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| pathway from Vitorchiano |
Tuscia (or Etruria) located one hour north of Rome and a half hour from Civitavecchia port makes a perfect escape from the tourist crowds. We residents enjoy a laid back lifestyle, excellent food and wine as well as peace, calm and the many off beat places such as the well known Sacro Bosco or Monster Park of Bomarzo.
Nearby are several other sites with strange stone sculptures, fountains and the remains of elegant gardens-often hidden away in the underbrush or valleys.
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| Photos by F. Micheletti |
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| stone heads Vitorchiano |
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| rock hewn cave in the Vitorchiano valley |
Just beneath the town of Vitorchiano a steep trail zig-zags down into a verdant valley.
Here trekkers literally trip over the mysterious monumental sculptures created in 1990 by a team of stone carvers who were invited to Vitorchiano from Easter Island, far away in the Pacific Ocean.
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| Easter Island head in Vitorchiano |
Other weird and wonderful stone figures date back to the Renaissance and 16th century and were created by native sculptors (or captive Turkish ones??) to awe visitors of local nobility, such as these in a wild setting just outside the town of Viterbo.
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| moss covered fountain with human heads spouts |
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| female figure, near Viterbo |
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| Papacqua fountain figure, Soriano |
In plain sight in the town of Soriano nel Cimino is the Papacqua fountain next to Palazzo Chigi-Albani and its many intriguing stone figures which art critics have been trying to interpret for centuries.
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| Papacqua fountain in Soriano nel Cimino |
These scary statues are just a few of the many fascinating, little known aspects of the Tuscia area that await visitors, especially artists, anthropologists and those who enjoy the unusual.
For more about these and other mysterious sites of central Italy, between Tuscany and Umbria, check out my website, use the search bar of the blog and read my latest two books on the area.
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