Tuscania historical timeline

Two myths compete over the founding. The first, reported by the Roman historian Titus Annius Luscus, has Tuscania founded by Aeneas's son Ascanius, on the spot where he found twelve dog pups — whence the name Tus-cana, cana being close to the Latin canis, dog. The second names Tusco, son of Hercules and Araxes, as founder.

The archaeology is less colourful and more useful. Beyond some Palaeolithic traces, finds at the Etruscan necropoleis of the Scalette and the Pantacciano date the first important settlements here to between the Copper Age and the early Bronze Age — the third to the first half of the second millennium BC. English accounts put human presence in the area from the Neolithic.

The first major expansion came with the Etruscans, from the eighth century BC, with the urbanisation of the acropolis on the hill of San Pietro — which today stands outside the city walls. But this was not yet one town: the discovery of twelve distinct rock-cut necropoleis across the territory suggests instead a cluster of small, mainly agricultural villages. English sources put the founding of the city proper in the seventh century BC, when the acropolis on St Peter's Hill was surrounded by a line of walls.

Its position then made it important. Tuscania's strategic location gave it a leading role in the Etruscan world, and after the defeat of the coastal cities by the Greeks in the fourth century BC it became a maritime trade centre too, through the port of Regas, next to today's Montalto di Castro.

Then comes the unusual part. There is no record of Tuscania being involved in the battles that led to the Roman conquest of Etruscan northern Lazio in 280 BC, as the city probably entered the Roman orbit peacefully. Agricultural development and the construction of the Via Clodia further boosted its economy, and it became a municipium in 88 BC.

In the fifth century AD — or earlier, depending on the source — Tuscania became one of the first bishopric sees in Italy. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire it fell to the Lombards in 569 or 574; in 781 it became part of the Papal States; between 967 and 1066 it was a fief of the Anguillara family and then of the marquises of Tuscany; and in 1081 it was besieged by the Emperor Henry IV.

In the following century it became a free commune with authority over a wide territory including numerous castles, but inner struggles cost it prestige in favour of nearby Viterbo, made a diocese in 1192.

In 1222 St Francis of Assisi sojourned in the city. And during the struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines it was captured by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen on 2 March 1240, and provided with a line of walls.

A failed military expedition against Boniface VIII in the early fourteenth century led to submission to Rome — and to the diminutive name the town then carried, as Toscanella, until 1911.