Blera (ancient Blera, a small Etruscan and Roman town in the Marta river valley, province of Viterbo, 20km southwest of Viterbo) is a town of approximately 3,200 inhabitants in one of the most specific landscapes of northern Lazio: the tufo gorge of the Biedano stream (the tributary of the Marta that has cut a 20-30m deep canyon through the volcanic rock in the centuries since the Roman period) provides the natural defense that made Blera a secure settlement from the Etruscan period, and the roads that radiate from Blera in every direction pass through the cut tufo banks that the Etruscan community used as the walls of their chamber tombs, tomb doors visible in the tufo faces on every approach road, many still containing the carved architectural details (the stone pilasters, the carved ceiling beams) of the original burial chambers.
The specific Blera archaeological character: unlike the great Etruscan necropolis sites of Cerveteri and Tarquinia (which have been excavated, organized, and turned into archaeological parks with ticket offices and visitor infrastructure), the Blera necropolis is distributed along the actual road network, the tombs are along the roads that people drive and walk daily, many accessible by simply stopping the car on Via Clodia or Via Traiana and descending into the tufo banks. This is Etruscan heritage in its unmanaged, unorganized, genuinely present form, not a museum but a living landscape where the ancient and the contemporary share the same territorial fabric.
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Blera: Key Sites
Via Clodia Bridge
The Ponte della Rocca (the "Rock Bridge", the single-arch stone bridge over the Biedano gorge on the approach from the north, on the ancient Via Clodia route) is the most specifically beautiful ancient engineering monument in the Tuscia zone outside the major cities: a single arch of tufo and travertine spanning the gorge at the point where the road must cross, with the specific functional beauty of a bridge designed purely for the load it must carry across the gorge it must span. The bridge dates from the Roman period (Via Clodia, the Roman road from Rome to the Etruria region north of the Tiber, passed through Blera on this alignment) and remains in use as a pedestrian and light vehicle crossing. From the bridge, the Biedano gorge is visible upstream and downstream, the tufo walls, the vegetation growing from the gorge face, and the tomb doors cut into the rock on both sides.
Q&A: Blera
How do I visit the Blera Etruscan tombs?
The tombs along Via Clodia and the approach roads to Blera are accessible from the road without special permits or ticket offices (the territory isn't organized as an archaeological park). Stop along the road at the points where the tufo banks are cut with tomb doors, descend to the tomb level (sometimes requiring a short scramble down the bank), and enter through the open tomb doorways, the chambers are dry, the architectural carving is visible, and the experience of standing in a 2,500-year-old Etruscan burial chamber that is simply a feature of the Blera road network is one of the most unmediated archaeological encounters available in Italy. Take a torch (flashlight) and be aware that the chambers may be inhabited by bats during summer evenings.
