What is Calcata known for?

Re-occupied by artists from the late 1960s after the 1935 evacuation order; one of Italy's longest-running bohemian communities. Relic of the Circumcision held in the parish church from 1527 until its theft in 1983; cult later suppressed by the Vatican. Vertical volcanic cliff above the Treja valley, the geological reason the government ordered the village evacuated in 1935.

Calcata is a comune in the province of Viterbo, Lazio region of Italy, about 65 kilometers from Terni.

Lazio · Viterbo

Calcata

A tufa-cliff village forty kilometers north of Rome, condemned and abandoned in the 1930s, then occupied by artists and never left.

65 km / 40 mi

Nearest hub (Terni)

905

Population

Apr–Oct

Best time to visit

Recognised as

Why come

Calcata sits on a tufa cliff above the Treja valley, forty kilometers north of Rome. The Anguillara family walled and castled it in the 13th century. In 1935 the Italian government condemned the village as structurally unsafe and ordered residents to move down to the new town in the valley below. Most did. The empty houses on the cliff were re-occupied by artists, hippies and a small bohemian community from the late 1960s onward; they cleared the alleys, opened studios and bars, and turned an officially uninhabitable village into one of Lazio's strangest functioning settlements. The Holy Foreskin relic of Jesus was kept in the parish church here from 1527, taken from the Sancta Sanctorum during the Sack of Rome, and was an active object of pilgrimage until the relic was stolen in 1983 and the Vatican suppressed its cult. Calcata Vecchia is now a single street of workshops on a cliff edge above the Parco della Valle del Treja.

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Gallery

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Known for

Calcata Vecchia
Medieval village on a tufa cliff, condemned in 1935 and re-occupied from the 1960s by artists and craftspeople.
Castello Anguillara
13th-century baronial castle of the Anguillara family, partially restored, now owned by the Treja Valley park.
Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Gesù
Parish church that held the Holy Foreskin relic from 1527 until its theft in 1983.
Parco Regionale Valle del Treja
Protected valley below the village, with trails along the Treja river and the Monte Gelato waterfalls.
Opera Bosco
Open-air museum of land art in the woods below Calcata, founded in 1996, work made entirely from forest materials.

When to visit

Best months · Apr–Oct

Best
Hot or crowded
Quiet
Mostly closed

April through June and September through October are when Calcata works. The Treja valley below is in leaf, the cliff in sun, the workshops and bars in the old village all open. July and August push past thirty degrees and the artist community thins out. Many residents leave for the coast in August. November through March stays mild but several bars close on weekdays. The Saturday and Sunday day-trip crowd from Rome arrives between eleven and five; the village empties again at sunset. The Monte Gelato waterfalls in the valley below are at their fullest from late winter through May.