The dying city — a medieval village on an eroding volcanic plateau, Italy's most improbable settlement
Civita di Bagnoregio is one of the most extraordinary villages in Italy — a medieval settlement of perhaps a dozen permanent residents perched on a column of volcanic tufa (a soft clay-and-ash rock) in the valley of the Tiber tributaries in Lazio, accessible only by a footbridge across a sheer-sided ravine. The tufa is crumbling irreversibly: the valley sides collapse constantly, the village's population has fallen from thousands to fewer than twenty, and UNESCO and the Italian government have labeled it 'Civita che muore' (the dying city). Walking into it feels like entering a ghost town tha…
Civita was founded by the Etruscans more than 2,500 years ago on the volcanic plateau above the Calanchi valley — the same soft tufa cliffs that have made it spectacular have been collapsing since the Middle Ages. The town was a significant medieval community; earthquakes in 1695 caused the first major depopulation and erased the original bridge, leaving the village accessible only on foot across a temporary wooden structure (the current concrete footbridge was built in the 1960s). By the mid-20th century only a handful of elderly residents remained year-round; international tourism since the…