Marta

Marta stands on the southern shore of the lake of Bolsena, and its territory takes in the Martana island and the first stretch of the river that carries the town's name. In winter, when the tramontana blows hard, the waves beat against the lakefront walls and freeze on them: here those days are called lagheggiate, and the ice hangs in stalactites from the walls, the trees and the fountains. It happens almost only on this southern shore. Above the houses stands the octagonal clock tower, some twenty metres high: a historian of Viterbo relates that the men of Viterbo stormed it in 1197, killing in battle the lord who held it; it was rebuilt in 1323 under John the Twenty-second and rebuilt again within ten years, which means that in the meantime it had fallen or been pulled down. When the Farnese arrived they restored it, and Pierluigi Farnese set his own arms on it, the unicorn above a plumed crest.

The arms of the town show Saint Martha treading on a green dragon, a cross in her right hand and a key in her left. Marta was fought over for centuries — the prefects of Vico, the lords of Bisenzio, Orvieto, Viterbo and two captains of fortune — before passing to the Orsini and the Farnese; in 1537 Paul the Third included it in the duchy of Castro, which he had created for his son Pierluigi, and there it stayed until the troops of Innocent the Tenth razed Castro, in 1649. It then belonged to the Apostolic Chamber until unification, except for two short spells when it was leased out, once to a Polish prince. Three kilometres away, on the road to Tuscania, stand the ruins of Castell'Araldo with its thirteenth-century Templar church: it has been restored, but the fresco of the high altar was carried off by persons unknown. In 1927 Marta was detached from the province of Rome and assigned to the new province of Viterbo.