Situated on a tufa cliff, Barbarano Romano is delimited on two sides by an overhang and on a third side by a 15th century city wall. It is located inside the Regional Natural Park Marturanum at 340 metres above sea level, 28,5 km from Viterbo and 72 km from Rome.
The village had such an inaccessible position in the Middle Ages that it was conquered by the barbarians to make it their headquarters, unassailable and impregnable. Apart from this, Barbarano is one of the 10 most beautiful villages of Tuscia for its urban characteristics and simple architecture, red tuff houses embroidered with grey peperino inserts, such as the steep external stairs (the famous profferli), the beautiful rusticated portals, the stringcourses of the noble palaces. The historical heritage of Barbarano Romano is well expressed in the churches of medieval origin such as the Church of the Crucifix, probably built between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was mentioned for the first time only in 1573. Its fame and its name derive from the valuable wooden Crucifix, dating back to the XVI century.
The Complex of Sant’Angelo is composed of a deconsecrated church, built at the end of the thirteenth century; some rooms of the structure houses the Archaeological Museum of the rocky necropolis of Barbarano, where there are rare artifacts found within the necropolis.
The village is then full of very characteristic corners that take us back in time.
Walking along the main street that crosses the village, you get to a panoramic point of a poignant beauty, moving. You look out from the tip of a very high spur of tufa and before your eyes you will see a valley at the bottom of high walls of red tufa, a lush, dense, almost impenetrable nature that makes you think of the jungle that we see in documentaries.
Here, however, we are not in the jungle, but in Tuscia, the land of the Etruscans, where the Egyptian vulture, a splendid vulture that is now very rare, used to fly and nest.
You can come here at any time and in any season, it doesn’t matter, it will always be a great emotion but if you can come in late autumn, when the morning light illuminates the valleys or in the afternoon when the sun lights up the red tuff, the autumn colours of the leaves, yellow, red, green, ochre while a veil of mist appears…
