The best towns on a walking route that eat well in the province of Perugia

Norcia

Why visit Norcia

Norcia sits at 604 meters on a high plateau on the Umbrian side of the Monti Sibillini, ancient Nursia of the Sabines, fortified in the 3rd century BC by Rome. Saints Benedict and his twin sister Scholastica were born here in 480; the Benedictine Order and the Ora et Labora motto that shaped Western monasticism began on this piazza.

The Basilica di San Benedetto rises on the traditional birthplace, built between 1290 and 1338 over a pre-existing crypt. On 30 October 2016 a magnitude 6.5 earthquake destroyed the nave; only the façade was left standing.

Reconstruction completed on 30 October 2025, nine years to the day, with the original stones and earthquake-resistant technology. The town gave its name to norcineria, the Italian word for quality pork delicatessen, after centuries of Norcia butchers specializing in wild boar and pork.

Black truffle from the Valnerina, lentils from Castelluccio, and ricotta from the high pastures complete the table.

Vespasia, Granaro del Monte, Casale nel Parco have been named by a guide.

What to see in Norcia

• Basilica di San Benedetto. Built 1290-1338 over the traditional birthplace of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, rebuilt with original stones after 2016, reopened 30 October 2025.
• Castellina. Fortified papal stronghold designed by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola in 1554, on Piazza San Benedetto, now the Museo Civico e Diocesano.
• Piazza San Benedetto. Civic and religious heart of the centro storico, with the Palazzo Comunale, the basilica, the Castellina and the statue of Benedict at the center.

How to get to Norcia

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Terni is roughly 93 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Norcia

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.

Everything we know about Trevi

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.

Everything we know about Spello

Assisi

Why visit Assisi

Assisi sits on a terraced spur twenty kilometers east of Perugia, the town built into the western flank of Monte Subasio where it drops toward the plain below. The Umbri settled the site before the Romans came, and the municipium of Asisium grew up around what is now Piazza del Comune, the square that still forms the civic center of the medieval town.

The centro storico runs between two poles: the basilica holding Francis's tomb at one end and the church holding Clare's relics at the other, with the Roman square and its temple facade sitting between them as the oldest layer beneath the medieval one. Below the town, on the plain, stands the basilica built around the chapel where Francis founded his order and died.

Further up the mountain, past the town walls, the hermitage occupies a beech wood where Francis and his companions withdrew from all of it. The layout traces the life it commemorates: birth and burial at the center, founding and death on the plain below, retreat in the wood above.

The town has arranged itself, over centuries, around the geography of one man's biography.

Une, La Locanda del Cardinale, Benedikto and 1 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Assisi

• Basilica di San Francesco. Two superimposed churches over the saint's tomb, frescoed by Cimabue, Giotto, Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti.
• Basilica di Santa Chiara. Church at the eastern end of the centro storico, holding the relics of Saint Clare and the San Damiano Crucifix.
• Tempio di Minerva. Roman temple on Piazza del Comune, six Corinthian columns intact, one of the best-preserved temple façades in the country, converted to a church in 1539.

How to get to Assisi

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 35 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Assisi

Gubbio

Why visit Gubbio

Gubbio sits at 522 meters on the lower slope of the mountain, the old town stacked in four parallel terraces against it. The settlement was Ikuvium, one of the most important towns of the Umbri before Rome arrived.

In 1444 a peasant woman named Presentina found the bronze tablets in the area of the Roman theater and sold them to the commune in 1456 for 40 florins, a transaction that kept them in the town where they were unearthed rather than scattered to a museum elsewhere. The terraces order the town's life by elevation: the Roman theater and lower ground below, the civic square and cathedral stacked on the upper terraces of the centro storico, the patron saint's basilica set apart on the summit above all of it.

The Corsa dei Ceri each 15 May draws that vertical order into motion, three teams carrying wooden statues of Sant'Ubaldo, San Giorgio and Sant'Antonio Abate from the square at the town's center up to the basilica at its height, filling the town from dawn to dusk. The layout is not incidental: a settlement that predates Rome, a civic archive kept where it was found, and a race that each year retraces the climb from town to summit all point to the same fact, that Gubbio's history has stayed stacked on its own mountain rather than dispersed from it.

Ristorante Taverna del Lupo, Tenuta Borgo Santa Cecilia, La Fornace di Mastro Giorgio and 1 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Gubbio

• Palazzo dei Consoli. Built 1332-1349 by Angelo da Orvieto and Matteo Gattapone, the Gothic civic palace holds the Tavole Iguvine and the civic museum, its vertical pilasters dividing the façade across the square.
• Tavole Iguvine. Displayed on the ground floor of the palazzo, the tablets were recovered near the Roman theater and record the religious rites of the pre-Roman western world in detail.
• Piazza Grande. Suspended civic square between Palazzo dei Consoli and Palazzo Pretorio, hanging on substructures against the slope of the mountain.

How to get to Gubbio

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Perugia is roughly 51 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Gubbio

Spoleto

Why visit Spoleto

Spoleto sits at 396 meters at the southern edge of the Valle Umbra, the Apennines rising behind it toward Monteluco. The town was Roman Spoletium from 241 BC, then capital of one of the two great Lombard duchies of Italy from 576, controlling Umbria, Sabina, Picenum and the Pescara valley for more than five centuries.

The Rocca Albornoziana on the Colle Sant'Elia was built between 1363 and 1367 by Matteo Gattapone for Cardinal Albornoz, both a papal fortress and a residence, now the Museo Nazionale del Ducato. From the Rocca the Ponte delle Torri, 230 meters long and 80 meters high, crosses the Tessino gorge to Monteluco, an aqueduct of the 13th century built over Roman foundations.

The Duomo holds a Byzantine mosaic of 1207 across its façade and Filippo Lippi's last fresco cycle in the apse. Gian Carlo Menotti founded the Festival dei Due Mondi in 1958; the Roman theater, the Rocca courtyard and Piazza del Duomo still carry the program each year from late June into mid-July.

Apollinare, San Lorenzo, Il Capanno have been named by a guide.

What to see in Spoleto

• Rocca Albornoziana. Papal fortress built 1363-1367 by Matteo Gattapone for Cardinal Albornoz, now the Museo Nazionale del Ducato di Spoleto.
• Ponte delle Torri. Aqueduct bridge 230 meters long and 80 meters high, crossing the Tessino gorge to Monteluco, 13th-14th century on Roman foundations.
• Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta. Twelfth-century Romanesque cathedral with Byzantine mosaic of 1207 on the façade, Renaissance portico, and Filippo Lippi frescoes in the apse.

How to get to Spoleto

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Terni is roughly 41 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Spoleto

Città di Castello

Why visit Città di Castello

Città di Castello sits at the head of the Alta Valtiberina, the upper Tiber valley, where the river that runs through Rome 250 km south is still a narrow, Tuscany-style stream. It is the largest town in Umbria north of Perugia, 56 km from the regional capital and reachable by the historic Trenino Centrale Umbra line.

The town's history sits in three layers. Roman: founded as Tifernum Tiberinum in the 1st c BC, with Pliny the Younger keeping a villa here and describing the upper Tiber landscape in his letters.

Medieval-Renaissance: a walled town run as a signoria by the Vitelli family from the 15th c, whose patronage brought a young painter to the centro to complete his first independent commissions, among them the altarpiece now in the Pinacoteca Comunale, before he left for Rome; the same Pinacoteca, housed in the Vitelli family's own palazzo, also holds works by Signorelli, Ghirlandaio and Della Robbia. Twentieth century: a native-born artist gave his name to a foundation that now runs two sites in the centro, a palazzo holding the earlier period of his work and a former tobacco-drying complex painted black inside and out for the monumental late series, together forming, by the town's own reckoning, the most complete single-artist museum after Picasso's.

Beyond the art, the town carries three Città quality marks: Città del Tartufo for its white truffle zone, which produces some of the best Tuber magnatum in Italy and is marked each November by a weekend market and festival; Città della Ceramica for a maiolica tradition dating to the 16th c and still worked in a dozen workshops across the centro; and a stop on the Cammino di San Francesco, the pilgrim route linking La Verna in Tuscany, where St Francis received the stigmata, to Assisi, his birthplace. There is also a horse fair in early September, the Mostra Nazionale del Cavallo, a Renaissance music festival in July called the Tibernum Festival, and a centro storico whose medieval walls survive in part and can be walked.

The food follows the valley: ciaramicola, the local Easter cake, strangozzi with truffle, the Vitellone Bianco dell'Appennino Centrale IGP beef, pecorino, and the local Sangiovese-based Colli Altotiberini DOC red. What the layers add up to is a river town that kept building on itself rather than being replaced: a Roman villa landscape, a Renaissance signoria that imported a major painter, and a modern art foundation occupying old tobacco warehouses, each still visible in the centro rather than paved over by the one that followed it.

La Miniera di Galparino have been named by a guide.

What to see in Città di Castello

• Fondazione Burri (Palazzo Albizzini + Ex Seccatoi). Two sites: 200+ works in the centro palazzo, and the monumental late series, including the Grande Cretti, in the black-painted ex-tobacco warehouses of the Alta Valtiberina. The Palazzo Albizzini holds the earlier period; the warehouses were painted black inside and out by Burri himself for the later cycle.
• Pinacoteca Comunale (Palazzo Vitelli). The surviving early altarpiece, painted for the Vitelli family before the move to Rome, hangs alongside Signorelli, Ghirlandaio, Della Robbia and other Vitelli commissions.
• Mostra del Tartufo Bianco (every November weekend). A market and festival held every weekend of November in the Alta Valtiberina, drawing producers and restaurants for tastings around some of the best Tuber magnatum in Italy.

How to get to Città di Castello

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 51 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Città di Castello

Foligno

Why visit Foligno

Foligno sits on the left bank of the Topino where the river leaves the Apennines and meets the plain of the Clitunno, the point at which the mountains give way to the Umbrian Valley. The town was called Fulginium in antiquity, and Cicero mentions the prefecture in two surviving fragments.

The Trinci ruled the town from 1305 to 1439, and the palace that carries their name still stands at its center, with the cathedral facing the same square where the town's tournament has run twice a year since its revival. The city's oldest church predates the Trinci period by centuries, its site going back to an 8th-century chapel, while the abbey in the hills above town was founded still earlier, in 1084, its cloister finished in 1229.

Between the ancient prefecture, the medieval abbey, the Trinci court, and the print workshop that put Dante into type, Foligno reads as a valley crossing point where successive centuries each left a building rather than displacing what came before.

Une, Osteria Bacerotti, Cucinaa and 2 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Foligno

• Palazzo Trinci. Seat of the Trinci signoria 1305-1439, frescoed by Gentile da Fabriano and Jacopo Bellini, now holding the Pinacoteca and archaeological museum.
• Cattedrale di San Feliciano. Romanesque cathedral on Piazza della Repubblica, built over the tomb of the bishop-martyr buried here in 251 AD.
• Basilica di Santa Maria Infraportas. Oldest church in the city on the site of an 8th-century chapel, frescoes by Nelli, Ugolino di Gisberto, Alunno and Mezzastris.

How to get to Foligno

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 42 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Foligno