Thousand of years of history have produced an important heritage. The Etruscans lived here from the sixth century B.C. leaving in their burial-vaults domestic utensils and other objects wich are on display in the Lake Vadimone.

Rome had its decisive victory over the Etruscan Alliance and made Orte a municipio. During the centuries of the Pax Romana, Orte expanded. The already existing ties with Rome by the river were so strengthened, with the Via Amerina which skirted Orte’s hill, crossing the Tiber a little further on at the great port of Castellum Amerinum. As the seat of the Bishop, Orte was granted the title of city in the fourth century A.D. and was fought over by the Goths, Byzantines and Longobards: Orte benefitted from its position on the only free route between Rome and Ravenna.

With an economy thriving because of the river traffic, Orte developed, first as and feudal country then as a Free Comune a widely autonomous system of government, up to the fourteenth century. The centralization of the papal power, internal fights and the plague led to a decline in development in the folliwing centuries.