stopping by Civita di Bagnoregio on the way to Rome?

I've not been there, but I'm wondering what makes it infamous.

Michael, it's "infamous" because it's Rick's favorite hill town in Italy and he talks about it quite a lot.

Kristin, I haven't been there, but we are going to Orvieto in November and I've been looking at CdB as well. A few points to consider:

1) If you take the train that stops in Orvieto, it'll be a much slower train than the Eurostar from Florence to Rome. Depending on your time constraints you might want to skip it and just go to Rome.

2) Orvieto's train station does not have luggage storage, but Rick's chapter on Orvieto in Italy 2008 mentions that Hotel Picchio near the train station will store your luggage for a fee. That's probably your best option. Rick also has a bag storage arrangement with the Bar/Enoteca in CdB.

3) I think--may be wrong on this--the bus to CdB picks up at the top of the town and the train station is at the bottom. So you'd need enough time to get out of the station, store your luggage, take the funicular up to the town, catch the bus to CdB, see CdB, catch the bus back, re-collect your luggage, and catch your train to Rome.

Based on Rick's estimates it takes about 30 minutes to get from Orvieto to CdB. Depending on how long it takes you to see the town, I'd say you probably should allow 4-6 hours to easily make all the transportation connections and enjoy seeing the town.

Kristin - I would not exactly call it on the way to Rome. It's a haul to ride the bus out to Civita di Bagnoregio. That said, it is a trip worth taking. I've loaded up friends and we headed by car to the city - which was a trip in itself.

Liz makes some good points - although friends have told me by bus it's more like 45 minutes from Orvieto... I've never gone by bus.

If you're renting a car, it's a much EASIER trip!Once there, it is picturesque (usually pretty quiet)...and there's a couple of great restaurants in town!

Good luck!
Ciao,
Ron

Kristin,

I'm not sure if "stopping by" Civita di Bagnoregio on the way from Florence to Rome is going to be easy to accomplish. The "luggage storage" is certainly one problem, but there's also the travel times to consider, especially if you're just using train / bus.

The trip from Orvieto to Bagnoregio on the "blue Bus" takes about 45 minutes to an hour. At Bagnoregio it's necessary to transfer to the small shuttle Bus to get to the base of the concrete bridge at Civita. It's not hard to spot the shuttle Bus when you arrive in Bagnoregio (fare was EU$1 from what I remember, proably higher now).

It might be a bit difficult to plan timing for the return trip, as I believe the shuttle Bus takes a "siesta" in the afternoon, and in my experience the time is somewhat "variable". The day I visited, it started raining and I got soaked waiting for the shuttle, which didn't arrive at the time it was supposed to (fortunately I was offered a ride back to Orvieto, which I gladly accepted!).

It might be possible to visit Civita very briefly, but given the luggage storage and transportation issues, it would certainly be a lot easier if you could stay at least one night in Orvieto.

Good luck and happy travels!

Not to sound sarcastic, but we rode our tandem bike from Orvieto to Civita, no bus, no car, and it was too much fun! It's only 18K, uphill there, downhill on the way home.

We enjoyed Civita, and it's worth an hour, but not much more than that.

As others have suggested, it sounds like too much of a hassle for you on this trip. Not worth the expense either. There are lots of hilltop towns, you can miss this one this time! And as mentioned, it's only (in)famous because Rick wrote about it in his blue book.
The entire town is tiny, tiny, tiny, just unique because of the land bridge they had to rebuild to get to town.

IMO you won't miss much by not stopping there this time.