Bassano in Teverina: what to see in the village of the hidden bell tower

Bassano in Teverina is the home village of Villa Vacanze Valentina, so we are biased. But the titles speak for themselves: it is one of the Borghi più belli d'Italia, the club of Italy's most beautiful villages, and since June 2025 it has held the Touring Club's Orange Flag. Just over a thousand people on a spur of tuff above the Tiber valley, about 90 km from Rome: a little over an hour's drive, with the Orte exit of the A1 fifteen minutes away. A story of destruction and rebirth, and two secrets few people know: a bell tower hidden inside another tower, and the palazzo where Cy Twombly painted for thirty years. Here is what to see, told by the people who live here.

The first secret: a bell tower inside the tower

The symbol of Bassano is the Clock Tower: 25 metres of stone raised around the sixteenth century, with a clock face of hand-painted eighteenth-century majolica. But it is not what it seems. It is a shell. In the 1970s, during consolidation work, it turned out that the tower concealed, walled in and forgotten, the Romanesque bell tower of the church of Santa Maria dei Lumi: some 27 metres high, with twin-arched windows and rare little columns carved into human figures. Rather than choose between the two, the restoration, from 1976 to 1984, kept both. Today you visit by walking through the narrow gap between them, about seventy centimetres wide. There is nothing like it anywhere else in Tuscia.

The second secret: Cy Twombly's palazzo

In the old village stands Palazzo Altemps, built in the sixteenth century for Cardinal Sittico Altemps. In 1975 it was bought by Cy Twombly, one of the great American painters of the twentieth century, who came here for the quiet, away from the Roman summer, and worked here until 2008. Several of his works carry the village's name in their title, Untitled (Bassano in Teverina), and now hang in museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. Since 2023 the palazzo has been home to the Fondazione Iris, set up by the artist's family. It is not a museum with fixed hours: it opens when there is an exhibition. If you pass by during one, go in.

It is a thread that ties the tuff villages of the Teverina to twentieth-century art: half an hour from here, in Celleno, the castle was the home of the painter Enrico Castellani.

The village: destroyed in 1943, rebuilt stone by stone

In November 1943 a German train loaded with ammunition exploded at Bassano station. The blast tore through the roofs and walls of the old village, which was abandoned and stayed empty for decades. The town rebuilt itself further up the hill, and in 1958 it became an independent municipality again, after some thirty years under Orte. Then, patiently, the recovery: the cliff shored up, the houses restored one by one, the lanes lived in once more. Walking through it today, you read both stories at once.

• Santa Maria dei Lumi: the twelfth-century Romanesque church that the hidden bell tower belongs to.
• Fontana Vecchia: the old fountain of 1576, commissioned by Cardinal Madruzzo, at the foot of the medieval village.
• Church of the Immacolata: nineteenth century, in the historic centre.
• The walkway along the walls: it runs along the edge of the plateau with the Tiber valley below your feet. This is where you understand where you are.
• Madonna della Quercia and Santi Fidenzio e Terenzio: two churches just outside the village. The second belongs to the patron saints.

Nature: the Tiber, the trails and a legendary lake

From Via Belvedere starts CAI trail 134. It drops through the woods towards the Tiber, passes the remains of ancient Roman brick kilns and climbs back up to the tiny village of Mugnano in Teverina, with its Palazzo Orsini perched on the tuff. A detour, trail 134A, leads to the altar of Casole and a small rock-cut chapel. You need proper walking shoes and a free morning.

Down on the plain towards Orte lies Lake Vadimone: today little more than a pool of sulphurous water among the fields. Yet here, between the late fourth and early third centuries BC, Rome fought the battles that marked the decline of the Etruscans, and Pliny the Younger described its floating islands. A place of memory rather than an attraction, and that is its charm.

Village festivals

Bassano's calendar is that of a real village. Around Ferragosto, mid-August, the Festa della Pizza returns: three evenings of long tables and music run by the local festival committee. The most heartfelt event is the feast of the patron saints, Santi Fidenzio e Terenzio, on the last weekend of September: four days with the procession of the saints through the streets, fireworks and, on the Monday, the fair along Via Cesare Battisti. Village life, not events staged for tourists. If you are here at the end of summer, see what the rest of the area offers in September in Tuscia.

Nearby, within fifteen minutes

• Vitorchiano (about 15 minutes): the village suspended on its cliff of peperino stone, with a surprise below the viewpoint, a Moai carved in 1990 by craftsmen from Easter Island. We tell its story in our guide to Vitorchiano.
• Orte (about 15 minutes): the old town on the tuff and Orte Sotterranea, underground Orte, with guided tours through aqueducts, cisterns and dovecotes, booked on the official website. In September the Ottava Medievale takes the town back to the Middle Ages.
• Bomarzo (10 minutes): the Sacred Wood and its stone monsters.

More places to discover on our page about the villages of Tuscia. If unusual villages are your thing, Sant'Angelo di Roccalvecce, about 35 minutes away, is where the houses tell fairy tales. And if you are driving north on the A1, Bassano makes a stop fifteen minutes from the motorway: more in where to stop on the way back from the South.

Where to stay in Bassano in Teverina

Here we are playing at home, quite literally. Villa Vacanze Valentina sits in the green countryside of Bassano: two apartments in the villa and the Casetta degli Innamorati, the lovers' cottage, with the large garden and the pool shared by the three. From the gate: Bomarzo 10 minutes, the Orte motorway exit and station fifteen minutes (trains from there to Rome), Viterbo 25, Lake Bolsena 40 and Civita di Bagnoregio 45. If you are looking for a base for the Monster Park, here are our tips on where to stay near Bomarzo.