Anna Maria Tardiolo- The small village of Civita, a fraction of Bagnoregio, in the province of Viterbo, inhabited by only eleven people, opens up to the world from a bridge built in 1965. The dying city. Thus the writer Bonaventura Tecchi nicknamed it. Hanging from life by a very subtle balance as it is built on the tuff whose progressive erosion risks making it disappear. Yet, it is the representation of resistance, of the bond to life, tenacious, to the detriment of any reasonable objection.  

The legacy of the Renaissance and the Etruscans…

Like its inhabitants who, despite the risk of losing their home every day, remain! In the eyes of an unsuspecting visitor, Civita does not appear so fragile. Perched on the spur from which it dominates the Valle dei Calanchi. On foot while crossing Porta Santa Maria, it shows solid medieval and Renaissance architecture built on the Etruscan urban layout. Of Etruscan origin, Civita is. It was this ancient population that founded it 2500 years ago. Over the centuries important pieces of its history have been lost; churches, palaces of great artistic and cultural value collapsed in the valley due to nature which, while showing itself to the world as beautiful, luxuriant, placid, almost harmless, hides her being at the same time a stepmother aware of her power over human beings. 

Representative of life…

The representation of life: the good and the evil that contains everything; death and life. It could be dared to say that Civita di Bagnoregio, after all, is nothing more than the very expression of the faces of life as a whole. A city that dies but at the same time contains life: the joy of people from all over who visit it every year more and more; the countless cultural events that take place here, with the great participation of national and international exponents; but also more simply the liveliness of the flowered balconies that inebriate the alleys of this enchanting village with their scent. The welcome of its inhabitants.