Italia 2019: Day 5, Into the Via Cava

Getting ready for a walk is always the same: switching around the bags, laying out boots, poles and clothes, but if it’s going to be a good walk, nothing beats the point sometime in the first thirty minutes where you look and decide that you’ve seen nothing like this before. All four of us had that reaction when we spotted our first via cava, the tunnel-like roads dig into the landscape and worn down by thousands of years of use.

The sunken roads are lined with tombs and chambers, with the locals oscillating between superstition and a utilitarian interest in using them as storage, wine cellars and evening carports; but there is not getting around their ancient and mysterious feel.

You can see that the road surface is worn from use, because until the Forties, access to these towns still relied on the ancient roads. This area – la Tuscia – was very isolated and the main train line went through Orvieto, on the other side of Lake Bolsano .

It’s amazing that we know so little about the Etruscans, and it certainly doesn’t get taught in school except as a footnote to the Republic; but it took the Romans 500 years to defeat and absorb them, and force the language into disuse. History certainly belongs to the victors. But complicating everything was the continuing occupation of the area by the descendants of the Etruscans, which is where the term Tuscan comes from, apparently: another two thousand years of pagan and Christian history under the Romans, the Lombards and the Orsini, before falling into decay in the 17th Century.

All absolutely fascinating, and you can see why eight kilometres took three hours, and it wasn’t just the steep paths as we climbed in and out of the ravines. Going into Sovana was moving from classical history into the renaissance, with the ruins of the Orsini castle looking at the top of the last hill. And then, suddenly, we were in the village of Sovana, with a van selling groceries and the top of the street (providing us with fresh fruit for our walks) and a stunning little resort hotel renovated from an ancient farmhouse.

We made up for the short walk with a steep climb down to the Etruscan cemeteries at the bottom of the hill, which were definitely worth the climb. The amount of work to create these faux temples from the tufa would put White Lady Funerals to shame! All finished up with a nice meal at the one decent restaurant, and we slept like the dead, although more metaphorically than the Etruscans.