The town dates to the second half of the eighteenth century: it was Pope Clement XIV who, of his own accord on 3rd June 1772, set into motion the procedures to transfer the old town (situated in the unhealthy Val di Lago) to a more pleasant setting on the northern edge of the volcanic crater of Lake Bolsena. No trace remains of the old town, known as San Lorenzo alle Grotte. The town plan for the new town, initially entrusted to Alessandro Dori and completed by the architect Francesco Navone, assisted by Abbot Giulio Sperandini according to some, drew on the model of the Amalienborg square in Copenhagen: a central octagonal space from which straight wide roads intersecting at right angles branch off. The parish church, dedicated to San Lorenzo, houses, among other things, two sixteenth-century canvases by Jacopo Zucchi (The Resurrection and The Ascension), an eighteenth-century altarpiece by Filippo Bracci (Martyrdom of St. Lawrence), a twelfth-century polychrome wooden crucifix in the Byzantine style (originating from the church in the old town), a tabernacle dating to the pontificate of Pius VI with the depiction of the Baptism of Christ attributed to Sebastiano Carelli.

In the church of the convent or the Capuchin Fathers, we can admire several late eighteenth-century works by Father Fedele di San Biagio, including a canvas reproducing the Immaculate Conception with St. Serafino di Montegranaro.