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Vetralla is a town and comune in the province of Viterbo, in central Italy, south of that city, located on a shoulder of Monte Fogliano.
The little fortress had been incorporated into the Papal States from their historic beginnings with the Lombards king Liutprand's Donation of Sutri (728) to Pope Gregory II, but the lords of Viterbo held it from 1110 to 1134. By 1145, Pope Eugene III was installed at Vetralla, safely removed from the violence and party strife of Rome; from here he issued his bull Quantum praedecessores, calling for the Second Crusade.
The territory was given extensive woodlands by Pope Innocent III in 1206, which brought it into fierce contention with the lords of Viterbo who coveted the land. To this day, in the annual ceremonial Sposalizio dell'albero ("marriage of the tree"), the mayor of Vetralla reaffirms the town's rights of possession on Monte Fogliano. The fief was entrusted through the centuries to various noble families associated with the Papacy, as lords of Vetralla: first the Orsini family, then the Di Vico until 1435, when the last lord Giacomo di Vico was forcibly ousted by the cardinal-condottiere Giovanni Vitelleschi, confined in the fortress of Soriano, then beheaded. Vetralla then passed in rapid succession among a series of Papal nobles: to Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, to Lorenzo Cybo (1529), and to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1534.
Uniquely among non-English cities, in 1512 Vetralla received the protection of the English Crown, bestowed upon the town by Henry VIII, and a monument commemorating this event can still be found in the local town hall.
It has a station on the FR3 Rome-Capranica-Viterbo regional railroad.
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