The best medieval festivals in Umbria

Bevagna

Why visit Bevagna

Bevagna sits on the floor of the Umbrian valley at 225 meters, where the Clitunno meets the Timia. Ancient Mevania, the name means she who stands in the middle, was a Roman mansio on the Via Flaminia, listed in the Antonine Itinerary.

A black-and-white mosaic of the 2nd century AD survives almost intact in the frigidarium of the Roman baths, twelve meters by seven, octopuses and dolphins in the center, tritons and sea-horses on the short sides. Piazza Silvestri at the heart of the centro storico holds two Romanesque churches that face each other at odd angles, San Michele Arcangelo and San Silvestro, built within years of each other in the late 12th century.

The Mercato delle Gaite each June turns the town into the year 1300 for ten days, four quarters competing on medieval trades and tavern menus, no anachronisms allowed. The Sagrantino slopes of Montefalco are nine kilometers up the road.

The re-enactment here is La Notte Medievale, usually held in September.

What to see in Bevagna

• Piazza Silvestri. Twelfth-century civic square ringed by the Palazzo dei Consoli, the churches of San Silvestro and San Michele, and the fountain of 1896.
• Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo. Romanesque collegiate church built by Binello and Rodolfo at the end of the 12th century, on the main square.
• Chiesa di San Silvestro. Romanesque parish church across the piazza, signed and dated 1195 by Binello, the same builder as San Michele.

How to get to Bevagna

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Perugia is roughly 39 minutes away by road.

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Nocera Umbra

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.

The re-enactment here is Palio dei Quartieri, usually held in August.

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

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.

Everything we know about Nocera Umbra

Città della Pieve

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 regularly cited as the narrowest alley in Italy.

The re-enactment here is Palio dei Terzieri, usually held in August.

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

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.

Everything we know about Città della Pieve

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.

The re-enactment here is Festa dei Barbari - Castel Rigone, usually held across July and August.

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.

Everything we know about Passignano sul Trasimeno

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.

The re-enactment here is Palio della Brocca, usually held across August and September.

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.

Everything we know about Deruta

Amelia

Why visit Amelia

Amelia sits on a hill between the Tiber and the Nera, sixty kilometers south of Perugia and close to the Lazio border. The walls that ring the town predate the Roman conquest, and when Amelia later became a Roman municipium, the town built outward and downward at once: terraces and roads above ground, and below the main square, a system of parallel cisterns cut to hold the settlement's water.

The gate on the old Via Amerina still marks the approach from outside, its current travertine form the result of sixteenth-century rework. Just beyond it, a bronze cuirassed general over two meters tall lay buried until 1963, when it surfaced and was moved into the town's archaeological museum.

The cathedral at the upper end of the centro storico carries its own layer of history, re-dedicated in the ninth century under a pope, and stands apart from the defensive and civic works that dominate the rest of the town's fabric. Amelia joined the Cittaslow network in 2004, and each summer the chamber-music festival founded in 1968 turns the town's attention outward to a different country's repertoire.

The town's layers sit on top of each other rather than beside each other: pre-Roman defense, Roman engineering, medieval faith, and a modern festival calendar all occupying the same small hill in sequence.

The re-enactment here is Palio dei Colombi, usually held in July.

What to see in Amelia

• Mura poligonali. Up to 6 meters high in places, the blocks fitted without mortar along the line that still defines the edge of the old town.
• Cisterne romane. The chambers measure 57.5 by 19.6 meters and sit directly beneath the paving of Piazza Matteotti, invisible from the square above.
• Duomo di Santa Firmina. Cathedral re-dedicated to Saint Firmina around 872 under Pope Adrian II, at the upper end of the centro storico.

How to get to Amelia

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 33 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Amelia