Sant'Agata Feltria

Sant'Agata Feltria sits at 607 meters in the upper Valmarecchia, in the historic Montefeltro region eighty-five kilometers north of Perugia and twenty inland from the Adriatic. The outcrop behind the centro carries overhanging walls on three quarters of its perimeter and a thirty-meter drop from summit to base, and its fortress is tenth-century in origin, rebuilt in the fifteenth century for the Fregoso family of Genoa, who gave it their name and held it until the seventeenth century. Before them the town belonged in turn to the Malatesta of Rimini and the Montefeltro of Urbino, each leaving their mark on a settlement whose stone houses cluster below the fortress along the main street, past the convent of San Girolamo.

Inside the borgo, the theater opened in 1605 is one of the oldest still-active theaters in Italy. Every Sunday in October the centro hosts the white truffle fair, running since 1985, the reason the town carries the Città del Tartufo designation. A hill town this small, held by three ruling families and still staging theater in a four-century-old hall, has kept more of its layered past standing than its size would suggest.