What to see in Viterbo in one day: a walking itinerary through the city of the Popes

We go looking for wonders far away, while the capital of Tuscia sits less than half an hour from the villa and an hour from Rome. Viterbo is the city of the Popes: for some twenty years in the thirteenth century it was the centre of Christendom. Today it keeps the best-preserved medieval quarter in Europe, and you can walk it, unhurried, in a day. This is our guide to what to see in Viterbo in one day: a walking itinerary, the squares and fountains, the museums, what to eat, and the answers to the questions our guests ask most.

San Pellegrino, the Middle Ages still standing

The old heart is the San Pellegrino quarter: a maze of lanes cut in the volcanic stone of Tuscia, where the thirteenth-century street plan has reached us almost untouched. You walk beneath arches and case a ponte — houses that bridge the street and roof it over — and in front of the houses open the profferli, the external stone staircases up to the first floor that are the signature of Viterbo's architecture. Piazza San Pellegrino, with its tower and thirteenth-century palaces, is one of the most photographed corners of Lazio.

The Palace of the Popes and the longest conclave in history

Above the city rises the Palace of the Popes, with its Gothic Loggia of openwork arches looking over the valley: the image that stands for Viterbo. Within these walls a word we still use was born. When Clement IV died in 1268, the cardinals met to elect his successor and could not agree: the election lasted 1,006 days, nearly three years, the longest conclave in history. Exasperated, the people of Viterbo locked the cardinals inside the palace cum clave — "with a key", which is where the word conclave comes from — cut their food to bread and water and finally removed the roof. Only then, in 1271, was Gregory X elected. Today you can visit the Conclave Hall and, next door, the Cathedral of San Lorenzo and the Colle del Duomo Museum, on a single ticket.

The squares and the fountains

Viterbo is the city of fountains: it has dozens, nearly all a fuso, spindle-shaped, with a low basin and a pillar rising from the centre — a model born here and copied across Tuscia. The most famous is the thirteenth-century Fontana Grande, in the square that bears its name. But the pleasure is meeting them square after square. In Piazza della Morte, just below the Colle del Duomo, the pine-cone fountain with its lion faces dates from 1243; the grim name comes from the confraternity that, in the sixteenth century, buried the poor. In Piazza delle Erbe, the city's living room, the fountain was redesigned in 1621 by the Viterbo painter Filippo Caparozzi; today's two marble lions, the symbol of Viterbo, arrived in 1877. Piazza del Gesù is the intimate square with the little Romanesque church of San Silvestro and a fountain of 1915 with lion heads. And civic life has its centre in Piazza del Plebiscito, framed by the Palazzo dei Priori: inside, the Sala Regia is frescoed all over with views of the castles of the Viterbo countryside, and from the loggias a small garden looks out over the valley.

The museums of Viterbo

If you want to understand where this land comes from, there are two addresses. The National Etruscan Museum is housed in the Rocca Albornoz, the fourteenth-century fortress at the northern gate of the city, renovated in the sixteenth century to a design by Bramante: inside are life-size reconstructions of the Etruscan houses of Acquarossa, a mosaic from Musarna and the bronze chariot found at Ischia di Castro. The Luigi Rossi Danielli Civic Museum, in the old convent beside the church of Santa Maria della Verità, has a Gothic cloister full of Etruscan sarcophagi, the sarcophagus of the Bella Galiana and art rooms from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. In the church next door, stop at the Mazzatosta Chapel, with the fresco cycle by Lorenzo da Viterbo of 1469, patiently restored after the wartime bombing.

At the table in Viterbo

The dish of Tuscia is acquacotta: stale bread — Viterbo's, made without salt — wild chicory, potatoes, garlic and good oil, with a poached egg on top. Then lombrichelli, thick hand-rolled spaghetti of nothing but flour and water, with a spicy sauce or, in the Vitorchiano version, with wild fennel. Finish with tozzetti, hazelnut biscuits from the Cimini hills, made for dunking. Country cooking, humble and honest: you find it in the trattorias of San Pellegrino and the squares without looking too hard.

Then the thermal baths and the cinema

Viterbo is not only stone. It has been a spa town for centuries: a few minutes from the centre are the Terme dei Papi and the free hot springs of the Bullicame, to end the day in warm water. And in summer the centre becomes an open-air cinema with the Tuscia Film Fest. Just outside town, in Bagnaia, the terraces and fountains of Villa Lante make one of the great gardens of the Renaissance.

The Macchina di Santa Rosa, the night of 3 September

But if one thing has made Viterbo famous around the world, it is this. Every year, on the evening of 3 September, the lights of the centre go out and a hundred Facchini dressed in white and red lift onto their shoulders the Macchina di Santa Rosa: a tower of light nearly thirty metres tall and weighing five tonnes, carried in the dark through the medieval lanes for more than a kilometre to the sanctuary of the patron saint. A rite repeated for more than 750 years, and since 2013 UNESCO Intangible Heritage. Anyone in Tuscia in early September should not miss it: it is one of those nights you do not forget. So is the night of San Lorenzo on 10 August, when you wait for shooting stars far from the city lights.

Where to stay to visit Viterbo

Villa Vacanze Valentina is in Bassano in Teverina, less than half an hour from the centre of Viterbo and an hour from Rome: you spend the day among medieval lanes and come back to sleep in the silence of the countryside, with the pool waiting. Discover the holiday home with pool or write to us on WhatsApp. All the festivals and food fairs of the area, season by season, are in our calendar of events in Tuscia.