IT WAS early evening in Blera, a small town in the hills north of Rome, and the wine was flowing. Sitting in a dusty stone chamber round a rickety hand-made table, we listened to the old man tell the history of his hideaway. His grandfather had dug it out of the rock as a place to keep his wine at a good temperature and escape from his family — Italian mammas being just as fearsome a hundred years ago as they are now.
Lodged against the wall were three huge casks, from which he occasionally drained another cup of rough vino rosso. Cronies dropped by to see if he wanted a game of cards or just to talk politics. It seemed the perfect refuge from the modern world. “Does your wife know about this place?” I asked. “She knows it exists . . .” he admitted, “but I won’t tell her where it is.”
Blera is typical of many hill towns in northern Lazio, also known as Etruria. This slice of Italy, between Rome and Florence, goes out of its way not to court tourists. I spent two months there once on an archaeological dig; the Italians we worked with were friendly, but the locals viewed us with some suspicion. Initial attempts at Italian were met with the same sort of reaction as a Home Counties accent in rural France. It was a good way to learn the language.
The area is quite unlike Tuscany or Umbria; there are no political freeloaders sipping chianti here. Etruria is a relic of an older age, once home to the Etruscans, a race, that “the Romans, in their usual neighbourly fashion, wiped out entirely in order to make room for Rome with a very big R”, wrote D. H. Lawrence.
Today little remains of Etruscan civilisation; they built almost exclusively of wood and clay and their cities vanished. What evidence we have comes from the magnificent tombs, which spatter the landscape like salami on a pizza and have made a lucrative hunting ground for the tombaroli, or grave-robbers.
Lawrence was fascinated by the Etruscans, writing in Sketches of Etruscan Places that they were filled with “ease, naturalness and an abundance of life”. He was particularly taken by the exquisite, often erotic, paintings inside their tombs — well, he would be.
The area has been shaped by rivers cutting through the soft porous rock, the tufo, forming hills, lakes and deep-sided ravines such as at Norcia, a hauntingly beautiful tomb site where dozens of graves cut into the wall rise above you. There are still volcanic springs in the middle of nowhere, such as the fields outside Viterbo, the area’s historic capital, where you can go bathing in sulphurous pools at midnight.
The fertile soil brings splashes of colour, too, with green and gold fields of wheat in summer, red poppies, and acres of olive trees and grape vines. Every town has fascinating churches, frescoed palaces or a fortress, and the property prices are far cheaper than in Umbria or Tuscany.
The European Property Network, for example, is selling a small two-bed house in Cerveteri, the first Etruscan town on the coast road out of Rome, for £150,000, and a farmhouse on the outskirts of the town with 8½ acres for £507,000. A three-bed house on Lake Bracciano costs £445,000, while a four-storey five-bed tufo house in Vetralla, ten minutes south of Viterbo, costs just £525,000.
Vetralla was once under the governorship of Henry VIII’s ambassador to Rome, and the area has a strong British connection, but Etruria remains Italy’s undiscovered campagna. Those who visit want discretion and to escape the public gaze. Camilla Parker Bowles comes often because it is excellent riding country, and the Prince of Wales sponsored a school of architecture in Viterbo.
The proximity to Rome is an attraction for some — the train takes about an hour and a quarter from Viterbo. Christina Thompson and her husband, Richard, bought a flat in an 18th-century building in the city simply because it was convenient for her husband’s job with the UN in Rome. Mrs Thompson, a garden designer, keeps her fingers green by creating typically English country gardens for expatriates.
“Expats expect a proper garden with their house, but it’s not yet caught on with the Italians. I hope it’s one small thing we can teach them,” she says.
To the west of Viterbo is the Tuscania valley — not to be confused with Tuscany — which Lawrence called “the most beautiful view in all Italy”. John Ferro Sims, a photographer, plans to build a traditional-style home on land he has bought there. The one stumbling block could be the rich archaeology beneath. “If you unearth anything, then the authorities can stop you building,” he says.
From my own experience, housebuilders and archaeologists don’t mix. We would arrive on site in the morning to find reminders that the developers who wanted to build on our Etruscan temple site were getting impatient — such as the bottoms of our wheelbarrows riddled with bullet holes.
Another reason why Etruria has escaped the Tuscan hordes could be the language barrier. Mary Jane Cryan, a writer and travel consultant who promotes the area through her website www.elegantetruria.com, explains: “You won’t find an estate agent who speaks English. Those who want to live here tend to rent for a while or stay with friends, looking for the ideal place.”
Dr Cryan says that the rustic simplicity is the big attraction. “Rome has forgotten all its traditions; out here very little has changed, as can be seen in the many traditional festivals. The people are very conservative; I’m regarded as a newcomer because I have been here for only 12 years.
“I have found that living in Etruria makes you feel younger than in Rome,” she adds, although that could be something to do with her new companion, Fulvio. “An excellent cook”, he was making her an olive chutney as we spoke. It seems that an appreciation of such fine things is essential if you want to live here.
“We get artists, writers, singers, anyone who doesn’t need to boast about what they earn,” she says. “I hope it doesn’t ever become as chichi as Tuscany. It’s an area that really doesn’t want to be discovered.” Keep this to yourself.
www.elegantetruria.com
www.europropertynet.com
