The prettiest villages with a medieval festival within 90 minutes of Perugia

San Casciano dei Bagni

Why visit San Casciano dei Bagni

San Casciano dei Bagni sits at 582 meters at the southern edge of the province of Siena, above 42 hot springs that average 42 degrees Celsius. The baths were used continuously from Etruscan through Roman times and again from the Renaissance, when visitors came from across Europe.

In 2022, an excavation that began in 2019 at the ancient sanctuary turned up 24 bronze votive statues protected by mud, with around 6,000 coins in gold, silver and bronze. The find was the largest of its kind in fifty years; most surviving Etruscan votive material is terracotta.

The 1,500 residents live on a basalt outcrop above the Roman thermal complex, in a centro storico of stone houses and three small churches. The borgo joined the Borghi più belli network in 2014 and remains one of the smallest communes in Toscana to carry both that label and Bandiera Arancione.

The re-enactment here is Palio di San Cassiano di San Casciano dei Bagni, usually held in August.

What to see in San Casciano dei Bagni

• Santuario Ritrovato. Etruscan-Roman thermal sanctuary excavated since 2019, where 24 bronze votives and around 6,000 coins were recovered in 2022.
• Bagno Grande. The principal natural pool of the 42 hot springs, used from the second century BC through the Renaissance and reopened to the public.
• Collegiata di San Leonardo. Romanesque parish church in the centro storico, restored in the seventeenth century, with a baptismal font carved from local travertine.

How to get to San Casciano dei Bagni

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Perugia is roughly 68 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about San Casciano dei Bagni

Cetona

Why visit Cetona

The town sits on the western flank of a ridge at the meeting point of Toscana, Umbria and Lazio, where the mountain divides the Val d'Orcia from the Val di Chiana. The medieval comune passed between Siena, Orvieto and Perugia before falling to Siena in the late fourteenth century, and it was Cosimo I who later sold it whole to a marchese.

The fortress at the top of the grid and the square laid out below it are two halves of the same Renaissance move: a private residence replacing a garrison at the summit, a flat civic stage opened up at the base. Above the town, in the woods, the hermitage and the caves belong to a much older layer, human use of the mountain reaching back to the Mesolithic, long before any comune or marchese laid claim to it.

What the town adds up to is a settlement built in tiers: a prehistoric mountain, a contested medieval center, and a Renaissance overlay that reorganized the base of the hill without touching what stood above it.

The re-enactment here is Corsa delle brocche a Cetona, usually held in July.

What to see in Cetona

• Piazza Garibaldi. Elliptical square at the foot of the medieval grid, flat and open where the streets above it climb steeply. The civic stage of the borgo, still the first thing that orients a visitor.
• Rocca di Cetona. Fortress at the top of the centro storico, its walls and keep still standing though the interior became a private residence rather than a garrison.
• Convento di San Francesco. Franciscan convent below the borgo, founded in 1212, with a single-nave church and a small cloister still in religious use.

How to get to Cetona

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Perugia is roughly 78 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Cetona

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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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

Anghiari

Why visit Anghiari

Anghiari sits at 430 meters on a spur above the upper Tiber valley, the Valtiberina, between Arezzo and the Umbrian border. The walled centro storico is intact, the streets running steeply from the Porta Sant'Angelo up to the Castello.

On 29 June 1440 the Florentine army defeated a Milanese force under Niccolò Piccinino in the plain below town, a battle that secured Florence's hold over central Italy and gave Leonardo da Vinci the commission for the Palazzo Vecchio fresco he started in 1505 and never finished. The painting, the Lost Leonardo, is presumed still to be hidden behind a Vasari wall in Florence.

Palazzo Taglieschi in the centro storico holds a polychrome wooden Madonna by Jacopo della Quercia and a working sixteenth-century table organ. The Mostra Mercato dell'Artigianato della Valtiberina has filled the streets with craft producers every spring since 1976, a working continuation of the textile and woodwork traditions that supported the town through the twentieth century.

The re-enactment here is Palio della Vittoria di Anghiari, usually held in June.

What to see in Anghiari

• Palazzo Taglieschi. Sixteenth-century palace in the centro storico, now the Museo Statale di Palazzo Taglieschi, with a wooden Madonna by Jacopo della Quercia and a working table organ.
• Castello di Anghiari. Medieval fortified core at the top of the town, walls and gates still intact, the visual anchor of the silhouette from the valley below.
• Campo della Battaglia. The plain at the foot of the walls where Florence defeated Milan on 29 June 1440, the battle that inspired Leonardo's lost Palazzo Vecchio fresco.

How to get to Anghiari

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Perugia is roughly 82 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Anghiari

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

Sassoferrato

Why visit Sassoferrato

Sassoferrato sits on the eastern slope of the Apennines on two levels: the Borgo at around 310 meters and the Castello at 400 meters, dominated by the Rocca built in 1365 by order of Cardinal Albornoz. A kilometer south of the modern town lies Sentinum, the Roman city next to which the consuls Publius Decius Mus and Fabius Maximus Rullianus defeated a coalition of Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians and Senone Gauls in 295 BC, in the decisive battle of the Third Samnite War that allowed Rome to unify central Italy.

The archaeological park preserves the cardo and decumanus, the urban baths, a second extramural bath complex and the ruins of a metalworking shop. The Civic Archaeological Museum inside the Palazzo dei Priori, built 1355, holds the finds from Sentinum, including a Byzantine Saint Demetrius mosaic icon on wooden support.

Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Il Sassoferrato, was born here in 1609; Palazzo Oliva holds a collection of his Raphaelesque devotional paintings. The town gives its name to the Battle of the Nations historical reenactment, held each August.

The re-enactment here is Palio della Miniera di Zolfo, usually held in August.

What to see in Sassoferrato

• Rocca Albornoz. Fourteenth-century fortress built 1365 by order of Cardinal Albornoz, dominating the upper Castello district at 400 meters.
• Parco Archeologico di Sentinum. Roman city a kilometer south of town, with the cardo and decumanus, the urban baths and the extramural bath complex still visible.
• Museo Civico Archeologico. Inside the 1355 Palazzo dei Priori, holding the finds from Sentinum and the Byzantine Saint Demetrius mosaic icon on wooden support.

How to get to Sassoferrato

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Perugia is roughly 74 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Sassoferrato

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