Ferento stands on the tuff hill of Pianicara, a few kilometres north of Viterbo. The town was founded in the 4th century BC and grew after the end of the archaic settlement of Acquarossa, on the hill opposite. It later went through Romanisation and reached a particularly important monumental phase under the Empire, making it possible to trace the shift from the Etruscan to the Roman world in a single place.
The layout of the city
The Ministry of Culture describes a settlement with block-built walls and a regular layout, crossed by the Via Ferentiensis. Necropolises spread around the plateau, in use from the Hellenistic period through to the Imperial age: the chamber tombs and inscriptions found here are important for understanding the Romanisation of inland Etruria.
The Roman theatre
The most visible monument is the theatre, built during the city's great phase of Roman urban development. Together with the remains of baths and other public buildings, it reveals the scale Ferento reached under the Empire — and it's precisely this contrast between Etruscan origins and Roman monumentality that sets the site apart from Tuscia's rock-cut necropolises.
A city destroyed in the Middle Ages
Ferento remained inhabited for centuries, eventually shrinking to a fortified medieval settlement. It was destroyed by the people of Viterbo in 1172 and never became a city again.
