Thursday 29 May 2025 – Rest days are wonderful things, but getting going again after them can be a pain in the arse. However, needs must and so we were down for an 0730 breakfast and ready to check out shortly after 8am, ready for a walk of some 18km to Viterbo. We expected to have to pay the city tax that we’ve paid at every other check-out, but in Montefiascone, the city tax doesn’t apply to people over 70. It’s a small advantage to being old, but when you get to our age, you have to take what you can get.

We bade goodbye to Montefiascone and its fabulous lake view

 

and headed off – downhill, of necessity, since Montefiascone is the highest point of this entire Via Francigena section.

The first part of the walk was interesting, because we were walking on the Via Cassia, a genuine Roman Road, which is in pretty good nick, considering it’s a couple of thousand years old.

 

One can see why the road has weathered well from the skill with which it was laid.

It stands up to modern traffic well

though I have to say I wouldn’t really have wanted to run a chariot along it. Also, I have a complaint to make:

It’s not straight! All Roman Roads are straight, surely?

We passed a kiwi fruit orchard

and a few other things, like roadside shrines,

a pilgrim’s fountain

and some sheep – the first we’d seen in Lazio.

Our downhill progress was clear from the view back to Montefiascone.

We passed the residence of a recent asylum-seeker from Tuscany

and were, in turn, passed by a lunatic.

I mean, who in their right mind would go running in the middle of a hot, sunny day?

Poppies were very much in evidence

as was the baling of straw,

which was neatly packaged in patriotic colours in many of the fields we passed.

There were a lot of straw bales lying around

and we fell to wondering: what will become of all of this straw?  Is it destined for animal feed? We’ve seen practically no farm animals anywhere. Who will use it, where and for what? These are the sort of things that occupy ones thoughts when the walking is tedious, because, by this stage, it had become really, really tedious – a strada bianca with no shade on a day with streaming sunshine.

Basically, it stayed tedious right up to the point where we were approaching Viterbo, where we passed under the motorway

and encountered the expectedly rather functional outskirts of the city.

There were a couple of things of note as we made our way towards our destination: a huge cemetery,

with, outside the gates, some opportunist flower sellers;

and the latest in my occasional series about the subtleties of language as used in international marketing.

We eventually sighted a gate into the old city

and approached it through a park, to give us relief from the dull old pavement.

The park featured a Mystery Object

whose purpose I could not fathom. Pram racing circuit for bored parents? Speed skating rink for toddlers? Who knows? Not me.

So, then: through the gate

and into the old town. Jane, one of the ladies we first met on the road to Acquapendente, had sent Jane, my wife, a message, saying that the old city in Viterbo made up for the tedium of the 10km leading up to it, so my expectations were high – and, rather, dashed, as we made our way to our accommodation, Palazzo Riario. It seemed dark, dowdy and cramped. Our route to the Palazzo was labyrinthine through narrow streets; without Google Maps, we’d be looking for it yet.  We passed a couple of reasonable scenes

but I wasn’t impressed.  We arrived at our accommodation,

which was the brown door in the above. The locked brown door in the above; a factor which didn’t improve our view of the city. Jane rang the phone number on the bell and it went to voicemail. I hammered on the door in frustration, to no avail.

However, after a couple of minutes a chap emerged from down the road and hailed us. It turned out to be Renato, the manager of the place, who had our key and showed us how to make it open the place up. In doing so, he “happened” to mention his restaurant, and Jane worked out that it was open for another hour for lunch, so we rapidly made ourselves slightly less unpresentable and hightailed it the extremely complicated 100 metres necessary to get to the next street over where Renato was chatting with a group of people outside Chimera, his restaurant. He saw us coming and, rather than seating us inside the decent but rather gloomy interior of the restaurant proper, bade us sit at a table in a courtyard opposite.

It was delightful – we had a nice lunch (there was no gin, so it couldn’t quite qualify as a Nice Lunch, but it was nevertheless good food with affable service). After eating, despite feeling creaky, we realised that we had to go for a walk. Obvously. So Jane mapped out a route that took us round the old city, starting at the tourist office to get our Timbri and a very useful tip to ease the rest of our sightseeing.

Viterbo has a huge medieval old city centre and an equally huge historical significance. It is known as the “city of the Popes”: at the end of the 13th century it was in fact the papal seat and for 24 years the Papal Palace hosted and saw the election of various pontiffs. This meant that the Duomo and papal palace were must-see items; and Jane had read about the San Pellegrino district, a centre for pilgrims over the centuries.

The papal palace is an imposing sight

and to get to it can be quite a taxing walk.  The tip we got was

to use the lifts. Down in one lift, across a couple of roads, along a tunnel

and up the other side, pretty much straight out into Piazza San Lorenzo.  With the sun beating down and the temperature feeling quite high (I’d seen 30°C outside one pharmacy on our way in), this was an absolutely golden tip. Was it worth the trip?

Yes, I think so.  The interior of the Duomo is quite austere, actually

but it has some magnificent marble flooring,

a side chapel with some lovely trompe l’oeuil work

and, for somewhere so large, a very modest organ.

The papal palace is a very impressive building

but it would have cost us €20 to get in and we thought that a bit steep. The view across to where we’d been included a great setting for the church of the holy trinity across the way,

so we satisfed ourselves with that, and headed off towards the San Pellegrino district. It was hot and we were thirsty, so we treated ourselves to a glass of something cold en route, and arrived in the Piazza San Carluccio, amid the overwhelming fragrance of jasmine, to look around.

Part of the grimness of Viterbo (and Montefiascone as well) is that a lot of it is built from dark stone,

but this didn’t detract from the delightfulness of the San Pellegrino district.  It is known for profferlo – medieval external staircases,

and is generally a delightful area to walk around.

It reversed our somewhat jaundiced view of the place, and we can now see why Other Jane was so impressed with what she saw.

Here are a few of the other scenes I took photos of as we walked around the district and headed back to our Palazzo.

Viterbo is the start of an official section of the Via Francigena, section 40, which takes us in several legs all the way to Rome, where we should arrive, all being well, on June 5.  Our next destination is Vetralla, and we’re offered two possible routes.  We’re going to opt for the shorter one because, frankly, we feel we’ve earned the right.  So the official distance is about 16km, and we have to go up some and then down some, so the day will still involve some effort on our part, and doubtless some moaning on mine. Why not check back in soon to see how everything went?