set bookmark!

Via cava, Italy

Category: Attraction

Address details

Strada Provinciale Sovana
58010 Sorano GR
Italy

undefined, Italy Print route » N42° 38' 60" E11° 39' 0"   (42.65, 11.65) Start navigation »

Phone & WWW

Business hours

Info

The Vie Cave (in English excavated roads), also known in Italian as Cavoni, are an impressive road network linking an Etruscan necropolis and several settlements in the area between Sovana, Sorano and Pitigliano, consisting mainly of trenches excavated as nearly vertical cliffs in tuff, sometimes over twenty feet high, possibly serving as an effective defense system against invaders.
They are narrow cuttings often running deeply through hills, are probably little changed since Etruscan times. Their construction may have mainly resulted from the wearing through soft tufo bedrock by iron-rimmed wheels, creating deep ruts that required the road to be frequently recut to a smooth surface. Their dating can only be deduced by that of settlements they pass between, and objects from tombs beside them.In Roman times, the Vie Cave became part of a road system that was connected to the main trunk of the Via Clodia, an ancient road linking Rome and Manciano, through the city of Tuscania, which branched off from the Cassia road in Lazio territory.

Discussions