Town of Bolsena

Bolsena is a town of 4,218 inhabitants of the Italian province of Viterbo in the Lazio region, famous for being called "The City of Eucharistic miracle ", giving rise to Corpus Christi. It is about 30 km from Viterbo and 20 km from Orvieto.

Traditions and celebrations

• July 24 Santa Cristina, martyr. On the evening of 23 July there is the representation of the Sacred Mysteries of Santa Cristina, some tableaux vivants, these mysteries are set up to remember the suffering of the holy child. The procession with the statue of Santa Cristinastop in front of each representation ,along the road from the Basilica to the Church of the Holy Savior . The costumes and setting are particularly well and the division of roles and the different models follows a tradition handed down from father to son. The next morning a procession with the Saint from the Church of the Holy Savior to return to Santa Cristina, stopping in front of new representations that are set up.
• The Christian tradition recalls the miracle of the Eucharist, which occurred in Bolsena in 1263. A priest of Bohemian origin,during the celebration of the Eucharist at the tomb of Santa Cristina, had doubts about transubstantiation. Suddenly, blood gushed from the consecrated, the body wet and liturgical linens. Pope Urban IV, who was in nearby Orvieto, was informed of what Bishop James and sent to control the situation, with the task of carry with them the sacred linen bloody. Nel1264 the Pope promulgated the Bull Transiturus instituting the Feast of Corpus Christi. In Bolsena houses the sacred stones, one of which is always exposed to the veneration of the faithful.

The famous procession that winds through the streets of the old town was celebrated for the first time in 1811 by order of the Franciscan friar Lorenzo Cozza.

Monuments and places of interest

• Chapel of the Miracle (1639): Baroque-style building, completed in the nineteenth century. The miracle of the host to which it relates in lontano1263 gushed out, according to the chronicles of the time, a significant amount of blood. The evidence of miracles were brought to Orvietoe delivered to Pope Urban VI, who after looking at the miracle of the tracks, he instituted the feast of Corpus Domini, the following year. The interior features an altar with a canopy and a very old valuable statue in honor of Santa Cristina, attributed to Buglioni.
• Cristina S. (XI century): Romanesque style, has a altarpiece Sano di Pietro of the fifteenth century, the chapel was painted by Sienese painters of the fifteenth century.
• Rocca Monaldeschi: the first records date back to 1156 when Pope Adrian IV had it fortified the villages situated on the Via Cassia in defense of the barbarian invasions. It then passed to the powerful family of Orvieto Monaldeschi. Currently home to the Territorial Museum of Lake Bolsena.
• Cozza Crispo Palace (now the Dragon): built to designs by the architects Simone Moscow and Raffaello da Montelupo in the mid-sixteenth century is one of the best-preserved sixteenth-century palaces of Lazio and keeps inside a cycle of frescoes dating back to Mannerism. It was the residence of the famous Abbot Joseph Cozza Luzi, Deputy Librarian of the SRC and Abbot of Grottaferrata.
• Fontana dei Medici: commonly known as "San Rocco" was built by Giovanni de 'Medici and is located in the picturesque square of San Rocco: bolsenesi for the water that flows is miraculous and a mass is celebrated every year with the blessing of water (August 16).

The origins of Bolsena: " Volsinii"

Volsinii (in latin) was an ancient Etruscan city (Velzna in Etruscan) and then Roman.

Political and religious center of primary importance, the ancient sources testify to its destruction in 264 BC by the Romans, following which he was re-founded the Roman town of Volsinii (also known as modern Volsinii novae), the current Bolsena. The identification of the ancient Etruscan town (referred to as modern Volsinii veteres) is discussed instead: the best hypothesis is the second stretch of Orvieto while others should always be identified with the Roman Volsinii and therefore the current Bolsena. There is also an identification of the site at Montefiascone. Velzna The name is also probably at the root of the Etruscan Felsina, today's Bologna.

The story of the Etruscan city

He was a member of the league of the twelve Etruscan cities (dodecapoli), which was located in the sanctuary of the Federal Fanum Voltumnae Vertumnus dedicated to the god (or Vertumnus Votumnus in Latin), corresponding to Veltumna Voltumna or Etruscan. The location of this shrine has not yet been precisely identified.

The city was a long struggle with Rome in the fourth and first half of the third century BC, tells us how the Roman historian Titus Livius:

• in 392 a.C. (Livio, V, 31-32) was rejected Volsiniesi raid Roman territory;
• in308 a.C. (Livio, IX, 41) the console Publio Decio Mure conquered the fortified towns in its territory;
• in 294 a.C. (Livio, X, 37) the console Lucio Postumio Megello defeated in a battle at the same city Volsiniesi, allied with the Etruscan cities of Perusia and Arretium, forcing the Etruscans to pay a huge tribute and to accept a peace of forty years;
• in 280 a.C. (Livio, epitome, XI) the city, allied with volcano, was again defeated and subjugated, as reported by the Capitoline Fasti.

Valerio Massimo (IX,1) Volsinii cites as rich and beautiful city, but it also tells the moral decay (from his point of view), for having taken over the servile classes. Probably a popular government had replaced an oligarchic government filoromano and Romans intervened to restore the situation in their favor, with an expedition led by the consul Quintus Fabius Gurgi.

They died in battle in 264 BC Consul Marco Fulvio Flacco was sent against the city to quell the rebellion and destroyed it. He came back to Rome a rich booty, including many statues in bronze, given as gifts to the gods: the excavation of the sacred shrine of Sant'Omobono in Rome, was found the base of one of these donar, identified by 'dedicatory inscription of the consul Flaccus. It was also built on the Aventine (according to the Roman dell'evocatio) a temple dedicated to the god or Vertumnus Vortumnus, where were these paintings of Flacco as the console winner.

The Byzantine author John Zonaras ("Historical Epitome", 8, 7, 4-8) reports that the town was re-established again in a different place.

Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia, II, 53) cites Volsinii as rich cities of the Etruscans, and speaks entirely destroyed by a thunderbolt.

The Roman city

Volsinii was later a Roman town, part of the Royal VII Etruria of the Augustan age, identified with the current Bolsena, which retains substantial ancient remains in the current Roman archaeological site.

Born in the town hall and the powerful Sejanus stoic Musonius Rufus.

The question of the identification of the Etruscan city

The identification of Velzna-Volsinii Etruscan Orvieto, some now held by the overwhelming majority of accredited scholars in the field of archeology dell'etruscologia and Italic, was proposed in 1828 by K. O. Müller. The later nineteenth century excavations unearthed the vast necropolis of Orvieto and the remains of a temple city, testifying to the importance of the city. Other remains testify to the existence up area as early as the Bronze Age and consistency with a particular population from the early Iron Age (phase known as the Villanova). Was recently identified the location, east of Orvieto tuff dell'acrocoro of Fanum Voltumnae shrine known through literary sources, which held assets of the league of the twelve cities of Etruria.

The name derives from Orvieto Urbs vetus, as attested by Procopius of Caesarea (Gothic War, 2,20,7-12), who uses the name of Οὐρβιβεντός-Ourbibentos.

In the fifties and sixties, excavations conducted by the French Archaeological School, resumed light on some of the remains attributed to the Etruscan era under the Roman town of Bolsena, giving rise to the hypothesis of a continuity of settlement between the Etruscan and Velzna-Volsinii Volsinii Roman. For the great Etruscan city whose remains were found in Orvieto was proposed as an alternative identification to the center of Salpinum, mentioned by the sources as an ally of Volsinii against the Romans.

The hypothesis was later abandoned, and it was considered rather than the foundation of a new Roman Volsinii after 264 BC dragging the surviving inhabitants took place in a small town near the existing one.

Recently there have been other discoveries of structures, interpreted as part of the walls of the old Etruscan Bolsena. This is the case of a wall consisting of two screens in place in square blocks of tufa, arranged head and cut and put in place without clamps or fixing mortar, filled intermediate rocks. The wall in some places reaches a thickness of about 3 m to reconstruct a perimeter of about 5 km. Around the city there are also different cemeteries, which have yielded material dated between the sixth and fourth centuries BC