Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

PART I I I : REGION A L GEOGRAPHY
building material foimd in irregular masses in the tufo beds. Each of the major
centres o f volcanic activity, the Monti Volsini, Cimini and Sabatini, is a complex
o f major and parasitic cones, some partially destroyed by later eruptions; for
example, M . Venere, half enclosed by Lago di Vico, lies within the main crater
o f the M ti Cimini, and Lake Martignano occupies a parasitic crater of the main
Bracciano cone. Lakes Bolsena and Bracciano, both about 150m deep, cover 114
and 57 sq km respectively. In general the Lazial upland presents an open rolling
landscape whose outlines do not obviously reveal the complex volcanic accumulation
underlying it; in fact one can be unaware o f a massive cone until at the end
of a long incline one finds oneself, as at Montefiascone, overlooking an obvious
crater lake. Each o f the major volcanic masses is incised by a radial pattern of
drainage so that not infrequently the open sweep o f the landscape is lost and one
finds oneself involved in a system o f deep valleys edged with steep wooded
bluffs (Via Cassia near Sutri). The abrupt fall-away to the Tiber valley, fretted by
a succession o f wooded ravines, softens as the Phocene sediments are reached.
The bluff-like edge o f the plateau provided defensible sites for a number of
villages some o f which are being forced to retreat from their perches because of
frane. Many o f their inhabitants are obliged to waste time and energy in reaching
their work in the valley, which was unhealthy and poorly exploited when the
villages were estabhshed.
The volcanic upland offers the farmer few outstanding advantages. Over large
areas the soil is too thin for agriculture and about one-third o f the total area is
classed as forest, much o f it strmted oakwood {bosco) regularly worked over for
fuel, although in the higher areas, notably the M ti Cimini, there are some fine
chestnut stands giving way to beech higher up. On the flanks of the cones there
are numerous perennial springs but their discharge is small and is barely sufficient
to supply the domestic needs o f the villages. The only areas where irrigation is
possible are on the shores o f the larger crater lakes, notably Bolsena where fruit
is o f some importance. In the vicinity o f the villages a dry Mediterranean polyculture,
based on wheat, olives and vines, is practised but over large areas the
tree crops thin out into open low-yielding wheat land, grazed by sheep after the
harvest. As elsewhere there is a tendency to concentrate vine and oUve cultivation
in specialized fields. Mezzadria is the commonest form o f operation and although
dispersed settlement in poderi is modestly represented, the mass o f the land is
worked from villages whose cramped and inconvenient sites reflect the insecurity
which reigned here till the later nineteenth century. The pleasant walled city of
Viterbo (52,000) is the only place o f any size; it is a provincial market centre
where Medieval popes more than once found refuge from the uncertainties of
their capital. A narrow-gauge, privately owned railway reaches it from Rome
across the plateau. Montefiascone has an ancient reputation for its wine
(Est-est-est), and numerous other centres, many o f them o f absorbing historical
interest because of their associations with the Etruscans and the patrician families
o f Rome, benefit from the summer exodus from the capital.
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