This guide was born out of a boring afternoon.
A cold Sunday at the end of April, one of those afternoons when you work but want to be distracted, you read but want to go out, you go out but want to watch television. Then someone said “come on, I’ll take you somewhere beautiful”, and five minutes later I was in the car without knowing where we were going.
We ended up in Sutri, forty minutes north of Rome on the Via Cassia, a place I had driven past dozens of times without ever stopping. It turned out to be one of the best discoveries I have made in Lazio, and I have been back since.
Sutri calls itself “the most ancient city”, and that is not marketing: it has a Roman amphitheatre carved entirely out of the rock, an Etruscan-Roman necropolis of sixty-four tombs, a rock-cut church that used to be a temple of Mithras, and a cathedral with a crypt where I found myself in total darkness (we’ll get there, because there is a practical detail that will save you from my mistake).
And then there is a historical fact almost nobody knows, one that makes this small town one of the decisive places in Italian history. I’ll tell you at the end.
Let’s go!
1 – The archaeological park and the amphitheatre carved out of tuff
The urban park of the most ancient city of Sutri covers seven hectares along the Via Cassia, just outside the centre, and it is one of those things you see from the road and nobody stops to visit. Wrongly.
The main piece is the Roman amphitheatre, and what makes it extraordinary is not its size (it is small: 49.60 × 40.80 metres) but how it is made: it is entirely carved into the bank of tuff, without a single load-bearing wall. It was not built, it was subtracted from the rock, like a sculpture in the negative. Archaeologists cite only two comparable parallels in the Roman world, the amphitheatres of Cagliari and of Leptis Magna.
You enter through corridors cut into the stone and emerge in the arena, with the tiers rising all around in the same yellow-grey as the bank. It feels like standing inside a single object rather than a building.
Above the amphitheatre the park continues through Mediterranean scrub, and it is worth the walk for the Tuscia landscape alone.
2 – The rock-cut necropolis
On the same side of the Cassia, facing the town, runs the rock-cut necropolis: sixty-four tombs carved into the tuff face, lined up along the ancient road, dated between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD.
The effect is that of a honeycomb of rectangular openings in the rock, some with the burial niches still perfectly legible inside. Several were reused over the centuries as stables, cellars and shelters: the normal history of these places, where nothing is abandoned but everything changes purpose.
Walk along it slowly and look inside: you work out for yourself how a Roman chamber tomb functioned, without needing a caption.
3 – The mithraeum turned church of the Madonna del Parto
This is the most singular thing in Sutri, and it is two minutes from the amphitheatre.
There is a church carved entirely out of the tuff which is now called the Madonna del Parto and which, according to the traditional reading, used to be a mithraeum, a place of worship dedicated to the god Mithras, the deity of Persian origin much loved by Roman soldiers, whose sanctuaries were always underground and narrow.
Inside, the frescoes belong to different, overlapping periods, and that stratification is the real subject: you move from pagan to Christian worship within the same carved space, with the paintings of one era covering those of the one before. There is a cycle devoted to pilgrims, because Sutri sits on the Via Francigena and this is where those heading to Rome or to the sanctuary of Saint Michael on the Gargano passed through.
In fairness I should tell you that the identification as a mithraeum is the traditional local reconstruction and it is debated: some scholars consider it a reused rock-cut space with no documented Mithraic phase. Either way it is one of the most evocative rock churches in Lazio.
4 – The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta
In the old town, the co-cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta is a building that lines up a thousand years of history and does not even try to hide it.
The structure is 12th century, as the tall, severe early-medieval tuff bell tower declares. The façade, on the other hand, is eighteenth century: the contrast between the two is the first thing you notice.
Inside, three naves and three chapels on each side. Things to look for:
- the Cosmatesque floor in polychrome marble, that geometric inlay work you know from San Clemente and Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome: it is the most precious thing in the church;
- a 12th-century Byzantine panel of the Saviour;
- the statue of the patron saint, Santa Dolcissima, from Bernini’s school;
- the nineteenth-century frescoes of the vault and apse, which give the whole interior that bright, late feeling.
5 – The crypt, and how not to visit it in the dark (as I did)
Below the presbytery you go down into the crypt, which is the oldest and most beautiful part of the whole church.
It is a low, aisled space with marble columns of Roman imperial date, reused: the capitals are not uniform and belong to different periods, Byzantine, Lombard and Romanesque, which means they were gathered from earlier buildings and reassembled here. Of the paintings that once covered the walls only fragments remain.
And now the anecdote that gave this post its original title.
The first time I went down, the crypt was completely dark. Not even light from the nave filtered in. I was about to turn back, then I thought that I might never again get the chance to visit a thousand-year-old crypt in the dark, and I turned on the torch on my phone.
It was one of the finest experiences I can remember. Lighting one detail at a time forces you to look properly: the columns, the veins of the stone, a capital, and then the dark all around. It felt like being underwater, the way you only see the cone of light when you dive. And for a moment you understand what the faithful who came down here with a candle actually saw: never the whole, only fragments.
Then, climbing back up the stairs, I found the coin box that switches on the lighting.
Here is the practical tip, and it is the one thing I would ask you to remember from this whole guide: in many churches in the Tuscia the lights in crypts and chapels are coin-operated, and the switch or box is near the entrance, not where you need it. Bring one-euro coins. Then, if you like, switch your torch off and on again: I do recommend the experience in the dark, but by choice and not by oversight.
6 – Why Sutri matters: the donation of 728
And now the historical fact that ought to put this town in the school books, and which was not in the first version of this post.
Sutri was the gateway to Etruria: the last stronghold before Rome on the Via Cassia, and for that reason it was fought over for centuries. In 728 the Lombard king Liutprand handed over to Pope Gregory II a number of castles of the Roman Duchy important for the defence of Rome, and the largest of them was Sutri. Along with Sutri, Bomarzo, Orte and Amelia also passed to the Church of Rome.
That act went down in history as the Donation of Sutri, and it is not a local footnote: it is considered the first nucleus of the patrimonium Petri, that is, the beginning of the temporal power of the Church, the Papal State that would last until 1870. One thousand one hundred and forty-two years of European history begin, technically, with the handing over of this town.
Think about that as you walk across the square: you are standing where the Papal State was born.
7 – Caprarola, twenty minutes away
That afternoon, before Sutri, the stop had been another one: the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola, some twenty minutes away by car.
It is one of the absolute masterpieces of the late Italian Renaissance, a pentagonal fortress turned into a residence by cardinal Alessandro Farnese, with its helical Scala Regia, the Hall of the Map of the World and the frescoed courtyards. I arrived sceptical and came out won over, which is why I gave it a post of its own: Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola.
If you have a car, Sutri and Caprarola make a perfect day trip: the palace in the morning (it needs time and concentration), the archaeological park and the town of Sutri in the afternoon.
What to eat in Sutri
Sutri is Tuscia, so the food is that of northern Lazio: fieno di Canepina and other handmade pastas, pulse soups, acquacotta, lamb, chestnuts and hazelnuts from the Cimini hills, olive oil from the Canino area, and the wines of the Cimini hills and the eastern shore of Lake Bolsena.
If you can, try to be there during a village festival, because the Tuscia does them well and without any tourist pretension. I arrived in the middle of a festival dedicated to jute and laurel, with a food market through the streets and bundles of laurel branches propped up in the square. I ended the day with a fried pizza and a craft beer in my hand, and the bill did not reach ten euros.
A calendar note: the village festivals here cluster between spring and early autumn, and it is worth checking the town council’s website before choosing your Sunday.
Practical information for visiting Sutri
Getting there. Sutri is about 50 kilometres from Rome on the Via Cassia, between 40 minutes and an hour by car from the ring road. By car it is straightforward and you will find parking. Without a car it is more awkward: there are Cotral buses from the Saxa Rubra station of the Roma Nord line, and the times stretch out, so think carefully before combining it with Caprarola.
How long you need. Half a day covers the archaeological park, the cathedral and a walk around the town. A full day if you add Caprarola.
Tickets. The archaeological park costs a few euros (with reductions) and covers the amphitheatre, the necropolis and the rock church of the Madonna del Parto, but the opening hours are limited and vary with the season, and the Madonna del Parto is generally visited only with an escort at fixed times. Do not set off without checking the town council’s or the operator’s website: this is the classic place where turning up at five on a winter afternoon means finding everything closed. The cathedral is free (with coins for the crypt lights, see above).
When to go. Spring and autumn, for the colour of the countryside and because it gets very hot here in summer. The best light for tuff, which is the material all of Sutri is made of, is late afternoon.
There are never enough boring afternoons that turn into discoveries like this one, and it is why I keep going back to the Tuscia: it is the part of Italy with the best ratio between what is there and how many people know about it.
If you have got a taste for it, nearby you have the Park of the Monsters at Bomarzo (which shares with Sutri the story of the 728 donation), the Romanesque churches of Tuscania, Civita di Bagnoregio and Marta on Lake Bolsena: I have lined them up, with verified tickets and connections, in the guide to the villages of Lazio.
And you, have you ever visited a crypt in the dark? Or would you rather bring the coins?
