The rock necropolis of Norchia: cube tombs carved into the tuff

There are places you do not reach by chance. Norchia, on the border between Vetralla and Viterbo, is one of these: having left the car in an unpaved, unattended clearing, the only way in is a path that descends into a gorge carved by the streams cutting through the tuff, among them the Pile ditch and the Biedano. Below, hidden by the vegetation, the tuff walls reveal themselves to be covered in Etruscan tombs.

The cube tombs

The heart of the necropolis is the cube tombs: large squared blocks cut directly from the rock, with a false door carved on the front to mark the passage to the afterlife. Above the cube, on an altar, libations were performed in honour of the dead. Beside them survive the half-cube tombs and, along the ditches, the famous Temple Tombs, aediculae with pediments recalling small stone sanctuaries. Walking along, you can still make out the course of the Via Clodia and the Cava Buia, a trench dug into the tuff.

Undertourism

Here the word undertourism is not a slogan. There are no ticket booths, no bars, no orderly queues. Often you are alone, accompanied only by the sound of the water and the calls of the birds among the holm oaks. It is exactly the opposite of the better-known necropolises, where one bus follows another: Norchia asks for time, attention and a little effort, and for this reason it stays authentic.

Respect and caution

Its very fragility demands respect. The trails are often muddy, the staircases cut into the rock are slippery and the blocks have been eroded by centuries of weather. You need trekking shoes, caution and the rule of not climbing on the tombs or taking anything away. Go in a group, leave the site as you found it and take away only images.

When to go

The best period runs from spring to early autumn, avoiding the hottest days of summer and the days after rain, when the gorges turn slippery. Early in the morning the raking light sets the tuff aglow and offers the purest silence. Norchia is not to be visited: it is to be walked through, on tiptoe, like a place still alive in its antiquity.

Related guides: Etruscan sites and necropolises to visit: an itinerary through Lazio, Tuscany and Umbria.

Getting there

The rock necropolis of Norchia lies in the territory of Vetralla, in the Viterbo area. It is reached by car by leaving Vetralla along the Aurelia bis (SS1) towards Tarquinia, then taking a side road that turns to gravel until an unattended car park; the final stretch towards the cube tombs is covered on foot along the path in the ravine. The reference town for services and train is Viterbo, with Rome as the main airport.

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• How to get to Viterbo