Territory
A place with a material identity.
Tuscia
Tuscia is the territory north of Rome shaped by volcanic geology, water, agriculture and successive layers of civilization.
Le Forre, Corchiano
For Officine Petrucci, Tuscia refers most immediately to the part of northern Lazio surrounding Viterbo and the Agro Falisco, and especially to Corchiano, where the Petrucci family has lived and worked for generations.
This is not simply where Officine is based. It is one of the places from which its material language comes.
Tufa and peperino. Olive trees and hazelnuts. Ancient roads cut directly through stone. Agricultural land still worked around archaeological remains. Medieval towns built over Faliscan and Roman settlements. Food that still follows the logic of season and preservation.
The territory is a source of materials, knowledge, people, habits and ways of making.
Roman amphitheater, Sutri
THE LAND
Volcanic country.
Tuscia was formed by successive volcanic systems whose traces remain everywhere: crater lakes, mineral springs, fertile soils, tufa and peperino.
Around Corchiano, streams cut through the volcanic plateau to form the forre: ravines whose walls contain roads, tombs, caves, aqueducts and agricultural structures made over thousands of years.
Tufo is soft enough to excavate and cut, yet durable enough to become walls, caves, cellars and entire settlements.
Peperino, darker and denser, appears throughout the Viterbese in thresholds, fountains, stairs, façades, architectural details and working objects.
Corchiano
AGRO FALISCO
Corchiano
Corchiano sits within the historic Agro Falisco, on a volcanic plateau above the Rio Fratta.
The surrounding landscape contains Faliscan tombs, rock-cut roads, sections of the Via Amerina, later Roman infrastructure and agricultural land that is still actively worked today.
The Forre di Corchiano, carved by water into the volcanic terrain, surround much of the historic settlement and remain one of the clearest examples of the relationship between geology, archaeology and agriculture in the area.
PLACES
A territory understood through individual places.
Viterbo
The historic center of the province. Medieval streets, peperino architecture, the Papal Palace, San Pellegrino and the thermal landscape surrounding the city give Viterbo unusual density across different historical periods.
Orte
A historic center above the Tiber valley with an extensive underground system of cisterns, tunnels, workshops and water infrastructure excavated through centuries of occupation.
Civita Castellana
The principal historic center of the Agro Falisco. The Forte Sangallo, cathedral and Museo dell’Agro Falisco make the city important for understanding Faliscan material culture, Renaissance architecture and the district’s continuing ceramic production.
Bomarzo
At the Sacro Bosco, peperino becomes sculpture, architecture and landscape at once. The garden offers a deliberate counterpoint to the control and symmetry of Villa Lante.
Caprarola
Palazzo Farnese is one of the clearest examples in the territory of architecture used to order landscape. Palace, town axis, gardens and surrounding Cimini hills belong to a single composition.
Villa Lante, Bagnaia
A Renaissance garden organized through gravity, proportion, sequence, shade and water. Its importance lies as much in control of land and movement as in ornament.
Sutri
A Roman amphitheater, necropolis and later Christian spaces cut directly into volcanic rock. One of the clearest examples in Tuscia of excavation becoming architecture.
Tuscania
Romanesque architecture, Etruscan origins, medieval walls and open agricultural territory remain visible within a relatively intact landscape.
Civita di Bagnoregio
A settlement whose physical form is inseparable from erosion. Its position above the calanchi makes the relationship between geology, architecture and continuing landscape change immediately legible.
Tarquinia
An essential place for understanding Etruscan visual culture. The painted tombs of Monterozzi and the Museo Nazionale Tarquiniense extend the cultural geography of Tuscia to the coast.
A TUSCIA TABLE
A concise vocabulary of local food.
The cuisine of the Tuscia is rooted in the cucina povera of the countryside — legumes, wild greens, freshwater fish, pork, bread. Several dishes have survived intact and remain genuinely good.
Acquacotta — The emblematic dish of the Viterbese. Stale bread, wild chicory, fresh mint, and extra virgin olive oil, finished with a poached egg or salt cod depending on the season. Declared UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Lombrichelli — Hand-pulled fresh pasta, long and irregular, made with flour and water only. The rough texture holds a sauce — typically cinghiale (wild boar), lamb, or mushroom with sausage.
Fregnacce — Fresh pasta sheets made with wheat flour, pork rind, pecorino, and oil. A dish of the Viterbese countryside.
Susianella — A cured pork sausage of medieval origin, made from offal and fatback with spices. Presidio Slow Food. Produced by very few remaining artisans, principally the Coccia family in Viterbo, active in the sector since the early twentieth century. Not widely available outside the province.
Pecorino della Tuscia — Sheep's milk cheeses of the area cover a significant range: fresh primo sale, medium-aged forms wrapped in walnut leaves, slow-aged forms ripened in natural tufa or volcanic lapilli caves near Lago di Bolsena, and barricati types fermented in red wine, grape marc, or olive oil skins. The Alta Tuscia Formaggi caseificio produces across the full spectrum with consistent quality. The Piccola Formaggeria Artigiana of Marco Borgognoni in Viterbo produces a different range: soft cheeses, a blue sheep's milk (Blu di Pecora), and the Stracchinato dei Papi.
Nocciole dei Monti Cimini — Hazelnuts from the Cimino hills are among the most prized in Italy for confectionery and paste production. The tozzetti di Viterbo — a twice-baked biscuit made with them — are the standard local sweet.
Coregone — The lavaret of Lago di Bolsena, a cold-water freshwater fish with delicate white flesh, appears in the best local kitchens only when the lake supplies it. Served smoked as a panzanella, or baked with wild fennel and potatoes.
Ceramics
The province has deep traditions in ceramics, tied to the volcanic clay deposits of the Viterbese. Civita Castellana has been a production center since antiquity — the Museo dell'Agro Falisco documents its roots in Faliscan polychrome ware — and several active workshops in the town continue the tradition. The Museo della Ceramica della Tuscia in Viterbo, housed in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Brugiotti, covers the full arc of territorial production.