Fifteen minutes from Villa Vacanze Valentina there is a village that seems carved from the rock. Vitorchiano does not sit on the cliff: it is part of it. The medieval houses rise straight out of a huge spur of peperino, the grey volcanic tufa of the Tuscia, fractured into boulders that become foundations, walls, stairs. They call it the "Hanging Village" (Borgo Sospeso), and it is one of Italy's Most Beautiful Villages. But the greatest surprise waits just outside the walls: the only full-size Moai in the world carved outside Easter Island.

The Hanging Village

Vitorchiano looks out over a gorge, and that is where its nickname comes from. Seen from the belvedere, the village appears suspended in the void: the peperino cliff splits into cyclopean blocks and the houses grow on top of them, continuous with the stone, seamless. You cannot tell where nature ends and human hands begin. It is an effect no photograph fully captures: you have to be there, to walk the alleys beneath arches and porticoes cut from the same tufa, then step out onto the Borgo Sospeso belvedere to understand why this corner of the Tuscia leaves you speechless.

The Moai: a piece of Easter Island in the Tuscia

And here it is, the unexpected wonder. Vitorchiano is home to the only full-size Moai in the world carved outside Easter Island. Not a copy: an authentic work. In 1990 the Atan family — nineteen people from Rapa Nui, Easter Island — came here and worked the local peperino with the same ancient techniques their ancestors used for the great statues of the Pacific. They chose Vitorchiano because its volcanic tufa is close to the stone of their island. The stone giant remained, a silent bridge between two distant worlds. In 2025 it turned thirty-five. You will find it in Largo Padre Ettore Salimbeni, near the belvedere: stop and look at it, and think of the journey it made to get here.

What to see

Beyond the Hanging Village and the Moai, Vitorchiano is best explored slowly, on foot.

  • The 13th-century walls — the medieval circuit that girdles the old town, with its gates and peperino walkways.
  • The old town — arches, porticoes and alleys all in the same grey stone, a medieval maze that looks carved from a single block.
  • The Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of Saint Joseph — a cloistered community just outside the village, where time keeps a different rhythm.
  • The Moutan Botanical Centre — a garden with a vast collection of tree peonies: the spring bloom is a display of colour worth the trip on its own.

A short hop from the villa

From Villa Vacanze Valentina, in Bassano in Teverina, Vitorchiano is barely a quarter of an hour by car: a perfect morning out, ideal for couples and families alike. And you are in the heart of the Tuscia, just under an hour from Rome, with the A1 Orte junction close by. Vitorchiano pairs beautifully with the other villages nearby: the ghost town of Celleno half an hour away, the Monster Park of Bomarzo ten minutes from home. And if you come in the loveliest season, read what September in the Tuscia has to offer: harvests, festivals and the first autumn light.

In the evening you come home, to Villa Vacanze Valentina: the pool, real silence, the countryside breathing. For couples there is the Lovers' Cottage, for families the apartments in the villa. The Hanging Village is waiting, a quarter of an hour from here.