Bomarzo historical timeline

Despite many archaeological finds across the territory since the early nineteenth century, the origins of Bomarzo's first inhabitants remain obscure: some point to the Asiatic Maeonians, others to the mysterious Rinaldonians. What is certain is that the territory was intensely populated by both the Etruscans and the Romans, who conquered it around the fifth century BC and ascribed its population to the Arnian tribe.

Tangible evidence of those periods survives across the area: the Etruscan Pyramid, the tagliate and the necropoleis, the ruins of a Roman aqueduct and the kilns of the Volumni. A Roman brickmaking factory established nearby may have been owned by Domitia Calvilla, the mother of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The name is disputed. The current form derives from Polymartium, first mentioned in the Historia Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon; the etymology polis martium, city of Mars, suggests a Roman origin — though archaeological evidence for a Roman city has not been found so far. An alternative proposal makes it a hydronym, from a small marsh the local torrent formed.

After the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor, Bomarzo continued as an administrative unit within the Roman world, first under Odoacer and then under Theodoric and his successors. In late antiquity the local bishop appears to have grown steadily in importance until he became the effective ruler of the town.

With the outbreak of the Gothic War (535–553), Bomarzo was repeatedly invaded: first by the armies of Totila, then by the Lombards of Alboin between 569 and 590. The last invasion came in 739 at the hands of King Liutprand, who took it from the Roman Duchy along with Amelia, Orte and Blera. With the victorious Frankish campaigns in Italy (755–756) it was reassigned to Roman territory, ruled no longer by the Byzantines but by the pope. Around the eleventh century the local diocese was probably suppressed, and with it ended the bishops' dominion over the town.

Through the centuries it changed hands repeatedly. It was sold by one Uffreduccio Risio, Veraldo and other co-lords to the city of Viterbo in 1298, and then enfeoffed to the Orsini, who held it until the mid-1640s — Anselmo Orsini is attested as lord of Bomarzo in 1340 — when it passed to Ippolito Lante Montefeltro della Rovere, raised to the title of Duke of Bomarzo.

And in the sixteenth century, between those two, came the garden. Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino (1528–1588), created it after the death of his wife Giulia Farnese.