Civita di Bagnoregio, the tourism town on the edge of extinction

Sign­posted as “Civ­ita, The Town That Is Dying”, the vil­lage is loc­ated in the Lazio region, 120 km north of Rome. Aside from its pic­ture-post­card aes­thet­ic, which it shares with oth­er hill towns that don’t charge entry fees, the “last chance” factor may be the big reas­on for Civita’s popularity.

At the town’s Geo­lo­gic­al Museum of Land­slides, maps and exhib­its show how the vol­can­ic rock Civ­ita sits upon has gradu­ally slipped away since the ancient Etruscans first settled there two-and-a-half-mil­len­nia ago.

Geo­lo­gist Luca Cost­antini reck­ons Civita’s big decline began with a strong earth­quake in 1695, when it was home to about 3,000 people. Since then up to 20 land­slides a year have chipped away at it.

Now Civ­ita is a per­man­ent home to just 10 people. (Oth­ers own sum­mer residences.)

One of the full-time res­id­ents is an Amer­ic­an who laments “the masses of people who come on week­ends, and the noise and con­fu­sion”. Of the res­id­ents, “some are profit­ing from it, but not every­body. And the very reas­on some people came here was to get away from this.”

Yet the tour­ist toll (~US$3.50 on week­days; ~US$6 on week­ends) pays for the con­tinu­al res­tor­a­tion of the town, makes pos­sible the elim­in­a­tion of loc­al taxes, and has helped to stim­u­late full employ­ment in the region.

The fees also likely pay for the Museum whose mani­festo on how to save Civ­ita sug­gests it won’t be cheap:

In order to find defin­it­ive solu­tions, meas­ures taken to con­sol­id­ate the slopes must be prop­erly cal­ib­rated against the intense dynam­ics of a such prob­lem­at­ic territory.

It is unreas­on­able to keep on inter­ven­ing only when an event occurs, act­ing in emer­gency, cir­cum­scrib­ing the inter­ven­tion exclus­ively on the area of interest and not involving the whole slope and, moreover, not tak­ing into account all of the gen­er­al prob­lems of instabil­ity that affect Civ­ita di Bagnoregio.

It is fun­da­ment­al to con­trol the area day by day to pre­vent any worsen­ing and spread of such phe­nom­ena: only by mon­it­or­ing the whole area with focused strategies and adequate tools the instru­ment data can be col­lec­ted, required to plan the pri­or­it­ies and char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the oper­a­tions to be per­formed on the slopes and to PREVENT the spread and worsen­ing of the instability.

The Palazzo Ale­manni in Civ­ita de Bagnore­gio houses the Museum.

More pleas­ing per­haps for the Amer­ic­an is that Civ­ita di Bagnore­gio may be required by UNESCO to cut back on vis­it­or num­bers. This is because the town is a can­did­ate for World Her­it­age Site list­ing. All oth­er things being equal this will mean for tour­ists either high­er prices or wait­ing lists, which should make every­one hap­pi­er … except those who can­’t afford it or don’t want to wait.

Sources: Based on a fea­ture story by NPR. Please read it. Also the Museo Geo­lo­gi­co e delle Frane, Civ­ita di Bagnore­gio.

Fea­tured image: Civ­ita di Bagnore­gio. By evon­due via Pixabay.