{"id":3524,"date":"2026-06-12T12:48:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/?post_type=selezione_antologica&#038;p=3524"},"modified":"2026-06-12T12:49:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T12:49:55","slug":"a-city-approaching-sunset","status":"publish","type":"selezione_antologica","link":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/selezione_antologica\/a-city-approaching-sunset\/","title":{"rendered":"A city approaching sunset"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":3523,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-3524","selezione_antologica","type-selezione_antologica","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-travel-and-leisure"],"acf":{"riassunto":"","composizione_articolo":[{"acf_fc_layout":"composizione_articolo_testo","composizione_articolo_testo_testo":"<p><strong>Tuscania is threatened by \u201ctuff death\u201d: walls, towers, castles, churches, convents, and buildings are crumbling, or threatening to do so. An invaluable asset risks falling into complete ruin<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Having left behind the traffic on the Via Aurelia and the tourist-thronged Etruscan and Medieval city of Tarquinia, we have taken a road leading to another Etruscan and Medieval city: Tuscania. It is a secondary route, but the roadbed is asphalted and well maintained, it has long straight stretches and only slight grades, and yet after having travelled twenty-four kilometres, we have not encountered a single car. The same was true on the return trip. [&#8230;] Initially, the road rises from the valley around small river Marta: it is a fairly spacious valley, enclosed on all sides by bare, smooth hills, similar to dunes [&#8230;].<\/p>\n<p>After a few kilometres, the road threads into a snug valley set between two small steep wooded hills that stand opposite each. Then it rises, taking us to the ridge line. Now it looks like we are on a plain, or more accurately, a lowland; a lowland edged in the distance by the forested mass of Cimino, below which the white houses of Viterbo appear. What follows are small hills, each like the next, and between one and the other are deep valleys, sometimes even precipices that you can only see once you\u2019ve reached the edge. The area around Viterbo is all like this: the terrain is tuffaceous. Tuff is a friable stone; water crumbles and erodes it easily, so even the most insignificant streams have carved deep beds.<\/p>\n<p>And here Tuscania emerges: a yellowish line of walls, towers, houses, and larger buildings that are either palaces or convents. Tuff is the only building material used here. In my opinion it is lovely, lovelier than hard stones, lovelier than sandstone, than travertine, lovelier than marble, because it confers a smoothness, a grace, to even the most massive structures, to the towers, to the castles. But it is a porous stone, and severe weather bests it in the end. Experts even speak of \u201ctuff death\u201d: after a given number of centuries, even the best built buildings are destined to fall, unless we take steps to make them more stable with the appropriate injections of cement. And this is in fact the tragedy of Tuscania, threatened by \u201ctuff death\u201d, with its walls, towers, castles, churches, convents, and palaces crumbling or threatening to do so: an invaluable artistic heritage, that from certain points of view is unique in Italy, risks falling into utter ruin.<\/p>\n<p>The history of Tuscania is unique. In the 4<sup>th<\/sup> century before Christ, it was one of the most powerful Etruscan cities: it appears that it led the Etruscan alliance against the Romans, at a time when they were completely occupied with the Samnites. With a legendary march through the Cimina Forest, in 311 the Consul Quintus Fabius Rullianus brought Tuscania into submission. It appears that the city then had 30,000 inhabitants. Having first become a federate city, then a Roman municipality, Tuscania fell into decline. However, it recovered in the Middle Ages, to the point that it was one of the leading cities in central Italy. [&#8230;] It then fell under pontifical control, and the vindictive Boniface viii punished it for an act of rebellion, obliging it to take on the disparaging name of Toscanella, and to provide Rome every year with eight acrobats during the games in Testaccio.<\/p>\n<p>Forced to change its name, Tuscania was also forced to change even its location. In 1494 in fact it had the audacity to oppose Charles viii who was crossing the pontifical territory on his way to conquer the Kingdom of Naples: and the King of France, irate, not only plundered the city but exacted such destruction that its inhabitants decided to abandon the hills of Rivellino and San Pietro and move the centre of the city to the southeast, where, naturally, they built new enclosing walls. Thus Tuscania could no longer boast of having been built on seven hills, like Rome. And what\u2019s worse, its most celebrated basilicas, San Pietro and Santa Maria Maggiore, were left outside the city. This abandonment, along with tuff death, helped threaten their very existence. Of the 30,000 inhabitants during the Etruscan age and the period of the Medieval city-republics, only 1,500 remained: Tuscania was threatened with complete extinction.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, it has successfully survived to the present day. In 1911 the city decided to reject the pejorative name of Toscanella and take back the glorious name of Tuscania. [&#8230;] Heirs of a splendid history but forced to live in a mediocre present with poor prospects for the future, the people of Tuscania are filled with resentment for the real or imagined culprits responsible for their decline. They are angry with the people of Viterbo, who took their bishop [&#8230;]. They are angry with the people of Tarquinia who, thanks to the location of their city alongside the railway and the Via Aurelia, have celebrated their archaeological heritage, while Tuscania, being off the beaten track, was unable to do the same. They are angry with those who pillaged their urns, their sarcophagi, their <em>Bucchero<\/em> ceramics, their Etruscan grave goods, which now grace museums in Tarquinia, Rome, Florence, and London. They are angry with Rome, which allowed half the towers, churches, palaces, fountains, and frescoes to fall into ruin without lifting a finger.<\/p>\n<p>We must however recognize that the people of Tuscania have contributed, and continue to make their own contributions, to the plunder and defacement of the city. City administrations of the past knocked down walls in multiple places for dubious road system requirements and allowed private citizens to build very modern houses plastered in white at scenic points (one of these awful houses stands right on the stunning San Pietro hill, mere steps from the basilica, the towers, and the ruins of the Bishop\u2019s Palace). What is worse, covert excavations, with the resulting theft and sale of Etruscan and Roman objects, became a systematic activity in the years after the Second World War, causing incalculable damage to the city\u2019s archaeological heritage. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Covert excavators and tuff death: we could sum up the ills of Tuscania this way. Fortunately, attempts have been made in recent years to remedy tuff death and the abandonment to which most of its monuments had been left. Thus arrangements were made to shore up some of the towers surrounding San Pietro, the nearby Bishop\u2019s Palace is being reconstructed, the Bargello tower that fell in 1954 is being rebuilt, and the disgrace of the San Francesco chapel being enclosed within the slaughterhouse perimeter and used a stall, has been addressed. But most of it still remains to be done [&#8230;]. We know very few small cities that can boast so many artistic and archaeological treasures; none in which the dereliction and abandonment have reached this point.<\/p>\n<p>We hope that at least the two gems of Tuscania \u2013 San Pietro and Santa Maria Maggiore \u2013 will be preserved and restored to their former selves. San Pietro, as we have already mentioned, stands atop the hill that once, before the destruction wrought by Charles viii, was the citadel of Tuscania. Already in existence in the 7<sup>th<\/sup> century, it was redone in the Romanesque period, but preserves many architectural elements of the previous centuries. [&#8230;] Santa Maria Maggiore stands at the foot of the hills. It is also Romanesque, with ancient elements: the plutei that make up the pulpit are from the 9<sup>th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n<p>The caretaker of these two basilicas is an eighty-year-old woman, Felicetta Zampelli. Despite her age, she is quite content to go up and down to open for visitors. But she is also convinced, it would appear, that after her there will no longer be any need for caretakers. \u201cEverything is crumbling here,\u201d she tells me. \u201cCan\u2019t you see it? Here everything is going to rack and ruin\u201d. But the labourers who are working to rebuild the Bishop\u2019s Palace tell me that a museum will be installed on the first floor, while the ground floor will serve as a residence for the caretaker. We wish Felicetta Zampelli a long life, but we also hope that the caretaker\u2019s residence will not go uninhabited.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"composizione_articolo_gallery","composizione_articolo_gallery_immagini":[{"composizione_articolo_gallery_immagini_immagine":"https:\/\/assets.fondazionepirelli.org\/rivista-pirelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/12124804\/RP_PP_1959_5_11_007mod.webp"},{"composizione_articolo_gallery_immagini_immagine":"https:\/\/assets.fondazionepirelli.org\/rivista-pirelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/12124802\/RP_PP_1959_5_11_002r.webp"},{"composizione_articolo_gallery_immagini_immagine":"https:\/\/assets.fondazionepirelli.org\/rivista-pirelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/12124800\/RP_PP_1959_5_11_006mod.webp"},{"composizione_articolo_gallery_immagini_immagine":"https:\/\/assets.fondazionepirelli.org\/rivista-pirelli\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/12124759\/RP_PP_1959_5_11_008mod.webp"}]}],"edizione":"N\u00b0 5, 1959","custom_sticky":false,"autore":[{"ID":95,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2019-04-08 14:41:25","post_date_gmt":"2019-04-08 14:41:25","post_content":"<!-- wp:paragraph -->\r\n<p>Novelist and essayist (1917-1987). His introduction to literature took place during the Second World War; he then published his first short stories soon after and started to work for the magazine \u201cCorrente\u201d. Active in the Italian Resistance, he was part of the partisan militia which was inspiration for many of his books. His best-known works include: <em>Fausto and Anna <\/em>(1952); <em>Il taglio del bosco <\/em>(1953); <em>Il cacciatore <\/em>(1964); <em>Storia di Ada <\/em>(1967). Winner of the Strega Prize in 1960 with <em>Bebo\u2019s Girl<\/em>, in the Seventies he started focusing on political and antimilitary issues and published titles such as: <em>Il gigante cieco <\/em>(1976); <em>La lezione della storia <\/em>(1978); <em>Contro le armi <\/em>(1980).<\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->","post_title":"Carlo Cassola","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"carlo-cassola-2","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-04-30 10:40:15","post_modified_gmt":"2019-04-30 10:40:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/internal-pcons-be-fondazione-fr-dev-elb-1449244171.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com\/?post_type=autori&#038;p=95","menu_order":0,"post_type":"autori","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selezione_antologica\/3524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selezione_antologica"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/selezione_antologica"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}