Viterbo Culture

Viterbo’s defining event is the Macchina di Santa Rosa, and it is genuinely without parallel. Every third of September a tower about thirty metres high and weighing around five tonnes, lit from top to bottom, is carried through the darkened streets on the shoulders of roughly a hundred men. It is UNESCO-recognised as intangible cultural heritage, and the structure is redesigned every few years.

The bearers — the Facchini di Santa Rosa — are a formal confraternity with selection trials, and membership is a serious local standing.

The thermal culture is older and more everyday. The Bullicame spring was known to the Romans and is named by Dante in the Inferno; today there are commercial spas and also free open-air pools where people sit in the sulphur water at all hours, which is the more Viterbese version.

The food is inland and frugal: acquacotta, a bread-and-vegetable soup; lombrichelli, thick hand-rolled pasta of flour and water; and the hazelnuts of the Monti Cimini, which are a major crop. The local white, from Montefiascone on Lake Bolsena, carries the improbable name Est! Est!! Est!!!