Bolsena historical timeline

Bolsena is a Roman foundation standing in for an Etruscan one. After the Romans destroyed the older Etruscan city of Velzna — Volsinii — it was founded in 264 BC under the Latin name Volsinii Novi, New Volsinii.

Which Etruscan city that was is genuinely disputed. Scholarly opinion is sharply divided over whether Volsinii was the same as the ancient Etruscan Velzna or Velsuna, with Orvieto, 20 kilometres to the north-east, the other candidate. George Dennis pointed out that Bolsena itself has no Etruscan characteristics — Etruscan cities were built on defensible crags, and the hill the castle stands on is not one. Pliny the Elder recorded that a bolt from Mars fell on Bolsena, "the richest town in Tuscany", and that the city was entirely burned up by it, after which the population moved to another site, which Dennis thought was Bolsena. The new city was named after the old, so, as the argument goes, Roman Bolsena has an Etruscan name.

Either way, Etruscan tombs have been found in the surrounding country, and funerary objects from them are now in Italy and abroad, including a fine collection in the British Museum.

The place prospered under Rome because of where it stood: on the strategic Via Cassia, which ran from Rome and passed through Sutri.

Fortification came in the twelfth century. The first notices of the Rocca date to 1156, when Pope Adrian IV had the villages on the Cassia fortified against barbarian incursions; it later passed to the powerful Orvietan family of the Monaldeschi.

And in 1263 came the event the town is known for. A miracle is said to have occurred in the Basilica of Santa Cristina, when a Bohemian priest, in doubt about the doctrine of Transubstantiation, reported bleeding from the host he had consecrated at Mass. According to the chronicles of the time the host produced a notable quantity of blood in 1263–1264. The proofs were carried to Orvieto and given to Pope Urban IV, who, having examined them, instituted the feast of Corpus Domini the following year. Orvieto Cathedral was eventually built to commemorate the miracle and to house the Corporal of Bolsena, in a reliquary made by the Sienese goldsmith Ugolino di Vieri in 1337–1338. The Mass at Bolsena, a famed fresco by Raphael and his school in the Vatican Stanze, depicts the event.

The twentieth century brought two episodes of a very different kind. The United States Navy established a naval air station here on 21 February 1918 to operate seaplanes during the First World War; it closed shortly after the Armistice. Sixty-four men of Bolsena fell in battle in that war. And in June 1944 the territory was the theatre of a battle between German and British forces that caused the death of 597 Commonwealth men.