The 7 best hidden hill towns you can reach by train in the province of Perugia

1. Fossato di Vico

45 min from Perugia · homes €460 to €610 a m² in the center · 2,555 people

Why visit Fossato di Vico

Fossato di Vico stands at 581 meters on the slopes of Mount Mutali, on the line of the Via Flaminia between Foligno and Gubbio. The Romans built a changing station here called Hellvillum after laying the road in 220 BC.

The borgo proper was founded in 980 by Lupo, called Vico, son of Monaldo, count of Nocera. In the twelfth century it passed to the Marsciano counts, who eventually sold it to Gubbio; in the thirteenth Perugia took it militarily and the commune declared independence.

What survives from that period is the network of covered passages called Le Rughe, stone vaults that turned the street into a defensible interior, a rare example of thirteenth-century castle architecture used as everyday infrastructure. The church of San Pietro, the oldest in town, predates the castle and was founded as a Camaldolese monastery.

The Chiesa di San Benedetto outside the walls keeps Eugubine-school frescoes including what is taken to be one of the earliest known portraits of a pope.

What to see in Fossato di Vico

• Le Rughe. Thirteenth-century covered alleyways under round stone vaults, rare surviving example of defensive castle-street architecture.
• Chiesa di San Pietro. Oldest church in town, founded as a Camaldolese monastery, Romanesque structure predating the medieval castle.
• Chiesa di San Benedetto. Thirteenth-century Benedictine abbey outside the walls, fragments of fourteenth and fifteenth-century Eugubine-school frescoes including an early papal portrait.

How to get to Fossato di Vico

It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 45 min away by road. The full route from Florence.

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2. Nocera Umbra

Best for a soak. The comune has thermal baths.

54 min from Perugia · homes €500 to €780 a m² in the center · 5,506 people

Why visit Nocera Umbra

Nocera Umbra sits fifteen kilometers north of Foligno. The Romans called it Nuceria; the town has held its own bishopric since the early Middle Ages and was contested between Perugia, Spoleto and the Trinci of Foligno through the medieval period, a tug of war between larger powers that left it walled and defensible on its slope rather than absorbed by any one of them.

The centro storico climbs to a summit where the tower, the cathedral and the former Rocca stand together, the civic and the religious and the military crowded onto the same high ground. Below, five kilometers down from that core, the springs form a separate pole of the town's life, functional rather than defensive, drawing visitors for water rather than for stone.

The Bandiera Arancione recognition was reconfirmed after reconstruction, a marker that the rebuilding did not just replace what fell but held the town to the standard it met before the quake.

What to see in Nocera Umbra

• Campanaccio (Torre Civica). Eleventh-century square tower at the highest point of the borgo. Only part of one side remained standing after 1997; the rest is reconstruction, stone matched to stone.
• Pinacoteca e Museo Civico. Civic gallery in the deconsecrated Chiesa di San Francesco with works by Niccolò Alunno, Matteo da Gualdo, and the school of Cimabue.
• Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Cathedral at the summit of the centro storico, partially damaged and restored, set beside the tower and the former Rocca.

How to get to Nocera Umbra

It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 54 min away by road.

Everything we know about Nocera Umbra

3. Spello

Best for a stage of a long walk. The Cammino di San Francesco passes through.

31 min from Perugia · homes €1,000 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 8,210 people

Why visit Spello

The centro storico climbs the lower southern flank of Monte Subasio, still contained within the circuit of walls raised when the town was renamed Splendidissima Colonia Julia by Augustus. Before that it was Hispellum under the Umbrians.

The Roman gates and stretches of wall from the Augustan period were not rebuilt over, so the line of the ancient town is still readable in the streets that climb from them today. The same streets carry the Infiorata each June and the fresco Pinturicchio completed for the chapel he painted in Santa Maria Maggiore, two things separated by roughly fifteen centuries but occupying the same short stretch of the old town: the chapel's Annunciation, Nativity and Christ Among the Doctors sit near the piazza the petal pictures are laid across.

A Roman villa with ten mosaic floors, found only in 2005 and left in place under cover, adds a third layer beneath the town that is still being uncovered rather than one that was always on view. The town's Roman skeleton, its painted chapel, and a floor uncovered within living memory all sit within the same small radius, which is unusual: most places show one era at a time, Spello keeps three in view at once.

What to see in Spello

• Cappella Baglioni. The Cappella Bella, commissioned by Troilo Baglioni, with four sibyls ranged across the vault above the painted scenes below.
• Santa Maria Maggiore. Twelfth-century church on Piazza Matteotti, its interior built around the fresco cycle and the later panel it houses.
• Porta Venere e Torri di Properzio. First-century BC gate flanked by two dodecagonal towers, still standing at close to full height with the stonework legible course by course.

How to get to Spello

It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 31 min away by road. The full route from Florence.

Everything we know about Spello

4. Campello sul Clitunno

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

48 min from Terni · homes €590 to €820 a m² in the center · 2,316 people

Written about. No. 77. Read the letter →

Why visit Campello sul Clitunno

Campello sul Clitunno sits at 290 meters along the Clitunno river, a few kilometers north of Spoleto. The name comes from the Counts Campello, originally Champeaux of Reims, who founded the hilltop nucleus of Campello Alto in the mid-10th century under the Burgundian noble Rovero.

The Fonti del Clitunno, the springs that form the river, produce 1,300 to 1,500 liters of water per second; Pliny the Younger wrote about them, and Lord Byron and Giosuè Carducci returned to the place in poems centuries later, the latter with the ode Le fonti del Clitumno. A kilometer downstream from the springs, in the frazione of Pissignano, the Tempietto del Clitunno is a 4th- or 5th-century pagan sacellum reworked by the Lombards in the 7th and 8th centuries; the interior frescoes have parallels with Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome.

The Tempietto entered the UNESCO World Heritage List in June 2011 as part of the serial site The Lombards in Italy: Places of Power. The Castello di Pissignano above the temple covers the medieval layer.

What to see in Campello sul Clitunno

• Tempietto del Clitunno. Small temple-shaped chapel of the 4th-5th century reworked by the Lombards in the 7th-8th, with frescoes of the Saviour, Peter and Paul; UNESCO World Heritage.
• Fonti del Clitunno. Springs producing 1,300-1,500 liters per second, forming the source of the Clitunno; visited by Pliny, Byron and Carducci.
• Castello di Pissignano. Eleventh-twelfth century hilltop castle just above the Tempietto, founded by Benedictine monks who enclosed the settlement with walls.

How to get to Campello sul Clitunno

It has its own railway station. Terni is about 48 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Campello sul Clitunno

5. Città della Pieve

Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.

45 min from Perugia · homes €820 to €1,200 a m² in the center · 7,388 people

Written about. No. 78. Read the letter →

Why visit Città della Pieve

Città della Pieve sits on a hill at 508 meters between Umbria and Tuscany, about 260 meters above the Valdichiana and within sight of Lake Trasimeno. The town is built almost entirely of the local red brick that has been fired here since the Middle Ages, which gives the centro storico a uniform terracotta color.

Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino, was born here around 1448 and returned in 1504 to fresco the Adoration of the Magi inside the Oratorio di Santa Maria dei Bianchi, one of the largest works he ever painted. The Cathedral of San Gervasio holds two more Perugino panels from 1510 and 1514.

Pope Clement VIII elevated the town from Castel della Pieve in 1600, restoring its episcopal seat. Vicolo Baciadonne, eighty centimeters wide, threads between two brick walls and is cited as one of the narrowest alleys in Italy.

What to see in Città della Pieve

• Cattedrale dei Santi Gervasio e Protasio. Cathedral on the main piazza with two Perugino panels, the Madonna and Child with Saints of 1514 and the Baptism of Christ of 1510.
• Oratorio di Santa Maria dei Bianchi. Confraternity oratory holding Perugino's Adoration of the Magi, frescoed in 1504 and considered one of his largest single works.
• Torre del Pubblico. Twelfth-century civic tower in Lombard Romanesque style, thirty-nine meters tall, set next to the cathedral on Piazza Plebiscito.

How to get to Città della Pieve

It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 45 min away by road. The full route from Florence.

Everything we know about Città della Pieve

6. Trevi

Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.

45 min from Perugia · homes €690 to €960 a m² in the center · 7,927 people

Written about. No. 90. Read the letter →

Why visit Trevi

Trevi sits at 412 meters on a conical hill above the Spoleto valley, the centro storico still inside the Roman walls of the 1st century BC. The town stood on the Via Flaminia, the consular road from Rome to the Adriatic, and grew into a Guelph commune by the 12th century.

Olive oil is what people come for. Over 200,000 trees blanket the slopes below the walls on near-ideal calcareous, well-drained soils, and the Olivo di Sant'Emiliano, at Bovara by the abbey of San Pietro, is about 1,700 years old, identified with the tree the bishop of Trevi was tied to in 304 before his martyrdom.

The Santuario della Madonna delle Lacrime, built in 1487 to mark a miracle, holds a fresco by Pietro Perugino. The centro storico runs in concentric rings up the hill, each ring older than the last, with the Palazzo Comunale and the Pinacoteca holding works by Lo Spagna at the top.

What to see in Trevi

• Santuario della Madonna delle Lacrime. Built in 1487 after a Marian apparition wept tears of blood in 1485, with a fresco by Perugino in the Cappella dell'Adorazione.
• Chiesa di Sant'Emiliano. Romanesque parish church at the top of the centro storico, dedicated to the bishop martyred in 304, the patron saint of the town.
• Olivo di Sant'Emiliano. About 1,700-year-old olive tree near the eponymous church, nine meters tall, traditionally the tree to which the bishop was tied before martyrdom.

How to get to Trevi

It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 45 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Trevi

7. Magione

Best for a day out from Perugia. It is 20 min by car.

20 min from Perugia · homes €820 to €1,050 a m² in the center · 14,680 people

Written about. No. 60. Read the letter →

Why visit Magione

Magione sits at 299 meters on a hill east of Lake Trasimeno, fifteen kilometers from Perugia. The name comes from the Knights Hospitaller, who built a hospital here in the mid-twelfth century dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and called their convent Maison in their own language.

The original nucleus stood on the Perugia-Tuscany route and grew into the fortified base that still anchors the town today. The lower town is organized around two medieval poles: the castle complex near the old route, and the quadrangular tower rising thirty meters over the settlement, built in the same period by the same Order.

The vineyards on the surrounding hills lie between 250 and 350 meters above sea level, and the town's territory extends down to the lake's eastern shore. In October 1502, the castle hosted a plot against Cesare Borgia: his own captains and allies conspired against him inside its walls.

Niccolò Machiavelli, sent by Florence to offer Borgia its support, watched him dismantle the conspirators within months. A hospital, a tower, and a plot against a Borgia: the town's history reads as a sequence of episodes gathered around the same fortified point on the road between Perugia and Tuscany.

What to see in Magione

• Castello dei Cavalieri di Malta. The fortified complex built by the Knights Hospitaller stands as the town's anchor, its walls the setting where the Conspiracy of Magione was plotted against Cesare Borgia.
• Torre dei Lambardi. Thirty-meter quadrangular tower built between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the Gerosolimitani Knights, three floors and a summit terrace.
• Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Chapel inside the castle walls, dedicated to the saint of the original Hospitaller foundation.

How to get to Magione

It has its own railway station. Perugia is about 20 min away by road. The full route from Florence.

Everything we know about Magione