Viterbo
Discover Viterbo
A concise introduction to Viterbo, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Viterbo is a walled city of about sixty-seven thousand people in northern Lazio, roughly eighty kilometres from Rome, and the capital of the area historically called the Tuscia.
Its centre is enclosed by about five kilometres of medieval wall and is built almost entirely in peperino, a dark grey volcanic stone that gives the city a sombre, heavy look quite unlike the warm brick and travertine further south.
The San Pellegrino quarter is the reason people come: a dense grid of thirteenth-century houses with covered passages, arches and profferli — the external stone staircases that are the local signature.
Above it stands the Palazzo dei Papi, built when Viterbo rather than Rome was where popes lived, with an open loggia on one side that is the city’s emblem. Outside the walls there are thermal springs, free to use and in use since the Romans.