Sutri has 6,552 inhabitants on a spur of tuff overlooking the via Cassia, and here the tuff has been dug into everywhere: there is a Roman amphitheatre carved entirely out of the rock, an Etruscan necropolis of dozens of tombs, and a Mithraeum that was turned into a church, the one of the Madonna del Parto. On the town's coat of arms is Saturn on horseback, holding three ears of wheat: one of the legends about the founding of the city brings in the god himself.
For one thing, though, Sutri is in the history books of half of Europe. In 728 the Lombard king Liutprand offered the city and the lands around it to pope Gregory II: that donation is regarded as the beginning of the temporal power of the Church, the first piece of the Patrimony of Saint Peter. In 1046 the council was held here, called by emperor Henry III, which closed the schism between three claimants to the papacy. And then there is the legend: Bertha, sister of Charlemagne, thrown out of the household for a relationship with a man of humble birth, is said to have stopped at Sutri on the road to Rome and to have given birth in a cave to Roland, the paladin of France.
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📅 Every year, on 16 and 17 September
On 16 September, the dies natalis of its patron, Sutri celebrates Saint Dulcissima with a procession; on the evening of the 17th the fireworks display and torchlight procession are held inside the Roman amphitheatre.
A white wine carved into Etruscan tufa history, toasted by Garibaldi's Thousand: Orvieto has held Denominazione di Origine Controllata status since 1971.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Sutri, but an easy day trip away.
