side trip & Civita di Banoregio

Here's what everyone here has said in the past about Civita

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Rick may be a little biased, Civita is one of his pet projects.

I can't imagine what you would do in Civita for two days, and it's not a good base for day tripping elsewhere. As I look at my map of Italy, I see a number of Tuscan towns, close to the A1, that would make good midway stopovers. Arezzo, Cortona, Pienza, Montepulciano, even Siena, suggest themselves. All are attractive, quite different from Venice and Rome, and can provide a base from which to see another town or two. There are loads of accommodations of all kinds and fabulous restaurants in and around all of them.

jane,

My suggestion would be to spend those two days in Orvieto. It's an incredibly beautiful hill town (IMHO) and if you want, you can take a day trip from there to Civita di Bagnoregio. As someone else mentioned, that's not an ideal place to spend two days as there's not much to do (especially at nights).

While in Orvieto, you could tour the Duomo (with incredible ceiling frescoes in the room at the end), St. Patrick's Well (a very impressive engineering feat, considering when it was built) and/or the Underground tour. There are some really nice restaurants there also, and it's only an hour or two from Rome by train.

Cheers!

For what it's worth, 3 years years ago I visited Civita on a free day during a business trip to Italy. I took the morning bus from Orvieto, toured every street and virtually every building that was open to the public in Civita, had a long conversation with some friendly locals, ate a leisurely lunch at a nice restaurant in Bagnoregio, hiked a really good 2-3 mile trail thru the nearby canyons - and was still done in time to enjoy a glass of wine before heading to catch the late-afternoon bus back to Orvieto. I enjoyed it thoroughly - the views are lovely - but I can't imagine what someone would do there for two days. It's worth seeing, but if I were you, I'd stay in Orvieto or some other nearby hilltown where there's more to see and do.

Tim

We stayed at night at Civita B&B (the only place to stay in Civita) a couple of months ago. My TripAdvisor review is here.

The B&B is OK and I'd stay there again, but it's certainly not great. Though there are a dozen photos of Rick Steves, his family, and the B&B owner on the walls, I've heard that Rick doesn't stay there himself when he visits. He stays over in Bagnoregio proper.

The town of Civita is a great place and I wouldn't miss it. But staying 2 days is a bit much unless you want time to do absolutely nothing but read a book. Otherwise, after a couple of hours there there's nothing really to do.

Take the advice above. Stay the two nights at Orvieto and do a half-day visit to see Civita.

There isn't enough here to spend 2 days. We visited Civita on our Italy trip in 2007 stopping by for several hours and having lunch. We enjoyed Civita but I would stay in Orvieto instead. Orvieto is lovely and has a beautiful church.