Nepi

Nepi has 9,353 inhabitants in the Agro Falisco, on a tuff spur isolated by two streams that have carved the forre all around, narrow valleys between vertical walls. The ancient name, Nepet, perhaps comes from the Etruscan nepa, water: legend has it that while the founder Termo Larte was tracing the furrow of the city a water snake came out, and that the apparition was taken as a good omen. The territory is still full of waters — ferruginous, sulphurous, mineral — and the Acqua di Nepi is bottled here.

Livy calls Nepi and Sutri the «Claustra Etruriae», the bolts of Etruria, and tells that during the war against Hannibal the city refused Rome any further help together with eleven other Latin colonies: they paid for it twice over. In the eighth century the Lombard noble Totone, duke of Nepi, came down on Rome with an army and at the conclave of 768 had his own brother elected pope, who took the name of Constantine II; his power lasted a year. Above the town stands the Borgia fortress, which belonged to Lucrezia.