Marta (a village of approximately 3,500 inhabitants on the southwestern shore of Lake Bolsena, in the province of Viterbo) is the most characterful of the four lakeside settlements around Italy's largest volcanic crater lake, and the one that has most successfully maintained its specific identity as a fishing community rather than transforming into the resort-town format that Bolsena (the main lakeside town) has adopted. The lake fishing tradition at Marta, the eel fishing (the anguilla di Bolsena is a DOP product, the specific lake eel that has been fished and cured here since the Etruscan period, and that featured on the menu of papal banquets at Avignon and Rome in the medieval period), the coregone (the whitefish specific to the Bolsena volcanic lake), and the tinca (the tench, the flat freshwater fish that appears in every Bolsena-area restaurant menu braised with tomato and local white wine), defines the specific gastronomic identity of Marta in ways that the tourist-facing Lake Bolsena experience rarely makes visible.
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Marta: The Processione dei Barche and the Village
Processione dei Barche (May 14)
The Processione dei Barche di Santa Martina (the Boat Procession of Saint Martina, patron of Marta, held annually on May 14) is the most specifically beautiful religious festival on Lake Bolsena and one of the most unusual in Lazio: the statue of Santa Martina is carried on a decorated boat from the Marta harbor across the lake, accompanied by the entire fishing fleet dressed in flags and garlands, while the population watches from the shore and the surrounding hillsides. The procession dates in its current form from the 17th century, though the associated fair and devotion to Saint Martina as protector of the lake fishermen is significantly older. The specific visual quality: the decorated fishing boats on the mirror-calm lake in May morning light, with the volcanic hills of the Bolsena shore reflected in the water, is one of those specifically Italian combinations of religious devotion, civic pride, and natural beauty that exists nowhere else in this exact form.
Lake Bolsena and the Volcanic Context
Lake Bolsena is the largest volcanic crater lake in Europe, the caldera of the Vulsini volcanic complex, whose last eruption was approximately 104,000 years ago. The lake (114 km² surface, maximum depth 151m) has the specific water quality of a volcanic lake (low mineral content, high clarity, temperature gradients that produce different fishing conditions by depth and season) and the specific landscape quality of a caldera that has been filled with water since the Paleolithic, the shores are alternately cliff (the volcanic rock, eroded to vertical faces) and gentle slope (the areas where the volcanic material has weathered into the brown-clay soil that produces the Cannaiola di Gradoli DOC wine on the north shore). The two islands in the lake (Bisentina and Martana, both private, Bisentina with its 16th-century Farnese chapel accessible on seasonal boat tours from Capodimonte) are the specific Lake Bolsena landmarks that distinguish it from a generic Italian lake.
Q&A: Marta and Lake Bolsena
How do I get to Marta from Rome?
By car: 110km north of Rome on the A1 (exit Orvieto) or Via Cassia (SS2), approximately 1.5 hours. By train: Roma Termini to Orvieto (Frecciarossa or Intercity, 1 hour), then COTRAL bus to Bolsena/Marta (40 minutes). Marta is best combined with the Lake Bolsena circuit (Bolsena town, 8km north, the basilica of Santa Cristina with the 15th-century miracle of Bolsena that established the Feast of Corpus Christi), and the Civita di Bagnoregio (25km north, the dying tufo city), and the Orvieto cathedral (30km east).
