Porta Santa Maria

Two carved lions over the only way into Civita, each with a human head between its paws. The heads are not ornament: they commemorate a popular revolt by the people of Civita against the Monaldeschi, the Orvieto family who held the place. This is the last of five gates the ancient town had -- the other four have gone with the cliff they stood on -- and it is cut through tufa under a tower with a small arcaded loggia on top.

Visit if you:

• want a monument that records a rebellion in stone and is still the front door
• are interested in medieval and Renaissance work sitting on an Etruscan street grid
• like a gate you cannot avoid: every visitor and resident passes under it

Skip it if you:

• are looking for the other four gates. They are gone, along with much of the rock
• cannot cross the footbridge on foot -- the gate is at the far end of it

This arch is the single point of entry to a village of about ten residents, and everything that goes in or out passes through it on foot. Standing in the passage to photograph the lions blocks the only door the place has.

The carving is weathered relief in tufa -- the softest building stone in common use -- on a gate dated to 1497 for the lions and about 1550 for the eagle. Tufa rounds off under hands as readily as under rain.

Four of the five gates this one belonged to are gone, and so are most of the Etruscan chamber tombs that lined the base of the cliff. Civita's base layer is a marine clay particularly prone to erosion under tufaceous and lavic upper layers, and the erosion is fast: torrents, weather, and the historic deforestation that accelerated it. The anti-erosion works the Etruscans began after 280 BC and the Romans extended were abandoned after antiquity, and the resulting degradation is what emptied the town. In 2005 the calanchi were proposed as a Site of Community Importance.

The 5-euro charge introduced in June 2013 is what funds the comune that maintains all of it -- the receipts were enough to abolish communal taxes in Civita and in Bagnoregio. The exemption list is long and published; the ticket is the point of it.

The gate is the entrance to the borgo rather than a monument with its own ticket, and passing through it has been chargeable since June 2013: 5 euros a head, bought at the gate. Two ticket offices rotate under the comune's tourist-flow plan -- Piazzale Battaglini on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, and Mercatello, near the bridge, on quieter days.

Arrive without a ticket and go to Piazzale Battaglini: on a quiet day it has parking from which the village is a 15-minute walk, or a shuttle runs to the Belvedere, and on a busy day it is the staffed office. Tickets are also sold online in advance and through the free Civita di Bagnoregio app, in Italian and English; queries go to +39 3248660940 or biglietteria.civita@gmail.com, 8:00-20:00.

Free entry covers a published list: children under 6, residents of the borgo, citizens of the comune of Bagnoregio and their closest relatives, guests of house owners and clients of holiday lets inside Civita, licensed guides accompanying a group and licensed interpreters, registered journalists with a press card, one adult per ten paying pupils on a school trip, students and teachers of schools in the comune, museum and heritage-site directors on written invitation from the comune, and anyone with 100 per cent certified disability with one companion each.

Look up on the way through. The lions and their heads are over the arch, with the eagle above, and the loggia is at the top of the tower -- all of it easy to walk straight under.

The gate is open ground at the end of an exposed bridge, so the season is the bridge's season: April to June and September to October are the comfortable months, and midsummer on bare tufa is not. Early and late in the day are also when the carving reads -- the lions, the heads and the eagle are weathered relief on the arch, and flat midday light flattens them into the wall.

Civita's own calendar fills the lanes just inside. The Palio della Tonna is run on the main square on the first Sunday of June and the second of September, which are also the two patronal feasts -- Maria SS. Liberatrice and the SS. Crocifisso. The Tuscia in Jazz Festival takes the last week of July and the first of August, the Good Friday procession leaves San Donato for Bagnoregio, and at Christmas a living nativity plays through the medieval streets. On all of those days the gate is a bottleneck as well as an entrance.