Vetralla

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Comune di Vetralla
Municipal coat of arms
Country	Italy
Region	Lazio
Province	Viterbo (VT)
Mayor	Massimo Marconi (since May 2006)

Elevation	300 m
Area	113 km²
Population
- Total (as of December 31, 2004)	12,459
- Density	105.45/km²
Time zone	CET, UTC+1
Coordinates	42°18′38″N, 12°04′45″E
Gentilic	Vetrallesi
Dialing code	0761
Postal code	01019
Frazioni	Cura di Vetralla, La Botte
Patron	St. Hyppolite
- Day	August 14
Website: www.comune.vetralla.vt.it

Vetralla is a town and commune in the Province of Viterbo, 18 km to the south of that city, located on a shoulder of Monte Fogliano.

The castello of Vetralla in a fresco in the Palazzo dei Priori, Vetralla.

[edit] History

Vetralla's dominating fortified position in the heart of Etruscan territories has been continuously occupied since the Early Middle Ages. The Roman site, two km distant, was a posting station on the Via Cassia; some ruins of walls and paving at S. Maria di Forcassi still mark the Roman Forum Cassii. The site was depopulated in the later Empire, when a smaller population retreated to the present strategic position commanding the valley, where it remained exposed to attack, in spite of the imposing walls that encircled it.

The little fortress had been incorporated into the Papal States from their historic beginnings with the Lombard king Liutprand's Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II, but the lords of Viterbo held it from 1110 to 1134. By 1145, Pope Eugene III was installed at Vitralla, apart from the violence and party strife of Rome; from here he issued his bull Quantum praedecessores, calling for the Second Crusade.

The territory was given extensive woodlands by Pope Innocent III in 1206, which brought it into fierce contention with the lords of Viterbo who coveted the land. To this day, in the annual ceremonial Sposalizio dell'albero ("marriage of the tree"), the Sindaco of Vetralla reaffirms the commune's rights of possession on Monte Fogliano. The fief was entrusted through the centuries to various noble families associated with the Papacy, as signori di Vetrallo: first the Orsini, then the Di Vico until 1435, when the last signore Giacomo di Vico was forcibly ousted by the cardinal-condottiere Giovanni Cardinal Vitelleschi, confined in the fortress of Soriano, then beheaded. Vetralla then passed in rapid succession among a series of Papal nobles, to Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, to Lorenzo Cybo (1529), and to Alessandro Cardinal Farnese in 1534.