WALLS – Cinta Muraria

HISTORICAL NOTES AND DESCRIPTION

The castle of Vitorchiano was built between the 9th and 10th centuries on pre-existing Etruscan buildings and owes its fortune both to its geographical position and to the city of Rome. Located on a high peperino cliff, it is defended by two city walls. The chronicles of Vitorchiano by the chronicler of the sixteenth century. Curzio Gobbino report its history, indicating 1172 as the initial date, the year in which Vitorchiano took part in the destruction of Ferento. During the war (1199) between Viterbo and Rome, Vitorchiano, disputed by the two towns, definitively placed itself under Roman protection, thus becoming the target of the Viterbo people, who damaged its walls on several occasions.

An emerging element of the oldest part of the town is the tower, called Rocca, located between the Town Hall and the monastery of Sant’Agnese, built by the Romans during the reconstruction of 1233. In the past, the fortress was accessed through a door that could be identified with the walled one, at the base of the clock tower.

The current gate was built in the fortified walls at the end of the 15th century, when the Town Hall was built, between the ancient fortress and the tower, also incorporating the castle walls.

In the 13th century the village was closed with a second wall. The entrance was guaranteed by a single Roman door, equipped with a drawbridge and surmounted by a tower. Externally, beyond the moat, the Cavour village extends today, already partially inhabited before the nineteenth century. This area was protected by a third wall, a place called, in the sixteenth-century documentation, “old walls”. However, the most interesting fortified wall is the second, as it has preserved the original structure in the best possible way.

The castle walls were made of gray peperino, extracted from ancient quarries and from the excavation of moats. Their first restoration in 1217 was wanted by the Roman Senate, but, a few years later, Vitorchiano was completely destroyed. The layout of the second wall was carried out in 1233, with a height lower than the current one. It is thought that the elevation occurred in the second half of the fourteenth century, a period in which the use of firearms began to spread. The construction of the round ramparts took place in the mid-15th century, while in 1625 the ashlar portal of Porta Romana was built. The civil engineering between 1959 and 1962 developed the consolidation plan.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Selvaggini Alessandro, Chiesa collegiata di S. Angelo in Viterbo, Viterbo 1963.

Pinzi Cesare, Guida dei principali monumenti di Viterbo, Roma 1889.

FERRO G., Le mura medievali di Vitorchiano, in “Le mura medievali del Lazio. Studi sull’area viterbese”, Roma 1993, pp. 61-75.

D’Arcangeli V., Vitorchiano, in “Tuscia viterbese. I Comuni”, vol II, 1968, pp. 473-476.

Special thanks to Dr. Andrea Presutti for scientific advice and archival photographic material provided on Vitorchiano.