Tuscia is the New Tuscany — And I Am Your Makeup Artist Here
Tuscia is the new Tuscany.
I say this not as a marketing phrase but as someone who lives between Viterbo and Rome, who walks the medieval quarter of San Pellegrino on weekend mornings, who knows where to find the best local olive oil and truffle, and who has watched this territory slowly become one of the most extraordinary destinations in Italy for couples who know what they are looking for.
If you are planning a wedding or a private event in Tuscia — in a castle, a villa, a borgo, a vineyard — and you need a makeup artist who understands this place from the inside, I want you to know that I am already here.
What Tuscia is
An hour north of Rome. An hour from Fiumicino airport. And yet a world entirely its own.
Tuscia is the ancient land of the Etruscans — a civilisation that preceded Rome and left behind a landscape shaped by volcanic rock, thermal springs, dense forests, and a quality of silence you do not find in cities. The territory covers the province of Viterbo and stretches across some of the most quietly spectacular countryside in central Italy.
What brings couples here is not fame. It is the opposite of fame. Tuscia is chosen by people who have already seen the obvious places and want something more rare — a castello that feels genuinely medieval, a garden that has not been designed for tourists, a borgo where the stones in the street are older than most countries.
Compared to Tuscany, Tuscia is slightly wilder, more mysterious, more rooted in something ancient. Compared to Rome, it offers calm instead of chaos, intimacy instead of spectacle. Logistically, it is almost impossibly convenient — close to the capital, close to the airport, far from everything that makes cities feel exhausting.
The places I love
I am not a visitor here. These are my places.
Caprarola — the Palazzo Farnese rises above the village like something from another dimension. One of the great Renaissance buildings of Italy, largely unknown outside the country, surrounded by gardens and forest. I never stop being moved by it.
Viterbo — the medieval quarter of San Pellegrino is where I go when I need to walk slowly and think clearly. Stone arches, external staircases, gardens hidden behind ancient walls. It is one of the best-preserved medieval city centres in Italy and almost no one talks about it.
Nepi — Roman aqueducts cutting through countryside that still produces extraordinary food. Local agriculture that has not been replaced by industry. A place where history and daily life exist in the same frame.
Ronciglione — elegant, layered, with a personality unlike any other borgo in the area. Fascinating and quietly refined.
Bomarzo — the Parco dei Mostri is one of the strangest and most beautiful places I have ever seen. Sixteenth-century stone sculptures emerging from woodland, commissioned by a grieving prince for reasons that historians still debate. Surreal is not a strong enough word.
Villa Lante in Bagnaia — one of the finest Italian Renaissance gardens in existence. Water, symmetry, and extraordinary stillness.
The villages of Lago di Bolsena — Capodimonte, Marta, Bolsena itself. A volcanic lake of extraordinary clarity, surrounded by villages that face the water with a kind of quiet grace. I find them genuinely beautiful every time.
Tuscania — a town with two Romanesque churches that would be famous landmarks if they were anywhere else in the world. Here they stand at the edge of town, surrounded by open countryside, visited by almost no one.
Where I have worked
The territory I know best is also where I have worked.
At Tenuta di Paternostro in Vetralla — an Etruscan Country Retreat set across thirty hectares of meadows, ancient oaks, and an organic olive grove, member of Healing Hotels of the World — I worked on a perfume campaign for a client from Eastern Europe. It is one of those places that stays with you long after the work is finished. I have returned since, not professionally, but simply because it offers a quality of stillness that is increasingly rare.
Elsewhere in the territory: Castello Ruspoli in Vignanello, with its extraordinary formal gardens — among the oldest in Italy and still privately owned by the same family. Castello di Gallese, which carries the particular atmosphere of a place that has not been staged for events but simply exists as it always has. These are not decorations. They are the real thing.
What the light does here
In Tuscia, the quality of light is different from Rome — softer, more golden, less hard. The volcanic landscape absorbs and diffuses it in a way that is extraordinarily kind to skin and to photography.
This matters for makeup. In outdoor settings surrounded by tufo stone, green countryside, and natural water, heavy makeup looks exactly like what it is — a layer placed on top of something that did not need it. The environment is doing too much for you to compete with it.
What works here is what I do everywhere: luminous skin, precise but light-handed technique, a face that belongs to the landscape rather than contrasting with it. A bride who chooses Tuscia has already made a choice against artifice. Her makeup should honour that choice.
Who comes here to marry
The couples I imagine in Tuscia are a specific kind of traveller. They have done their research. They are not looking for the obvious. They want a location with real history, real atmosphere, real food and wine — local Canaiolo and Aleatico grapes, extraordinary olive oil, truffle from the surrounding countryside, cheeses that do not exist anywhere else.
They are often American, British, or Northern European. They have perhaps already considered Tuscany and found it slightly too well-known, too managed, too prepared for the cameras. Tuscia offers the same beauty with less of the infrastructure — which is precisely the point.
For these couples, every element of the wedding is a considered choice. The makeup artist is one of those elements.
I am already here
I work in Rome regularly. I travel for destination weddings across Italy and internationally. But Tuscia is where I live, and that means something practical: no travel stress, no rush, no risk of arriving late because of motorway traffic. I know the roads, the locations, the light at different times of year.
If you are planning a wedding at a castello in Vignanello, a ceremony overlooking Lago di Bolsena, a reception in a Renaissance garden in Bagnaia, or anything else in this territory — I am the makeup artist who is already on your side of the map.
For enquiries about makeup for weddings and private events in Tuscia, Viterbo, and the surrounding area, visit danielacioara.com or contact Daniela directly.