How Bolsena was built and evolved over time

Bolsena was built twice over, and the second time deliberately.

The town is a Roman foundation of 264 BC, created as Volsinii Novi — New Volsinii — after the Romans destroyed the older Etruscan city of the same name. It is, in other words, a replacement town, which is why it carries an Etruscan name on a site with no Etruscan characteristics.

Its prosperity came from the road. The place stood on the strategic Via Cassia, which ran from Rome and passed through Sutri, and the ancient route still follows the lakeshore through the town as the modern SR143.

Fortification followed the road. The first notices of the Rocca Monaldeschi della Cervara date to 1156, when Pope Adrian IV had the villages situated on the Cassia fortified against barbarian incursions. It later passed to the powerful Orvietan family of the Monaldeschi, and today it houses the Museo territoriale del Lago di Bolsena.

The religious building is layered in three periods: the Basilica of Santa Cristina of the eleventh century, Romanesque, with a chapel frescoed in 1498; the baroque Chapel of the Miracle begun in 1639 and completed in the nineteenth century; and the catacombs beneath.

And the Renaissance contributed the Palazzo del Drago, designed by Raffaele da Montelupo and Simone Mosca.