This content was automatically translated. View the original text.
Volsinii, the Ancient Etruscan-Roman City: From the Fall of Orvieto to Rebirth on the Shores of Lake Bolsena
In 264 BC Rome razed Volsinii, the most powerful Etruscan city — and what is now Orvieto - to the ground. The survivors were deported, and forced to rebuild everything from scratch high up on the eastern shore of Lake Bolsena. This new settlement was called Roman Volsinii, at Poggio Moscini. Not a conquered town, but a town restarted: new forum, new basilica, new houses, new temples. It took generations before it truly functioned again.
The Forum and the Two Roman houses
Excavations by the French School in Rome — forty years of work, from 1946 to 1986 — brought to light the forum, a paved square of 71 x 106 m with columns of nenfro stone and granite (the civic basilica, transformed into a Christian church in the 4th century), stores, warehouses, latrines and a horreum. The two private dwellings are the most interesting. The Domus of the Paintings had an underground room with Dionysian terracottas — interpreted as an underground temple destroyed in 186 BC with the suppression of the Bacchanalia — later transformed into a cellar. The Domus of the Nymphaeum had marble floors and mosaics, and a nymphaeum whose niched walls are still legible.
The Area Today
The ruins, freely visitable, are in Bolsena, in Via Orvietana. Opening hours are variable according to season. The underground room of the Domus of the Paintings is visitable on request. The Visigoths in 410 AD and the Lombards in 570-575 AD ensured the town's final decline.
