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Mazzano Romano: the Village in the Treja Valley, Faliscan Necropolises and Sunken Roads
Mazzano Romano is located in the Treja Valley, 40 kilometres from Rome and 220 metres above sea level. The village stands on a tuff spur overlooking the river, in a territory inhabited since the Iron Age by the Faliscans, an Italic people allied with the Etruscans. The historic centre preserves its medieval layout: stone houses leaning against one another, narrow alleyways climbing towards the summit, portals with tufa lintels. It is a small village, with just over 3,000 inhabitants, but is layered historically, going from the Faliscans to the Middle Ages.
Faliscan Traces
Around the town there are rock-cut necropolises, sunken roads carved in tufa and the remains of pre-Roman settlements. The sunken roads are corridors up to 15 metres deep, carved in the rock by the Faliscans as communication routes between settlements. Some are still passable, and start out from the village. Along the routes there are chamber tombs with funerary niches and inscriptions in the Faliscan language, which had an alphabet similar to archaic Latin.
The Castle and the Park
The Castello Orsini dominates the village from above: a medieval tower transformed into a residence by the Orsini family in the 15th century, and today privately owned. Mazzano is one of the entrances to the Treja Valley Regional Park, a protected area covering 628 hectares, with trails leading to archaeological sites and natural gorges. Near the village is the Sanctuary of Monte Li Santi, a Faliscan sacred area from the 4th century BC.
