Viterbo, Lazio

Calcata

In 1935 the government ordered this village evacuated. Nobody left. Thirty years later artists moved into the houses the state had condemned.

Residents
905
Region
Lazio
Best time
April to June and September to October, at weekends, when the workshops are open.

Why it is worth the drive

In 1935 the mayor registered Calcata among the towns to be moved under a 1908 law on settlements threatened by landslides. Anyone who relocated within ten years would get a hundred square metres free in the new site. Nobody went.

Two laws in 1939 protected the village as a historic and landscape asset. The new Calcata was finished in 1959 and the transfers began in 1966, but by then artists and architects from Rome had moved into the emptied houses. They are still there.

Getting there

Rome Fiumicino (FCO), about seventy kilometres, a little over an hour. There is no station and the bus is slow and rare.

The honest part

It is an hour from Rome, so on a fine weekend it fills with Romans. Cars stay outside; you walk in. Some of the workshops lean new-age. Almost nobody stays the night.

Sources: tuttitalia.it/lazio/95-calcata/ ; visitcalcata.it/storia/

Last checked 2026-09-12. Opening hours and festival dates change: confirm with the town before you travel.

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