San Pietro, Tuscania (3)

San Pietro seen from across the valley, standing on the hill where the Etruscans built their acropolis nearly three thousand years ago. Tuscania, in northern Lazio near Viterbo, was a prosperous Etruscan settlement closely linked to the powerful city of Tarquinia, surrounded by necropoleis of rock-cut tombs and sarcophagi. Absorbed into Rome as a municipium, the town flourished again in the Middle Ages, when the great Romanesque churches of San Pietro and Santa Maria Maggiore rose over the ancient acropolis.

From this distance you see what the builders understood — the church doesn't sit on the landscape, it grows out of it. Three civilisations, one hill.

This print is 120 x 80 cm on Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl with a 5cm border.