Lugnano in Teverina: The Village of the Vampire and the Roman Children

There are places that carry the weight of history differently from others — not with gilded monuments or crowded squares, but with the silence of those who suffered. Lugnano in Teverina, a village of a thousand souls in the Amerini Mountains on the border between Umbria and Lazio, is one of those places. Its green hillside sloping toward the Tiber conceals a discovery that has astonished archaeologists around the world.

The children's necropolis

At the site of Poggio Gramignano, just outside the historic centre, archaeologists from the University of Arizona have been unearthing since the 1990s an extraordinary fifth-century AD necropolis: forty-seven burials of newborns, foetuses, and small children who died within a few months during a devastating epidemic. Analysis of the skeletal remains identified hemozoin — the biomarker for malaria — making Lugnano the first archaeological evidence of the disease transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito in Italy. In the summer of 2018, something even more disturbing emerged: a girl of about ten years old buried with a stone wedged in her mouth, the classic apotropaic rite against the undead — a so-called vampire burial.

The collegiate church and the Antiquarium

Lugnano's historic centre is surprisingly intact for such a rarely visited village. The Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Assunta, built in the twelfth century, features a portico with high-quality Romanesque sculptures and a medieval ciborium that very few know about. The Municipal Antiquarium houses the finds from Poggio Gramignano: mosaics, ceramics, amphorae used as coffins for the children, and the early results of the excavations.

The view and the road

From the viewpoint on the edge of the village, you can see the Tiber flowing two hundred metres below among oak woods and sunflower fields. Lugnano is about 20 kilometres from Amelia and 30 from Orvieto: the road climbing from the valley floor is narrow but paved, and the village has a small car park just outside the walls. Entrance to the village is free; for the Antiquarium, it is best to call ahead to check opening hours.

When to go

Spring and autumn transform the Amerini Mountains into a palette of colours. Lugnano is part of the Most Beautiful Villages of Italy network but remains absolutely off the tourist circuits: even in August, you walk in peace.