Bagnoregio

The name is Balneum Regis, the king's bath, from thermal waters that no longer flow here; the legend says king Desiderius was cured of a grave illness by them. The Etruscan name of the place, by contrast, is not known at all: the Romans took it away, in the erasures they repeated more than once against their powerful neighbours. Bagnoregio lay within the domain of Volsinii, and it grew when Rome, having destroyed Volsinii in 264 before Christ, deported its people to a new town, Bolsena — leaving Bagnoregio halfway between that and the Tiber, then navigable. In the Middle Ages the Monaldeschi held it in fief and did it badly enough to drive the town to revolt: the revolt succeeded, and in 1160 the free comune was born. When the Monaldeschi tried again, building the castle of the Cervara from 1318, the people rose once more and pulled it down in 1457.

On the tenth of June 1695 an earthquake cut the ground: Civita, which until then was Bagnorea proper, was left separated by a spectacular precipice from the two quarters of Mercato and Rota, and Rota, which took in those who left Civita, became the new Bagnorea — today's Bagnoregio. Civita is now reached only on foot, over a bridge rebuilt in 1965, and they call it the town that is dying. Its best-known son is Saint Bonaventure, who was born there and whom the Franciscans recognise as their second founder. And on Good Friday the crucifix of the old cathedral of Civita is carried in procession down to Bagnoregio and taken straight back up again: the legend says that if it stayed past midnight it would become the property of the town below.