a bit of green

Some weeks ago, me and Alex travelled to Rome. We just wanted to leave it all behind for a while and travel together (the destination didn’t matter) and since we found amazingly cheap air tickets for Rome, that was it: alea jacta est!
The upcoming travel was an opportunity for me to freshen up my meager italian, so I took up some free italian lessons from Livemocha. Livemocha is an online learning community where users can learn a language and also review exercises of other users. That’s how I read a writing submission (in english!) of an Italian user, titled “Your last vacation”, where he described he visited an old city called Civita di Bagnoregio. He added, “If you ever go to Rome, take a day to visit Civita di Bagnoregio!”.

History

As we found out after a little searching in Wikipedia and several websites, Civita di Bagnoregio was founded by Etruscans over twenty-five hundred years ago. It is located in the Province of Viterbo, in central Italy, atop a plateau overlooking the Tiber valley. It is connected to the outer world by a narrow bridge. The town was beginning to decline by the 16th century, with its population moving to its former suburb Bagnoregio, which is now a small, prefectly normal city. A major earthquake in the 17th century led to further abandonment of the city and Civita became known as il paese che muore, the dying town. As a result of the isolation of Civita, the town is almost intact, its architecture spanning several hundred years. Today in Civita di Bangoregio live about 12 people in winter and over 100 in the summer, when tourists come up.

Getting there

As you might guess, we just had to go, and that’s exactly what we did a particularly cold and windy day. In order to go from Rome to Civita di Bagnoregio, you have to take the train from Roma Termini to Orvieto, buying a ticket from an automated train ticket machine (they also accept credit cards!) or a ticket booth in any train station (more info on tickets and prices at trenitalia.com).

Now, from Orvieto, you have to take the blue Cotral bus to Bagnoregio. The trip takes about an hour and costs around €1.5. Cotral buses start from Orvieto’s Piazza Cahen and then stop outside of the train station daily except Sunday at 6:15 and at 12:45, 15:45, and 18:20. During the school year from September to June, there are additional departures at 7:20, 7:50 and at 13:55. There is a pretty big time interval between the first and the second itinerary as we found out when we arrived at Orvieto. Fortunately, we were there long before 15.45, so long actually that we had two or three hours to spare and visit the old city of Orvieto (do it if you have the chance, there’s also a funicular railway that connects the new city and the old city, it’s fun).
In any case, you can always check the timetables at the Cotral website here (scroll down to ORIGINE and search for da Orvieto to see the departures from Orvieto to Bagnoregio, and DESTINAZIONE per Orvieto to see the departures from Bagnoregio to Orvieto).

Another tricky thing in Orvieto is the Cotral bus tickets; you can buy them at the train station’s café, although there is absolutely no sign of that. Just ask the cashier after you pay for your cappuccino! We strongly suggest that you buy the return tickets there as well, since we couldn’t find any at Bagnoregio. We went all the way back to Orvieto concerned that a ticket controller might jump on the bus and catch us (okay, I admit it, I was merely sleeping during half the ride, but Alex was concerned).

The Cotral bus will drop you off in central Bagnoregio; follow the signs and/or ask the locals to find the road that leads to Civita di Bagnoregio. It was quite easy for us to find it as it was the windiest of all. Prepare for a long way (about 2 km). When you arrive at the base of the bridge, the view is breathtaking!

View from the plateau.

There are weeds almost everywhere!

The town is almost entirely medieval, it made us feel like we traveled in time.

You might also like: