Civita di Bagnoregio
Discover Civita di Bagnoregio
A concise introduction to Civita di Bagnoregio, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Civita di Bagnoregio is a hamlet in northern Lazio, about a hundred and twenty kilometres from Rome, sitting on an isolated outcrop in the valley of the Rio Chiaro. It is administratively part of the town of Bagnoregio, about a kilometre and a half away, and the two are joined only by a pedestrian bridge built in 1965.
There is no road in, no vehicle access beyond small service transport, and the permanent population is in the low dozens at best — the figure moves and is often quoted as around eleven.
What survives is small and complete: a single main street, a square with a church, a medieval gate cut through the rock on Etruscan foundations, and a handful of houses, several of which now hold restaurants, guesthouses and workshops.
The reason it looks the way it does is geological, and so is the reason it is shrinking. It was a much larger town, and the cliff has been taking it away for centuries.