The Most Beautiful Places in Viterbo
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Viterbo are Gardens of Bomarzo, Villa Farnese and Civita di Bagnoregio. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
The province of Viterbo, in northern Lazio, is the core of the old Tuscia, the land of the Etruscans. Extinct volcanoes left crater lakes such as Bolsena and Vico and a thick bed of soft tuff that is easy to carve and quick to erode, so towns perch on narrow ridges and tombs were cut straight into the rock. In the Renaissance, powerful Roman families and cardinals chose these hills for their country seats, which is why one province holds both some of Italy's finest Etruscan art and some of its most inventive gardens.
The Etruscan layer is clearest at the Necropolis of Monterozzi outside Tarquinia, where underground chambers painted with banquets, dancers, musicians and hunting scenes form the richest collection of Etruscan wall painting known, part of a UNESCO site with Cerveteri. Civita di Bagnoregio shows what the soft rock does over time: a medieval village on a crumbling outcrop of tuff and clay, now reached only by a long footbridge across the eroded valley.
The Renaissance left two masterpieces of design. At Caprarola, the Villa Farnese is a pentagonal palace built for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to plans by Vignola, with a celebrated spiral staircase and frescoed halls. Villa Lante at Bagnaia arranges its garden around a single stream of water that descends through fountains, a stone water chain and a dining table cooled by a channel. And at Bomarzo, Vicino Orsini filled a wooded valley with enormous sculptures carved from boulders in the sixteenth century, among them a giant gaping mouth, a leaning house and battling giants.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gardens of Bomarzo | Sculpture garden | |
| 2 | Villa Farnese | Palace | |
| 3 | Civita di Bagnoregio | Most beautiful village | |
| 4 | Necropolis of Monterozzi | Necropolis | ✓ |
| 5 | Villa Lante | Historic garden |
01 Gardens of Bomarzo
Parco dei Mostri
Italy42.492° N 12.248° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Sacro Bosco, the "Sacred Grove" of Bomarzo, better known as the Park of the Monsters, is one of the strangest gardens of the Renaissance.
Did you know? The architectural historian Liane Lefaivre has argued that the sculptures illustrate scenes from the Renaissance romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
02 Villa Farnese
Palazzo Farnese
Italy42.329° N 12.237° E
Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Villa Farnese towers over the small town of Caprarola like a fortress, and that is exactly how it began. Its plan is a regular pentagon with corner bastions, set on a platform cut from the volcanic tuff of the Cimini hills, and the town's main street runs straight up the slope to its front terraces.
Did you know? The villa's five floors were each assigned a different function, from the guardroom-like base to the state rooms and the floors for courtiers and servants above.
03 Civita di Bagnoregio
Italy42.628° N 12.114° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Orlando Paride · CC BY-SA 4.0 Civita di Bagnoregio is a hill town left standing on a pillar of rock. It sits on a narrow plateau of volcanic tuff over a softer base of clay, and all around it the land has fallen away into the Valle dei Calanchi, a badland of grey and ochre ridges carved by rain and streams.
Did you know? Visitor numbers rose from about 40,000 in 2010 to an estimated 850,000 in 2017.
04 Necropolis of Monterozzi
Necropoli dei Monterozzi
Italy · 16.8 km from Civitavecchia42.250° N 11.770° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Gsimonov · Public domain On a long limestone ridge east of Tarquinia, the Etruscans buried their dead for the better part of a thousand years.
05 Villa Lante
Italy42.426° N 12.155° E
Orlando Paride · CC BY-SA 4.0 Villa Lante is a garden in which water tells the story.
Did you know? On the Fountain of the Lamps, small jets spout from basins shaped like Roman oil lamps, so that in sunlight the water seems to flicker like flames.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Viterbo?
- On our list, Gardens of Bomarzo ranks first, followed by Villa Farnese and Civita di Bagnoregio.
- Who created the Gardens of Bomarzo?
- The Gardens of Bomarzo, also called the Sacro Bosco or Park of the Monsters, were created in the sixteenth century by Prince Pier Francesco 'Vicino' Orsini. Their grotesque figures were carved directly from the volcanic boulders of the valley.
- Why is Civita di Bagnoregio called the dying town?
- Civita di Bagnoregio stands on a hilltop of soft tuff and clay that has been eroding for centuries, steadily cutting the village off from its surroundings. Today it is reached only by a pedestrian bridge.
- What is the Necropolis of Monterozzi known for?
- The Necropolis of Monterozzi near Tarquinia is known for its painted Etruscan tombs, whose frescoes of banquets, games and dancers are a principal source for Etruscan daily life. It forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the necropolis of Cerveteri.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Viterbo?
- In our collection, the places in Viterbo are most often historic gardens (1), palaces (1), villages (1) and necropolises (1).
- How many places are on this list in Viterbo?
- The list covers 5 places.