BOLSENA

Overlooking the shore of the largest volcanic lake in Europe, Bolsena was observed by the inhabitants of the Etruscan Velzna, placed on the Orvieto cliff, forced by the Romans and abandoning the overly equipped cliff of their city of origin for a more easily place controllable. Place of miracles, from those of Santa Cristina, who came out several times unscathed to attempts to kill her because of her faith, whose feast day is celebrated on 23 and 24 July with the representation of the mysteries of the saint, which she brings back to the scene in the squares of the country the different stages of his martyrdom; the so-called “miracle of Bolsena”, when a host, faced with the doubts of the priest who celebrated the mass, starting to bleed, giving rise to the feast of Corpus Domini, during which the streets of the city are filled with colors and perfumes dell’Infiorata. Welcoming and well-equipped city for the tourist flow, as evidenced by the Orange Flag granted by the Touring Club, Bolsena will welcome you not only with the artistic and naturalistic beauties of its territory, but also with a search for cuisine that focuses on the coregone, delicious lake fish.

Recommended to visit

Rocca Monaldeschi and Territorial Museum of Lake Bolsena. Erected in the twelfth century to protect the wayfarers who walked the Via Cassia, it was enlarged and renovated by the Orvietan family of the Monaldeschi della Cervara, who ruled Bolsena between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was destroyed and rebuilt several times, the last in 1815 when the inhabitants of the city attempted to dismantle it to prevent it from falling into the hands of the French of Luciano Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother. Restored from the 1970s to the 1900s, it now houses the Territorial Museum of Lake Bolsena, which illustrates the archeology, history and traditions of the Lake Bolsena area.

Basilica and Catacomb of Santa Cristina. The Basilica was built over an ancient early Christian cemetery area, just outside the walls of the ancient Roman city of Volsini, where it was believed that the remains of Santa Cristina were buried, martyred in Bolsena, according to tradition, at the time of the Emperor Diocletian around 304. From the sacred building it is still possible today to access the network of tunnels of the catacombs which, for their articulation and spatial distribution seem to have actually preserved the venerable remains of an ancient martyr; some tombs are still intact, bearing epigraphs and fragments of frescoes. In 1880 in a cave under the Basilica, the relics of the saint were found, placed inside an imperial-era marble urn, in turn enclosed in a peperino sarcophagus. The discovery of a coin inside it seems to place the deposition in the 11th century BC, when, according to tradition, the Countess Matilde di Canossa founded the church. This has Romanesque characters, with figured capitals, unfortunately heavily damaged at the end of the 18th century. Of great importance is a VIII-IX century ciborium, placed to cover the so-called “altar of the four columns”. The external appearance of the sanctuary is instead elegantly Renaissance, according to the project commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni de ‘Medici at the end of the 15th century. It was precisely inside this church that in 1263 the so-called “Miracle of Bolsena” took place: faced with a priest’s doubts about the actual presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist, during the consecration, the host began to bleed , staining his body and the stones of the floor, still preserved in a chapel. It was precisely following this miracle that a few years later the Corpus Christi feast was instituted. 

Archeological area. The remains of the ancient Roman city of Volsini are immediately adjacent to the modern urban area in Poggio Moscini. Numerous monumental remains are visible, including the walls and the various public buildings of the forum area, with cobbled streets and houses that still bear substantial remains of the frescoes that decorated the walls.

History.

Lake Bolsena fills a depression caused about 320,000 years ago by a collapse of the chin following the intense eruptions of the numerous volcanic vents in this district, some of which can be identified in the hills where the towns of Valentano and Montefiascone are located today. The Marta River is its only emissary, which flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea after having passed through the cities of Tuscania and Tarquinia.

The origins of Bolsena are to be found in the end of the ancient Etruscan city of Velzna, located on the cliff of Orvieto and the federal capital of the Etruscan nation: defeated for the last time in 264 BC, after a revolt, it was given a much more destiny bitter than that of its allies: the Romans did not simply confiscate a part of its territory, as had happened for Vulci (281 BC) and Tarquinia (280 BC), but completely razed the city to the ground, forcing its inhabitants to move to a more open and more easily controllable place than the impregnable Orvieto cliff, located on the shores of Lake Bolsena; the city kept the same name, which in Latin will become Volsini. The city saw its importance gradually increase especially after the construction of the Via Cassia, in the second century BC, which connected Rome to Florence, crossing it from Viterbo and heading towards Chiusi. The Latin poet Giovenale remembers it as a famous holiday resort.

The attestations of the presence of Christian communities are rather early, as shown by the catacombs of Santa Cristina, dating back to the beginning of the fourth century AD, and in fact it is already located between the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century BC. the formation of the diocese of Volsini.

Destroyed by the barbarians Lombards between 573 and 575, the population concentrated on the cliff dominated by the current Monaldeschi fortress, more easily defensible than the Roman city; in the same context, and for the same reasons, the bishop is likely to move to the newly inhabited Orvieto cliff, transferring the seat of the diocese to it.

Although formally subject to the State of the Church, the powerful Municipality of Orvieto exercised its influence over the whole of Lake Bolsena. In 1281 the city was visited by Pope Martin IV who apparently, having the opportunity to taste the eels of the lake, became so greedy that he deserved a place in the sixth frame of Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy, with the souls victims of the vice of the throat. The eels of Bolsena are also the protagonists of another anecdote, narrated by Petrarch, referring to Benedict XII (1334-1342), a pope of the Avignon period: it seems that some beautiful eels had been sent to France; he, having admired their beauty, distributed them among many of his cardinals; a few days later, during a conversation with Cardinal Colonna, falling the subject on the subject, the pope told him that if he had tasted them before he would not have been so generous towards him, he did not believe that in Italy there were such delicious foods; to which the cardinal replied that a man as wise as his Holiness could certainly not ignore that Italy is superior in everything.

 In 1328 it was put under siege by the emperor Ludovico il Bavaro who, however, was unable to conquer it. In 1346, in the convulsive struggles between the various branches of the Monaldeschi family for dominance in the city of Orvieto, Bolsena rebelled against the control of the free municipality, the fortress was set on fire; Orvieto’s power was forced out of his residence and driven out of the city, and the Bolsenese army began to attack and plunder various castles in the Orvieto countryside. In 1348 the plague broke out which apparently kills nine tenths of the population of Orvieto and similar had to be the effect also in Bolsena and in the cities of the Val di Lago. In 1350 Francesco Petrarca passed through Bolsena, on a pilgrimage to Rome on the occasion of the Holy Year . In a letter addressed to his friend Boccaccio, he tells how, as he was about to leave the city, he had been the victim of an accident, hit in the ankle by the kick of the horse of one of his travel companions; despite the great pain and the wound he suffered, he preferred to continue his journey to Viterbo and Rome, rather than stop further in that “parvum et ignobile oppidum”.

In 1368, taking advantage of the pope’s presence in not far Montefiascone, Bolsena sent a messenger to the court of Urban V to ask to be freed from any form of subjection and tribute to Orvieto. The cause dragged on for several years without reaching a conclusion, until in 1375, thanks to a serious famine which heightened the heavy discontent towards the administrators of the Papal States, a violent revolt broke out throughout Tuscia, to which Bolsena adhered The Pope , determined to regain control of the city, presided over by the rebel prefect of Vico, in 1377 he sent an army of 1,000 Breton soldiers against Bolsena; these, thanks to the help of the Franciscans of the convent that rose just outside the city that hid them, managed to infiltrate the city and open its doors to the bulk of the troops who, however, did not limit themselves to occupying it, but sacked it, setting it on fire numerous homes, killing over 500 citizens and making many others prisoners to demand a ransom. At the end of the revolt, Orvieto, who had remained faithful to the pope, asked for Bolsena to return to his jurisdiction, which was granted to him; the city was also forced to break down its walls.

Pope Pius II Piccolomini, related to the Monaldeschi, who in the meantime became lords of Orvieto and Bolsena, visited the city between 1460 and 1462, describing it as devastated by numerous internal wars.

In 1527 also Bolsena, like other cities of the Val di Lago, was sacked by the troops of Charles V, the notorious Lanzichenecchi who shortly thereafter set Rome itself to fire and who would repeat the sacking also on the way back.

The history of the city continues without noteworthy facts, governed by cardinals and prelates appointed by the Holy See. In 1695 serious damage also caused an earthquake in Bolsena which caused a part of the Bagnoregio cliff to collapse. In 1737 the work “Storia di Volseno metropoli della Toscana” was published, an erudite work by Andrea Adami, one of the first treatises on the history of Bolsena, which, although very imaginative (the foundation of the city is attributed to the god Vertumno), it was adorned with several engravings depicting the ancient remains of the city, which today have partially disappeared.

In 1797 the works that seriously damaged the ancient church of Santa Cristina were deliberated: the decorated capitals and the columns of the sacred building, different from each other, and the numerous ancient remains scattered inside it seemed indecorous to the Bolsenesi of the time, who ordered to chisel all the columns and cover them with stucco so as to transform them into simple Doric columns all the same and to clear all the sculptural pieces, which were scattered through the streets and squares of the city.

In 1828 Pope Leo XII granted it the title of city. In 1860, when the city of Orvieto was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, the bishop preferred to move to Bolsena, which remained within the Papal States, as did other citizens of Orvieto to escape the compulsory lever. Finally, in 1870, with Rome and what remained of the pope’s domains, it also became part of the Kingdom of Italy.