the Gate of Jupiter head on, with the entablature bracket on the piers and the curtain of squared blocks running away on either side; under the arch the avenue of pines and at the end of it the abbey

Museum visits · Fabrica di Roma · Italy

Falerii Novi and the abbey of Santa Maria di Falleri

two kilometres of almost intact Roman walls in the middle of the fields, and under the fields the city

half a dayDuration

freePrice

all year, the abbey at weekends onlyWhen to go

In 241 BC the Romans razed Falerii Veteres, which stood on the tufa spur where Civita Castellana is today, and for the surviving Faliscans they built a new city six kilometres further on: on the flat, in the middle of the fields, with no ravines around it to defend it. It was a punishment dressed up as a concession, and it is called Falerii Novi. The surprising thing is that it is still there. Two thousand one hundred metres of red tufa walls in squared blocks, some fifty square towers, a ditch along the eastern side, and the Gate of Jupiter with the head of the god on the keystone of the arch. Inside the walls there is no village at all: there is a meadow, the Cistercian abbey of Santa Maria di Falleri and almost nothing else still standing. Under the meadow, though, is the entire city, and since 2020 we know exactly how it was laid out.

Getting there

The site is halfway along the road between Civita Castellana and Fabrica di Roma, on the Faleriense provincial road, the SP27: barely five kilometres from either
A small surfaced road branches off the provincial road; after three hundred metres or so a dirt track branches off that, and it is the track that leads to the entrance
The nearest open ground to the entrance is at 42.302553, 12.352221, about two hundred and sixty metres from the Gate of Jupiter. OpenStreetMap knows of only one other, at 42.305499, 12.347054, which is eight hundred metres further back: nobody marks the good one
Parking is free and signposted with a P, on the opposite side of the road from the entrance
The dirt track ends in front of the Gate of Jupiter and you go in there: there is no gate to open, there is no ticket office, and from under the arch you can already see the avenue of pines with the abbey at the end of it
Around the walls you walk on grass and beaten earth: two kilometres of perimeter, all on the flat, but without a metre of shade

Practical information

Duration two or three hours for the circuit of the walls and the abbey; a full half day if you want to add the amphitheatre and the necropolises, which are outside the circuit.

Price free

When to go all year, the abbey at weekends only

Suitable for everyone, and children more than anywhere else, because inside the walls there is a whole meadow and not a single barrier. There is no shade and no water: in summer you go in the morning.

Booking not needed, the site is in the open air and has no ticket office.

Contacts

comune.fabricadiroma.vt.it

Where it is

Fabrica di Roma · Lazio

42.299509, 12.356582

You set off from

Civita Castellana

6 km · Area sosta di via Terni

10minutes

Notes

Who the Faliscans were. They were not Etruscans, even if from the outside they looked like it. They spoke Faliscan, an Italic language of the Latino-Faliscan branch, that is to say far closer to Latin than to Etruscan. They lived on the right bank of the Tiber, between the Cimini and the Sabatini hills, and their centre was Falerii Veteres. Politically and culturally, however, they lived inside the Etruscan world: allies of Veii against Rome, an alphabet derived from the Etruscan one, pottery that can be mistaken for that of Cerveteri. It is the reason why the museum in Civita Castellana is called the museum of the Agro Falisco and not of Etruria, and the place to understand that difference is this one
The 2020 ground-penetrating radar. A team from the universities of Cambridge and Ghent led by Martin Millett went over the whole area inside the walls with ground-penetrating radar and reconstructed the plan of the city without digging: baths, shops, water pipes, a theatre, a temple nobody knew anything about. It is the first Roman city read in its entirety at that resolution. The plan is below in the gallery, and it is worth looking at before you set off, because it changes what you see: the empty field inside the walls is not empty
The abbey opens on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 10 to 13, and the town council of Fabrica di Roma has confirmed that those hours have no season: they hold all year. Inside there are the volunteers, who tell you the story of the place, and entry is free. The archaeological site, on the other hand, never closes, so arriving outside those hours you lose the abbey and not the walls
What you see inside the walls. Little standing and a great deal on the ground: the traces of the forum and those of the theatre. Outside the circuit the remains of the amphitheatre survive, and the necropolises cut into the tufa. The via Amerina crossed the city from one side to the other, entering through the Gate of Jupiter, at 42.300497, 12.353858, and leaving through the Gate of the Ox, at 42.297242, 12.362278: walking from one to the other means walking the decumanus
The doorway of the abbey. Santa Maria di Falleri is twelfth century, Romanesque and Cistercian at once, and its doorway is the work of the Cosmati, the family of Roman marble workers. They are the same ones who six kilometres away left the porch of the cathedral of Civita Castellana, of 1210. The sources do not agree on which of the Cosmati did what, but the workshop is that one: anyone who sees the two doorways on the same day recognises the hand
Outside the walls, towards the Treja, is the necropolis of the Cavo degli Zucchi: you get there on foot and it adds a good hour to the walk