Lugnano in Teverina

Lugnano in Teverina sits on a ridge above the Tiber, sixty kilometers south of Perugia and twenty-five west of Terni. The town traces its origins to the seventh century, when inhabitants fleeing barbarian invasions sought refuge on the spur after the destruction of nearby Luchiano. The Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, dated 1230 on the inscription of its façade, is built in travertine from quarries by the Tiber, a Romanesque parish church layered over a Lombard-era predecessor, with a cosmatesque pavement and a portico of paired columns.

On the hill below, the Villa Romana di Poggio Gramignano, built around the 10s BC, was excavated through the 1980s and again from 2016. Beneath its collapsed roof archaeologists found a late-fifth-century cemetery of 47 infant and fetal burials, the largest set of child burials in Roman Italy, interpreted as a catastrophic die-off from Plasmodium falciparum malaria. The Olea Mundi olive collection, planted in 2014, holds 1,200 trees from 23 countries.