The best hidden towns you can reach by train that eat well within 90 minutes of Perugia
The train out of Perugia runs through country built on olive oil and lentils, past terraces of grey-green trees, tobacco fields, and the flat silver of Lake Trasimeno. Kitchens here work with what the season hands them: torello and carp from the lake in summer, strangozzi under black truffle from autumn into winter, pici rolled by hand in the Val di Chiana, roast pork with wild fennel any time. The towns are pink limestone and brick, warm at the end of the day, with steep lanes that climb to a Romanesque door and a bar that has been pouring the same amaro for decades. Nothing needs a car, which means lunch can involve a bottle.
We have confirmed each town on this list is reachable without one, and a dining guide has named a table in each. Most visitors to this part of Italy get off at Assisi, and with reason, because the basilica and the Giotto cycle are among the great sights of Europe. The result is a station forecourt of coaches, a main street of souvenir shops, and restaurants that have learned they will be full whatever they cook. It is worth the day. It is simply not where anyone eats well by accident.
The same hills, the same oil, the same butchers and the same rail lines carry on past that stop. North and west the track runs to the lake shore; south it crosses into the Val di Chiana and the clay hills of Siena; east it follows the old Flaminia under the olive slopes. Fewer people get off at these platforms, and the tables named in this list belong to the towns rather than to the traffic. These are the smaller stops, all within about an hour and a half of Perugia.
Of the 41 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Perugia, 15 qualify as towns you can reach by train that eat well: we have confirmed each is reachable without a car, and a dining guide has named a table in each. This list is the hidden ones, 9 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Trequanda, has 1,166 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best hidden olive oil towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Perugia and The 6 best hidden towns with a serious restaurant that you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Perugia.
Trequanda
Why visit Trequanda
Trequanda is three villages in one comune: Trequanda itself at 453 meters, Castelmuzio, and Petroio at 486 meters, scattered across the hills southeast of Siena. The first written record dates to 1198, when the Cacciaconti of Scialenga held it as fief; in 1211 Emperor Otto IV gave them the right to collect tolls.
In 1553 the village was among the first to be annexed to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The Cacciaconti castle still anchors the centro storico, the Pieve dei Santi Pietro e Andrea next to it, built from 1327 in a Gothic-Romanesque mix and renovated in the Renaissance.
Petroio has produced fine ornamental terracotta since the early sixteenth century: lions and dogs and pineapples and chimney pots, the surface of half the gardens in central Tuscany. The municipality holds the Orange Flag from the Italian Touring Club and was inscribed in 2018 in the national register of historic rural landscapes.
Il Conte Matto, Fattoria del Colle have been named by a guide.
What to see in Trequanda
- Castello dei Cacciaconti. Medieval fortress at the center of Trequanda, seat of the Cacciaconti di Scialenga from the twelfth century.
- Pieve dei Santi Pietro e Andrea. Gothic-Romanesque parish church begun in 1327, expanded in the Renaissance, holding a fresco attributed to Sodoma.
- Castelmuzio. Walled hilltop frazione between Trequanda and Pienza, on the rural landscape register, the smallest of the three borghi.
How to get to Trequanda
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 70 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the green months across the Crete Senesi, the clay hills holding their color before the summer burn. September and October are dry and gold, the olive harvest running through November in the Petroio and Castelmuzio frantoi. July and August touch thirty-six degrees and the three borghi go quiet between four and seven in the afternoon.
Rapolano Terme
Why visit Rapolano Terme
The comune sits at 334 meters on the eastern edge of the clay hills, twenty kilometers east of Siena. It was called simply Rapolano until 1949, when the spa industry pushed the name change, a shift that marks how thoroughly the waters came to define the place.
The thermal facilities and the quarry sit at some distance from each other within the comune: the springs rise near the centro and to its south, while the travertine beds lie in the Serre frazione three kilometers further out, a separate settlement built around the stone rather than the water. The medieval centro storico, meanwhile, holds no thermal or mineral history at all: a fortified perimeter, a Sienese-period castello on the highest point, and a parish church founded in the eleventh century, all predating the spa industry by centuries.
The clay-hill landscape spreads north and west of the comune, and draws most visitors past the spa itself. What emerges is a town built on two extractive industries, water and stone, wrapped around an older walled settlement that has little to do with either.
Osteria Il Granaio have been named by a guide.
What to see in Rapolano Terme
- Terme Antica Querciolaia. Six outdoor pools at 38 degrees, the older of the two facilities and the one tied to a general's convalescence.
- Terme San Giovanni. Thermal complex south of the centro among the clay hills of the Crete Senesi, with outdoor pools facing vineyards and olive groves.
- Cave di travertino di Serre. Active quarries in the Serre di Rapolano frazione three kilometers south, the source of the stone behind the Pienza Duomo's façade.
How to get to Rapolano Terme
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 63 minutes away by road.
Our tip
Thermal towns work year-round and Rapolano is the rare Sienese commune where winter is a season. The pools at Antica Querciolaia and San Giovanni stay open through the cold months and the steam off the 38-degree water against the December clay hills is the postcard the spa industry sells. April through June and September into October are the wider best months, with the Crete Senesi at full color and the surrounding wine and olive harvests pulling traffic through the centro.
Trevi
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 near the abbey of the same name 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.
La Cucina di San Pietro a Pettine have been named by a guide.
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
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 47 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for Trevi. The olive groves are in leaf or in harvest, the hill is green or silver-gold depending on the half, and the valley below holds the morning light. The Festa di Sant'Emiliano runs the last week of January with the Palio dei Terzieri, when the three quarters of the town compete.
Passignano sul Trasimeno
Why visit Passignano sul Trasimeno
Passignano sul Trasimeno sits on a low promontory on the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, twenty kilometers northwest of Perugia, separated from the lake only by the road that links Perugia to Tuscany. The Umbri held the ground first, then the Etruscans pushed them east of the Tiber; the Romans turned the spur into a watchtower controlling the pass between northern and central Italy.
In 217 BC Hannibal trapped Gaius Flaminius's army of 25,000 in the narrow road between Tuoro and Passignano, killing about 15,000 Romans in the morning fog of June 21, one of the worst defeats in Roman history. The Rocca, built around 850 by the marquises of Tuscany and conquered by Perugia in 1187, holds a quadrangular plan around a 32-meter keep that survived a 1778 partial demolition.
The Festa della Padella, held in late August, fries lake fish for the village in a four-and-a-half-meter pan on the shore. The Borgo dei Borghi finalist designation arrived in the 2010s.
Da Luciano, Il Molo have been named by a guide.
What to see in Passignano sul Trasimeno
- Rocca di Passignano. Quadrangular fortress built around 850 by the marquises of Tuscany with a 32-meter central keep, partly demolished in 1778.
- Chiesa di San Bernardino. Sixteenth-century church near the Rocca with a Renaissance interior and views down to the lake from its portico.
- Centro di Documentazione Annibale e Battaglia del Trasimeno. Small documentation centre on the Battle of Lake Trasimene of 217 BC and Hannibal's ambush of Gaius Flaminius.
How to get to Passignano sul Trasimeno
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 28 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Passignano sul Trasimeno
“The lake is like a sanatorium compared to the sea. It’s relaxed. It’s calm. It’s silent. To find this level of almost disturbing quietness, you either go up into the mountains, or you really need to know your way around the sea to find that particular spot not overrun by vacationers and beach people. In Trasimeno, this is easy. Even the most popular towns like Castiglione or Passignano sit in quiet harmony with the stillness of the water.”
Read our piece on Passignano sul Trasimeno →Lago Trasimeno | Never Compete with the Sea
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months the lake works. The water warms enough by late May for swimming off the Lido and the ferry to Isola Maggiore runs to a steady schedule. July and August are crowded; the Festa della Padella in late August is the loudest weekend of the year. Festa dei Barbari - Castel Rigone falls in July.
Magione
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, on diplomatic mission for Florence, learned the details and passed them to Borgia, who dismantled 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.
Osteria Rosso di Sera have been named by a guide.
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. Parish church inside the castle complex, dedicated to the saint of the original Hospitaller foundation.
How to get to Magione
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 23 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the working months on the eastern Trasimeno: clear lake light, olive groves on the hills above, evenings cool enough to walk between the Castello and the Torre. July and August reach the low thirties in the basin; the lake helps but weekends fill with Perugia and Florence day-trippers and the lakefront frazione of San Feliciano runs heavy. The olive harvest in late October and November turns the territory busy with frantoi at full capacity. Festa del Giacchio - Sagra del Pesce del Lago Trasimeno falls in July.
Chiusi
Why visit Chiusi
The hilltop stands above the Val di Chiana, the valley floor visible from the town at a height that made it defensible and gave it command of the surrounding farmland. The cathedral, the museums and the tunnel network are close enough to walk between within the old center, while the painted necropolis and the lake lie outside it, a few kilometers apart in different directions, one inland toward the tombs and the other north toward open water.
The tunnels themselves connect the upper town to what lies beneath it: built as drainage, later folded into legend by Pliny the Elder, who took them for part of a king's tomb. The cathedral's own columns, lifted from earlier Roman buildings, make the same point in stone that the tombs make in paint and the museum makes in bucchero and alabaster: this is a town built repeatedly on top of itself, each layer reusing what the last one left behind.
I Salotti, Il Grillo è Buoncantore, La Solita Zuppa have been named by a guide.
What to see in Chiusi
- Museo Nazionale Etrusco. Holds canopic urns, alabaster sarcophagi, bucchero pottery and grave goods pulled from the necropolises around the town.
- Duomo di San Secondiano. Cathedral built around 560 AD over an earlier basilica, renovated in the thirteenth century, nave and two aisles on antique marble columns from Roman buildings.
- Labirinto di Porsenna. Visited from the Museo della Cattedrale, the tunnels run beneath the streets at a scale that still reads as engineering rather than legend, whatever Pliny made of them.
How to get to Chiusi
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 58 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the working months on the Val di Chiana edge: mild days, evening light over the lake, the wine and olive cycles below town. The Frittellata of San Giuseppe in mid-March and the Festa di San Mustiola in early June fill the centro storico with traditional kitchens. July and August push past thirty degrees and the basin below town holds the heat; the museums and the Labirinto stay cool. Tria Turris Medioevo e Palio delle Torri di Chiusi falls in June.
Spello
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.
La Cantina di Spello have been named by a guide.
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
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 33 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months for Spello. The slopes of Monte Subasio above town carry wildflowers, Cammino di San Francesco walkers pass through, and the Infiorata weekend on Corpus Domini in late May or June is the most concentrated day on the calendar. July and August touch the mid-thirties on the valley floor; the centro storico at 280 meters stays a few degrees cooler in the upper streets, but most visitors come early or wait until after seven. Borgo diVino tour falls in October.
Deruta
Why visit Deruta
Deruta sits fifteen kilometers south of Perugia, its hill rising above the Tiber on the river's left bank. The walled medieval core, organized around Piazza dei Consoli, occupies the high ground, while the lower town spreads along the old road linking Perugia to Rome.
That road is where the workshops cluster, most of them family businesses running three or four generations deep, and it is also the route that carries traffic five kilometers south to the pilgrimage church, its walls built up over four centuries from votive tiles left by travelers on the same stretch of road. The first documented kilns appear in the archaeological record in the late thirteenth century, and by the early sixteenth the town's workshops had developed the lustro finish that gave Deruta wares their metallic shine, along with the Bella Donna plates that paired painted portraits with flattering banderoles naming the women depicted.
That convent complex, once a working monastery, now holds both the ceramics museum and, next door, the civic gallery with its Perugino and Alunno panels, so the town's religious architecture, its art collection, and its ceramics history sit under the same roof by accident of reuse rather than design. The upper town's churches and museums hold the record of what Deruta made and believed; the lower town's workshops are still making it.
I Rodella have been named by a guide.
What to see in Deruta
- Museo Regionale della Ceramica. Holds over 6,000 pieces from medieval to modern, arranged through the convent's old cloister and cells.
- Chiesa di San Francesco. Consecrated 1388 after earthquake reconstruction, Sienese 14th-century frescoes inside, Domenico Alfani Raphael-school panel above an altar.
- Pinacoteca Comunale. Civic gallery with Perugino's Eterno and Saints Romano e Rocco, plus two altarpieces by Niccolò Alunno from the surrounding churches.
How to get to Deruta
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 19 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months locals prefer. The Tiber valley stays mild and the workshops keep regular hours, with kilns running on weekdays and tastings open on weekends. The Festa della Ceramica in late August opens the cellars and the older workshops to the public. Palio della Brocca falls in August.
Montepulciano
Why visit Montepulciano
The ridge runs between the Val di Chiana and the Val d'Orcia, 70 kilometers southeast of Siena, and the town follows its spine uphill: streets climb from the gates toward the high point, where the main square sits ringed by the buildings that define the skyline from below. The origin predates the Renaissance fabric by centuries.
Etruscan tombs survive in the surrounding hills, though almost nothing of that period shows in the centro storico itself, which was rebuilt wholesale in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries over whatever came before. The wine and the festival both use the climb as their setting rather than their subject: the cellars are cut into the rock beneath the palazzi, keeping a constant temperature for aging, and the barrel race each August sends two men from each of the eight contrade hauling an eighty-kilogram cask up the same gradient that every visitor covers on foot, only slower.
The steepness that shaped the defensive site nine centuries ago is still what a person feels first, in the legs, before the buildings register at all.
Ristorante Caffè Pasticceria Poliziano, Osmosi, Le Logge del Vignola and 3 more have been named by a guide.
What to see in Montepulciano
- Tempio di San Biagio. A 13-meter dome and travertine façade standing alone outside the walls, the ground falling away below it so the building reads as a single volume against the hillside.
- Piazza Grande. The high piazza at the top of the ridge, ringed by the Duomo, the Palazzo Comunale and the Palazzo Tarugi, all rebuilt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
- Palazzo Comunale. Town hall designed by Michelozzo in the fifteenth century, its tower offering a view over the Val di Chiana and Val d'Orcia.
How to get to Montepulciano
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 57 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the working months on the ridge: vine work in the surrounding hills, mild days, evening light that lingers over the Val d'Orcia. July and August push into the low thirties and the climb to Piazza Grande slows even the residents. The Bravìo delle Botti runs the last Sunday of August and fills the town. Calici di Stelle falls in July.
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