DAYS 1–2
After my two previous attempts to travel to Southern Italy ended with two wars and the cancellation of my flights, I decided to outsmart fate by going to Italy anyway — but farther north, flying into Rome. Fortunately, luck was finally on my side: El Al had canceled flights only through April 18, while my ticket was for April 19, simply because nothing earlier was available. And here I am.
Of course, the trip still began with a fair amount of stress. My departure was moved from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., which meant losing the hotel I had already paid for. I had to book another one close to the airport at the last minute, and it was expensive because the cheaper hotels only accepted check-ins until 11:00 p.m. I paid €89, while another traveler heading to the same hotel, who found herself in exactly the same situation, paid only €73. Frustrating. She probably booked it on her phone. I really should start doing the same. It’s less convenient, but apparently much cheaper—I noticed the same thing once when booking hotels at the Dead Sea.
While waiting for my suitcase—which arrived last after nearly an hour—I ended up reading every sign in the baggage hall out of boredom. Surprisingly, it turned out to be useful. I discovered that the minimum official taxi fare from Leonardo da Vinci Airport (Fiumicino) is €35 per ride. Any ride, even if it’s only 500 meters. And, knowing the local taxi drivers, the sign specifically clarified: per ride, not per passenger.
Our driver, however, tried to charge both me and my fellow traveler €30 each, insisting he was giving us a discount. Not so fast. “It says per ride, not per person,” I told him in a terrible mixture of Italian and Spanish—which, somehow, he understood perfectly. In the end, we negotiated the fare down to €45 total.
The next morning I returned to the airport on the hotel shuttle (€6) to pick up my rental car. Just a week earlier, the rental offices and the parking garages had been moved into separate buildings, so collecting a car now requires quite a long walk through corridors and pedestrian passages. Fortunately, everything went smoothly. I had already informed the rental company that I would most likely collect the car the following morning rather than on the evening of my arrival. Once I finally had the keys, my journey could begin.
This trip gave me the chance to visit Tivoli and its famous villas which I never managed to do during my previous trips to Italy.
I started with Villa Gregoriana. Despite its name, this “villa” is actually a spectacular landscaped park created in the 19th century by Pope Gregory XVI in a deep gorge known as the Valley of Hell. The park was designed as part of an ambitious engineering project to divert the river that had repeatedly flooded Tivoli. Today it features two waterfalls, artificial grottoes, fountains, and peaceful walking trails. It’s a beautiful place, filled with birdsong, and towering above the gorge stands a magnificent stone pine—one of my favorite trees. It’s a lovely place for a walk, although I wouldn’t call it extraordinary.
Hadrian’s Villa, built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian around AD 120 near Tivoli, survives today as a magnificent archaeological site, second in scale only to landmarks such as the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla. In Italy, the term villa often refers not to a single residence but to an extensive country estate that could include baths, theaters, palaces, gardens, and other buildings—in effect, a township. Hadrian’s Villa is vast, and its impressive ruins are fascinating to explore. The first thing visitors encounter is a massive wall, once enclosing the villa’s gardens. The structures were built using small stones bound with mortar and faced with bricks and decorative stone tiles arranged in geometric patterns. Thin Roman bricks, known as bipedales and plinths, were also widely used in the construction. Hadrian’s Villa is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tivoli’s third and most famous villa, Villa d’Este, was closed on Monday, so I would have to return here to see it at the end of my trip.
After Tivoli, I made a long drive north to the Tarot Garden. (Tarot is a deck of 78 cards originally created in the 15th century for playing games before later acquiring symbolic and mystical significance.) Here, in the late 20th century, the French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle created a remarkable park featuring 22 monumental sculptures inspired by the Major Arcana of the Tarot. For many of these colorful figures, she borrowed Gaudí’s idea—brilliantly realized in Barcelona’s Park Güell—of decorating surfaces with trencadís, a mosaic technique using broken ceramic tiles and porcelain. The result is truly extraordinary.
One pleasant surprise during today’s sightseeing was that I wasn’t charged admission at any of the attractions. Just in case, I had brought along the disability card I received through Israel’s National Insurance Institute in connection with my caregiver benefits. The English version identifies it as a disability card, and visitors with a disability rating of 67% or higher are entitled to free admission. Although my card doesn’t mention any percentage, simply producing it was enough for the ticket staff at all three sites. At least growing older has a few unexpected perks. Tonight I’m staying in a quiet little village, very peaceful. Just what I needed.
DAYS 3–4
After yesterday’s seemingly endless day, Day Three began at a much slower pace. I took my time before setting off along roads winding through the gentle rolling hills of Lazio, the heartland of the ancient Etruscan civilization. Passing through Marciano, I couldn’t resist making a detour to its historic center, crowned—as so many towns and villages in this part of Italy are—by a hilltop fortress. I left the car in the main square, beside a beautiful fountain, and climbed to the top, where sweeping views stretched across the surrounding countryside. It’s actually possible to drive all the way up to the castle, provided you have the skills of a stunt driver.
Back on the road, I continued to Saturnia, famous for its natural sulfur hot springs. Over thousands of years, the mineral-rich water has deposited layers of travertine, creating a series of natural terraces and pools where visitors can enjoy a relaxing soak. I had long dreamed of seeing the dazzling white travertine terraces of Pamukkale—the “Cotton Castle”—in Turkey but, unfortunately, they are currently inaccessible to Israeli travelers. So when I discovered that Italy has its own, though much smaller version, I knew I couldn’t miss it.
Near the spring there is a spa complex, but the natural pools themselves—known as Cascate del Mulino (the Mill Waterfalls), named after the ruins of an old mill nearby—are open to the public free of charge all year round. The water emerges from the ground at a pleasant 37.5°C (99.5°F).
When I arrived, however, I discovered that I had forgotten my swimsuit. All I could do was take off my shoes, roll up my trousers, and wander through the warm water, carefully stepping over the sharp travertine rocks. “Serves you right,” someone reading this will probably say. “You should make packing lists.” And they’d be absolutely right. There was a time when I traveled abroad several times a year for work, and packing had become second nature. Apparently, I still haven’t adjusted to the fact that these days, a checklist is a much better strategy.
From Saturnia I continued to the famous medieval hill town of Civita di Bagnoregio. Perched atop a narrow plateau and visible from every direction, it is one of the most spectacular sights in Italy. I had been here about ten years earlier, but the day before I had injured my leg and wasn’t able to make the one- to one-and-a-half-kilometer walk across the long pedestrian bridge leading into the town. So this time I came back to finish the job.
As soon as I set off, a heavy rainstorm broke out, and within minutes I was soaked to the skin. I kept walking anyway and finally entered the “conquered” town. Once inside, however, I found it rather ordinary. It certainly has its charm, and unlike many other Italian medieval towns, it has remained remarkably untouched by modern development. Yet, in my opinion, it doesn’t match the atmosphere or beauty of many of its counterparts. The unforgettable experience is seeing Civita from afar, dramatically rising above the surrounding landscape. That view is what makes it truly special.
When I reached my accommodation that evening, I asked the owner to turn on the heating. By morning, all my clothes were dry.
I spent the night in Viterbo and headed into the historic center the following morning to see whether my impression from several years ago had been fair. Back then, I had found the city rather uninspiring. This time I discovered a number of monumental buildings that I had somehow missed on my previous visit, yet none of them truly captivated me. So I had been wrong to dismiss Viterbo altogether—but it still isn’t a place that speaks to me personally.
I had also expected much more from the city’s Etruscan Museum. After visiting the outstanding Etruscan collections in the Vatican Museums, however, this one felt rather modest. I found the Etruscan necropolises of Tarquinia and Cerveteri, both here in Lazio, far more impressive. Later I realized I had visited the wrong museum. Instead of the National Etruscan Museum housed in the medieval Rocca Albornoz fortress, I should have gone to the Parco Archeologico Naturalistico di Poggio Giudio, which is said to be much more interesting.
One convenient way to reach Viterbo’s old town is by public elevator, but during my visit the entire area was under construction, with roads closed and access restricted, so I wasn’t able to find the way to it. Viterbo also has a Ceramics Museum that I would have loved to visit, but as so often on this trip, I was racing against the clock.
After leaving Viterbo, I stopped in two small historic towns. In the first, Soriano nel Cimino, the Church of St. George—believed to date back to the 11th century—turned out to be rather unremarkable. The second stop, however, Vasanello, was much more rewarding.
The town is home to the 12th-century Orsini Castle, named after its original owners and distinguished by its four cylindrical corner towers. It also boasts two 11th-century churches. The Church of Santa Maria Assunta features beautifully carved Romanesque column capitals, while the Church of San Salvatore is fairly plain in itself but is accompanied by a magnificent freestanding Romanesque bell tower, built in the 13th century, that is well worth seeing.
Another pleasant surprise for a town of this size was its multi-level municipal parking garage—which, remarkably, is completely free.
The day ended at the spectacular Cascata delle Marmore. On the way there, I passed the town of Orte, dramatically perched atop a cliff resembling the bow of a ship, and somehow found myself in Amelia, with its tower crowned by swallowtail battlements—an architectural feature that Russia later borrowed from Italy for its Kremlin fortifications.
The waterfall itself is simply breathtaking. Of all the waterfalls I have seen—excluding the truly colossal ones, belonging in a different league—this is undoubtedly my favorite. Even more remarkably, it is entirely man-made. It was created by the ancient Romans in 271 BC to drain the marshlands formed by the Velino River. Over the centuries, the diversion canal gradually filled with silt and stopped functioning, but it was restored and redesigned during the 15th, 16th, and 18th centuries. Today, Cascata delle Marmore is the tallest man-made waterfall in the world, plunging 165 meters (541 feet).
The waterfall is surrounded by a park with several scenic hiking trails. Visitors can also climb about 600 steps to a viewpoint near the top of the falls. Since that viewpoint is also accessible by car, I chose the easier option, although it still required a fairly long walk from the parking lot, including anyway 76 steps. Watching such an immense volume of water crash down from close range is always exhilarating, but in this case it didn’t add much to the overall experience—especially if you’ve stood once just a couple of meters from the thundering curtain of Niagara Falls plunging down just next to you.
One important thing to know for those whointend to see it, is that the waterfall doesn’t flow continuously. Instead, the water is released on a schedule, usually twice a day for two or three hours, and never in the morning. Otherwise, only a few small streams trickle down the cliff so that visitors who arrive at the wrong time aren’t left completely disappointed. The operating schedule changes every month, so it’s essential to check the park’s official website before visiting. I timed my arrival perfectly, reaching the falls just as the warning siren sounded at 3:00 p.m., signaling the start of the water release, which lasted until 5:00 p.m.
I had also hoped to visit the Parco delle Cascate di Chia del Fosso Castello Terni, a nature reserve about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Viterbo, known for its waterfalls and cascades. From what I had read, it seemed to be a wilder Italian version of Spain’s Monasterio de Piedra. I already knew it wouldn’t reopen until April 24. After confirming that it was indeed still closed, I reluctantly gave up on the idea.
DAY 5
After spending the night on the outskirts of Rieti, I headed into the city center of what is considered the geographical center of Italy. Rieti is known for its 13th-century city walls—perhaps not the most beautiful in the country, but among the longest—as well as several historic churches and elegant palaces. After finding a conveniently located parking space, I took a leisurely walk through the old town, which turned out to be quite enjoyable. The photographs tell the story better than words. Perhaps my favorable impression of Rieti was also helped by the warm hospitality of the hostess at the place where I stayed, who welcomed me like an old friend.
While planning my route, I noticed that not far from the road beyond Rieti was a town called Cittaducale—literally “City of the Duke.” I decided that a place with a name like that simply deserved a visit. As it turned out, the town itself offered no great surprises, but it does boast several tall medieval towers, enduring reminders of the ambition and vanity of those who built them centuries ago.
After Cittaducale, the road climbed toward the still snow-cаpped peaks of the Apennine Mountains. My destination was L’Aquila. For some reason, I hadn’t expected much from this town, yet it turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises of the trip. Sometimes a place captures your heart the moment you arrive and never quite lets go. In Spain, such cities for me are Barcelona, Seville, Salamanca, and Zaragoza. In France, Carcassonne, Rouen, and perhaps Arles. Prague, too. L’Aquila instantly joined that list. As soon as I entered the city, I caught sight of the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio and gusped in amazement. Dating back to the 13th century, this masterpiece of Abruzzese Romanesque and Gothic architecture is one of the region’s greatest treasures. Its extraordinary façade, built from alternating blocks of pink and white stone, is adorned with a magnificent central rose window flanked by two smaller ones and an elegant portal that is impossible to stop admiring. Inside, however, the atmosphere is austere and restrained. Most of the original decoration has been lost over the centuries, leaving only a handful of surviving frescoes to soften the vast interior. Conveniently, there is free parking in the park beside the basilica.
I was so impressed by the cathedral that I decided to skip the city’s other churches. Instead, I strolled along the long pedestrian Corso Vittorio Emanuele, lined with one elegant palace after another, peeking down side streets. L’Aquila has several beautiful fountains and an impressive collection of historic palazzi, many of them painstakingly restored after the devastating 2009 earthquake that severely damaged the city. It’s the kind of city that you would like to stay overnight, stroll around at a leisurely pace and spend an unhurried evening.
But the reality had other plans—or rather, so did my hostess, who had asked me to arrive early because she needed to see a doctor, and after unsuccessfully searching for the famous Fontana delle 99 Cannelle, the medieval fountain of the 99 spouts with 99 masks, I hurried to toward my next overnight stop in Sulmona.
While preparing this publication, I discovered a gross oversight: in the town of Bominaco, between L’Aquila and Sulmona, there is the Oratory of San Pellegrino, the interior walls of which are completely covered in 12th-century frescoes, earning it the nickname “Abruzzo’s Sistine Chapel.” What a shame! To be so close and miss it. Unforgivable. Nearby is the picturesque village of Santo Stefano de Sessanio, which is a delightful stroll.
