After a fairly quick train ride north, I arrived to calm and sedate Viterbo, a primarily medieval built city with lots of gothic architecture, still standing city walls, medieval gates, and amongst the narrow stone streets are the occasional peaceful piazza.

After my super busy time in Rome, the slower change of pace was very welcome. Viterbo is mostly famous for it’s Papal palace and was the home of most of the popes during the 13th century. The Palazzo dei Papi is also attached to the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, originally built in the 12th century and the Popes official place of worship during that time. In fact, there are two popes buried inside, although the exact location of Pope Alessandro IV is still a bit of a mystery.

The Palazzo dei Papi looks really huge, though your only allowed to visit a really tiny portion of it.

The 15th century built Piazza del Plebiscito and the Palazzo dei Priori have always been the Viterbo City Hall and the center of Viterbos political scene.

The oldest church in Viterbo, however, is the Chiesa di Santa Maria Nuova. It was originally built in the 11th century and St Thomas Aquinas preached from that stone pulpit in 1266AD. Wow!

Despite all the history, the best part of Viterbo has been just strolling the narrow medieval streets, gazing up at all the old buildings and balconies, and finding cool hidden away places to eat. I found a spaghetti restaurant with so many concoctions, the menu looked like an Encyclopedia Britannica! La Spaghetteria, yummmmm!

Viterbo was also a good base of operations because I of course had some day trips planned. First, I hopped on a bus east to Bomarzo. Bomarzo is a hilltop medieval town kind of like Viterbo, but much smaller.

Before exploring the town itself, the reason I came here is to explore the Parco dei Mostri, also known as the Park of Monsters, or Villa of Marvels. Prince Vicino Orsini in the 16th century was apparently not a happy dude. He had been through a war, seen his best friend killed, and lost his wife. So rather than design a typical renaissance garden, he designed this, Parco dei Mostri.

The inscription on this guys upper lip reads, “All Reason Departs”. Chilling! It’s not all bad, though, because inside is a nice place for a picnic using his tongue as a table.

Not only monsters, but he designed this leaning house to intentionally disorient people.

This is a war elephant and I’m pretty sure he’s killing that guy.

There were many others, but you get the idea. Apparently, our disturbed prince resolved some of his issues because twenty years later he constructed this beautiful little temple as well.

Back up the hill I took some time to wander the streets of the tiny historic center of Bomarzo. It was very quiet and lonely up there. And there were a lot of for sale signs. Maybe I could just buy the whole town. Hmmmm

I still had a few hours before the bus back to Viterbo, so I had also planned to go exploring the forest around Bomarzo for Etruscan ruins. Etruscans were the people that inhabited this region over two thousand years ago, long before the Romans.

I hadn’t anticipated how much hiking this would involve, but it was such a beautiful day and it was so nice to get out in nature for a while. After eating my lunch on this cliff with incredible views, I found the Etruscan pyramid. It’s not really a pyramid, more like a platform, but it was really cool. It’s really hidden away in the forest and was only just discovered in the 1990’s. It’s also believed that it was an alter used to read the entrails of animals to divine the future. Awesome!

A couple more miles from the pyramid is this Etruscan necropolis. It’s hard to know what’s what, but there is a definite alter of some sort and the remains of several sarcophagi. And It’s all just sitting out here in the forest!

I eventually made it to my bus stop and when I arrived back in Viterbo, the streets were jam packed with people and music was blasting through the whole city. Where in the heck did all these people come from?! I didn’t realize it was Carnavale. I’ve never seen so much confetti! The streets looked like it had snowed, but it was just an inch of confetti on the ground. Who’s gonna clean this up?

Here’s something I’m finding a little frustrating about the transport in Italy. Bus drivers no longer take money, so you either have to buy tickets from a machine ahead of your trip or figure out which unmarked random bar or mini market is authorized to sell tickets. For my second planned day trip to Sutri, the machine was out of order and there wasn’t time to walk the half mile to the place that sold tickets and still catch the bus. So I missed out on seeing the Roman theatre in Sutri. Oh well! Instead, I went to Viterbos own Etruscan museum which turned out to be surprisingly good.

It’s crazy how many Etruscan sites are in this area north of Rome. I could probably plan a whole trip just around those. Maybe next time!

Well, that about wraps up my time in Viterbo. I’m heading north for another quick stop so don’t go too far…