe.

We chatted for a while enjoying yet another spectacular Sabine sunset. I took some photos just as the sun was setting behind Monte Soratte. 

Check out the rays of sunlight or raggi di sole, over Monte Soratte

After I finished my wine, I took a number of photos showing the route to our house from outside the town main gate, the Porta Romana. I will put this in another post. Enroute I bumped into a young lad we have seen grow up over the years we have been visiting here in Casperia, our neighbour Francesco, and he asked me. "Did you see the tornado last night?" I asked "Tornado? When?" He said last night at 9:00. I knew it was a bad wind storm but I had no idea that there had been a trombo d'aria as it is called here. At home, I took some more photos of Monte Soratte from our window.

And so ended another wonderful day in the Sabina... a land of beauty... a land of mystery... a land of interesting and complex characters... and enough dark secrets, I hope, to propel me through the process of writing my first novel, a murder mystery.