On the edge of an era
In Umbria, just a 90-minute drive from Rome, Ellen Himelfarb discovers some of Italy’s most striking ‘ghost villages’ – towns of haunting beauty where mere handfuls of residents struggle to keep their way of life alive
A slender road winds between hills dense with woodland that could sustain us for weeks. Shooting downward, the terrain suddenly opens up and we emerge into undulating green, fading to blue on the misty horizon. On distant hilltops, a medieval village, or two. With barely another soul on these roads, just 90 minutes from Rome, the car lurches into top gear. Something about all that open space means the girls in the back seat, normally hunched over barf bags or fixed nervously to the road straight ahead, are gazing out at the olive groves, having thrown caution to the wind.
As we cross the Tiber Valley into Umbria, I wish I could say I hadn’t expected this. But from postcards and Pinterest and years of marketing, I knew exactly what to expect. I just hadn’t believed it. The region is just as green and quietly quaint as they say. And empty. In August.
We need groceries, to stock up the kitchen of the rambling modernist villa we’re sharing, at a ludicrously reasonable $100 per bedroom per night. So I pull off the exit for Montecchio and ease onto an upward spiral of tarmac – not so much a road as the incidental space between buildings from the Middle Ages.
Some way back, a sign has promised a supermercato, but before it gets to that I manage to wedge us awkwardly between low stone walls and iron barriers, at the dead end of a one-way route. In the great tradition of tourists getting into tight spots, three elderly men in flat caps watch from a bench, barely amused.Soon enough, though, I’m in the shop, running back and forth to the cash with zucchini, tomatoes, produce, milk jugs, cereal and rounds of focaccia, there being no means of carrying it around with me. The grocer weighs and scribbles his tally. His wife comes out of the back to watch. Nobody, it seems, has ever bought so many groceries.
The next afternoon we’re following an untethered donkey around Parco dei Mostri, a jungle-knotted dale cut back to reveal stone sculptures carved in grotesque animal forms, mouths agog, eyes gaping. Commissioned by a grieving nobleman in the 1500s, it was restored only in the last 40 years – a sort of Angkor Wat in pastoral Lazio. So spectacularly creepy, it could be the most universally alluring attraction in the Tiber Valley.
And yet next door, in the elegantly peeling hilltop village of Bomarzo, life barely holds on. Searching for a shop, a café, a single bench, we find nothing. Our footsteps actually echo.
Finally, a resident. My husband, competent in Italian, strikes up a conversation. She wants to know why we’ve come, as if one requires justification for visiting the living history of 1,000 years, nearly 1,000 feet in the air. “Nobody comes here,” she tells him. Looking out from Bomarzo’s only stop sign, over a gorge combed with vineyards, I think: incomprehensible.
What will happen to the towns of central Italy when the seniors are gone, when the abbey is vacant and the swaddled grandchildren, shown off at the morning market by nonna, have moved to Bologna or Milan? How will their children hold together family businesses, the oils and liqueurs produced by small holdings? I felt, suddenly, as if I were standing on the edge – not of a gorge but of an era.
My family are city people, dependent on new culture: theatre, galleries, cocktail bars, all within walking distance. That has gone for vacations as well. When the kids were younger, flat pavements and wall-to-wall novelties were good; remote hinterland, bad. We once found ourselves, on the second night of a holiday, atop a mountain in rural China stricken with food poisoning, our only choice to cut and run.
We had forsaken Italy. It’s not going anywhere; we’ll get there, eventually. I’m glad we didn’t wait long.
Another day, another village. This time it’s Civita di Bagnoregio; its population: 10. In fact, it’s two villages.
We park in Bagnoregio, then walk along a brick road flanked by butchers with striped awnings and cafés out of Fellini. At the edge of town we purchase $4.50 tickets to cross a vertiginous bridge ending at a cliff topped with Renaissance towers and cottages built by the Etruscans.
But the volcanic-ash foundations are prone to landslides, and most of Civita has decamped next door. It has yet to be awarded UNESCO status, despite a fervent local campaign. All people have to help save this place at death’s door are the tickets, and homemade banners screaming for more funds.
Every morning, merchants creep over to Civita to sell souvenirs and wine, to play music in the little square. But is anybody buying? From the empty chairs on the terraces and the echo from inside the medieval church, it didn’t appear so. At last count, there were 20,000 so-called “ghost villages” across Italy.
The rise of volcanic tufo (tuff) is firmer beneath Orvieto, one of the most vibrant towns in Umbria. We begin our exploration from its base, where a 175-foot-deep well, or pozzo, draws us deep into the cool earth via a double-helix staircase. It is barely signed from the road, and thus mostly ours for a damp half-hour.
Climbing back out is our warm-up for the route cutting through Orvieto’s almost healthy town centre, selling designer clothes and antiques. As the yellowed-stone villas close in to narrow the path, it lurches upward to a piazza acres wide and, at its centre, a cathedral of striking black and white stripes, almost on trend in its bold, monochrome motif. The Gothic façade is coated in gold mosaic, so in late afternoon it shimmers against richly painted ecclesiastical scenes.
If so many of its neighbours are dying, Orvieto is the opposite. It’s near impossible to get a clear shot of the church, or even a seat on the curb opposite. Masses come out of nowhere to line up at Gelato di Pasqualetti, an all-natural ice-cream parlour around the side.
In the queue is a couple from San Francisco who decided to move to town with their son after a single visit last spring. All the vast distances and Italian classes are worth it, they say, to experience the culture first-hand, before all that remains are big-box olive oils and frozen meatballs. But they’ve taken early retirement. Who else could afford to make a life here?
Back at our villa, I am rushing inside every hour to grab my camera. The sun’s movement has an enchanting effect on the hillsides, filtering them with yellow, orange, green, blue. In the distance is Civitella del Lago, vaulted up over Lake Corbara, on the path of the Tiber.
After a gentle warning from our landlord not to attempt the journey on the poor back roads, my husband and I brazenly take the bait.
We’re a minority, for sure. Pushing our feeble engine up the steep approach, we idle behind gnarled old men, hunched from the effort of climbing, like exiles from the Thriller video.
Eventually, we pass, park in a communal lot outside the car-free zone, and wander in. At Trippini Market, past the medieval church tower, we buy a tin of olive oil named for the shop. The Trippini family owns the groves down below – not to mention the B&B next door.
At midday, labourers in coveralls are sitting outside Bar Pazzi and filing into a two-storey tavern with views over the lake – called, unsurprisingly, Trippini. It sits next to a municipal lookout, all new bricks and shiny iron lampposts, and someone has had the idea to place three picnic tables out on the edge of the precipice, in the shade of an old olive tree.
If there were glass between us, we’d be pressing our noses against it. We should sit down for fettucine with the local truffles, washed down with the area’s exceptional Grechetto wine. Alas, lunch is waiting for us at home.
We head to the car through a scrum by the main road. A pair of roller trucks have managed the climb, however impossibly, to repair the old blacktop, and the entire village has come to watch – probably a Trippini or two, and the hunched old men.
“At least they made it,” we said to each other. Then we bumped on down the road home.
IF YOU GO
Where to stay
Locanda Palazzone
For the money, you get two-storey apartments with arched stone terraces and access to acres of gardens and the outdoor pool. Just outside Orvieto, the palazzo is remarkably well-kept considering it’s one of Italy’s oldest hotels, dating back to the 13th century. The owners make their own wine on site.
Localita Rocca Ripesena 67, +39 0763 393614; locandapalazzone.it; suites from $294.
Ripa Medici
An old-school townhouse with dark wood furniture and dramatic silk drapes, this B&B is a little bit town and a little bit country – on the edge of medieval Orvieto with views out to green, cypress-studded hills. Families or those with mobility issues will love the new ground-floor apartment, done up all in white, with its own terrace. From here, you can walk to some of the finest gelato in the country, and the most spectacular cathedral this side of Siena.
Vicolo Ripa Medici 14; +39 0763 341343; ripamedici.it; doubles from $94.
Borgo Fontanile
This small farmhouse villa on the Tiber River has a pool, common rooms indoors and out and owners who cook for you on the outdoor grill. There’s a sheep farm on the property alongside the eponymous spring and an olive grove. Rooms are big, clean and have their own entrance. The market town of Montecchio and the hilltop village of Civitella del Lago are each 15 minutes away.
Vocabolo Fornace 159, +39 377 179 9329; doubles from $86.
Where to dine
Il Fontanile
Kids play on beanbag chairs out by the bank of the Tiber; adults clink glasses of Montepulciano and debate toppings for the wood-fired pizza. The owners make their own salume, sausage and fettucine.
Via Teverina 3, Montecchio, +39 (0) 744 951024; locandailfontanile.it.
La Pergola
A sweet stone room with colourful bistro tables looks onto a private courtyard out back. It’s refreshingly modern for village-Umbria, but the food is traditional: ragu pastas, grilled meats and creamy desserts.
Via dei Magoni 9, Orvieto, +39 0763 343065; lapergolaorvieto.com.
I Gelsi
Fresh steamed greens come with simple cuts of meat that seep into wooden boards. But seafood – clams, prawns and calamari – is the thing here, piled on pastas or chopped into salads.
Localita Madonna Del Porto 53, Guardea, +39 0744 906085.