Classical Italian architecture in Tuscania Lazio
There is a particular quality to the light in Tuscania in late summer, just before the evening arrives. It caresses the stone buildings in warm amber, and the long shadows that follow usher in the end of the day with a kind of ceremony. The history, the light, the smells of the surrounding countryside — it all teases the child in you and pokes you to explore.
This image was taken while walking the streets of Tuscania, in the province of Viterbo in northern Lazio, during my years living in Italy. I turned a corner and stopped. A beautiful town house, pale local stone, and climbing up its entire facade — above the roofline and beyond — a mature wisteria with a trunk as thick as a small tree. The kind of plant that takes decades to reach that scale. It had been growing there long before anyone currently alive in Tuscania was born, and it will be growing there long after.
That is what Tuscania does to you. Every corner produces something that almost assaults you with its beauty. You are never quite prepared for what the next street will offer.
The Town
The architecture in Tuscania is a blend of medieval, Renaissance, and Gothic styles. Narrow cobblestone streets lined with buildings of local stone, intricate facades, coloured shutters, doorways worn smooth by centuries of use. The town’s centrepiece is the Santa Maria Maggiore church with its ornate bell tower and frescoes. Just outside the town centre stands the Etruscan church of San Pietro — older still, built over an acropolis that the Etruscans occupied long before Rome existed.
The whole territory was populated in ancient times, and excavations of numerous necropoleis around the acropolis and along the Marta river have confirmed the depth of Etruscan presence here. That history is not in a museum — it is in the ground beneath the streets you walk on.
The Countryside
The surrounding countryside is extraordinarily fertile — rolling hills of deep green, fields of sunflowers stretching to the horizon, olive groves producing some of the finest olive oil in Italy, and vineyards yielding wines that carry their own history.
Two worth knowing: Aleatico di Gradoli, a wine with over a thousand years of history, its grape variety brought to the region by the Etruscans from Greece — intense red with purple hues, smooth and fruity. And Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone DOC, a white wine whose unusual name comes from a 12th century legend — a bishop’s servant sent ahead to find good wine, instructed to write “est” where it was found. When he reached Montefiascone the wine was so good he wrote it three times.
The cuisine follows the same logic of depth and simplicity. Tuscania sits at the meeting point of Lazio, Tuscany, and Umbria, and the food reflects all three — handmade pasta with wild boar or hare sauces, lamb and pork from the grill, and Acquacotta, the ancient peasant dish of stale bread, potatoes, tomatoes, and chicory that tastes like nothing else.
Tuscania is the kind of place that stays with you. Not because it is spectacular in the way that Rome or Florence are spectacular, but because it is completely itself — unhurried, layered, and entirely indifferent to whether you have discovered it or not.
These images form part of my ongoing personal documentary project — black and white architecture and street photography from Italy, the UK, and beyond. Based in Sandwich, Kent, I work as a portrait and documentary photographer across the UK, London, and internationally. If you would like to discuss a commission or follow the documentary work, visit the Personal Observations gallery or get in touch directly.
Visceral, character-led portraits from honest, quiet human moments. Classical legacy portraiture for private commissions. International, UK, London, based in Sandwich, Kent.