A winter weekend near Rome does not have to mean a hotel with the heating on full and two museums in a row. An hour from the capital there is countryside that in this season does exactly the opposite: it slows down. This is the two-day itinerary we give guests who write to us saying "we are coming in January, what should we do?".

Why it works precisely in winter

Three concrete reasons. First: the thermal water. Around Viterbo it surfaces at 58 degrees and fills open-air pools — with cold air it is a completely different experience from August. Second: the villages empty out, and places like Civita di Bagnoregio change face entirely. Third, the most practical: you barely drive. Everything below sits within half an hour.

Saturday

2pm — arrival, no rush. From Rome it is fifty minutes on the A1 to the Orte exit, then a quarter of an hour. By train you get off at Orte: the station is ten minutes away. Winter afternoons are short, so drop the bags and go straight out.

3:30pm — Civita di Bagnoregio. Forty-five minutes of road and you are facing the 260-metre footbridge. The walk takes ten to fifteen minutes, the last stretch uphill. In winter, with fog rising from the badlands, the village looks suspended in mid-air: this is the time of year when the nickname "the dying town" stops being a brochure line. All the practical details are in our guide to Civita.

7pm — early dinner. Villages eat early in winter. Tuscia's cooking comes from the land: pici, beans, chestnuts, truffle in season, and local wines that cost little because nobody has discovered them yet.

9pm — the night bath. This is the highlight of the weekend. At the Terme dei Papi in Viterbo, every Saturday the monumental pool stays open from 9pm to 1am: two thousand square metres of water at forty degrees, steam rising into the cold air and the winter sky above. Twenty-five minutes from us. Prices and current information in our guide.

Sunday

9am — a slow start. Mornings here are yours: there is a coffee corner in the house and the village bar a few minutes away. In winter the valley often wakes under low fog that lifts towards ten.

10am — the free pools. If Saturday night was the "with facilities" version, Sunday morning try the other face: the free basins of Bullicame or Piscine Carletti, open all year and with no ticket. You arrive in a bathrobe and flip-flops, get in, and watch the steam. The full guide is in our article on free thermal baths near Rome.

12:30pm — one village, only one. The classic mistake is trying to see four. Pick one: Vitorchiano, carved into peperino rock a quarter of an hour from us, or Celleno, the ghost village abandoned after earthquakes and landslides. In winter both are practically deserted.

4pm — the last hour in the warm. Before leaving, the part guests remember: the fire lit. In our apartment with the fireplace the firewood is included; couples stay in the Lovers' Cottage, all wood and heated. You are back in Rome for dinner, with hands that still smell of woodsmoke.

What to pack

Little, but the right things: bathrobe and flip-flops (for the springs, or you end up buying them), waterproof shoes for the stone villages, a jacket that holds against the evening wind, and a swimsuit — yes, in January too. The rest you will find in the house.

Where to sleep

Villa Vacanze Valentina is in Bassano in Teverina, between Orte and Viterbo: two apartments in the villa and a wooden cottage for two, open all year. In winter it is the house that makes the difference — heating, a fireplace with firewood included in one of the apartments, full kitchens — and the position keeps everything close: springs twenty to twenty-five minutes away, Civita forty-five, Rome one hour.

Everything is on our Winter in Tuscia page. If the weekend becomes a week, better still: in low season we gladly arrange long stays too.

Opening times and prices at thermal facilities verified in July 2026: it is always worth checking before setting out, as some winter schedules change. Cover photo: Angelmanxego, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.