Umbria

Acquasparta

Province: Terni

A hill town at 350 meters above the Naia valley, where Federico Cesi convened the first Accademia dei Lincei in his Palazzo Cesi in 1603.

Allerona

Province: Terni

A stone borgo at 472 meters between the Paglia valley and the Valdichiana, an Orvieto outpost whose Monaldeschi castle fell to Charles V.

Amelia

Province: Terni

A pre-Roman hilltown at 406 meters ringed by polygonal walls of the fourth century BC, with ten barrel-vaulted Roman cisterns under the main square.

Arrone

Province: Terni

Medieval castle village on the left bank of the Nera at 243 meters, upstream from the largest man-made waterfall in the world.

Assisi

Province: Perugia

A pink limestone town at 424 meters on the western flank of Monte Subasio, the birthplace of Francis and a UNESCO site since 2000.

Bettona

Province: Perugia

A hill town at 353 meters between the Topino and Chiascio rivers, the only Etruscan settlement ever built east of the Tiber.

Bevagna

Province: Perugia

Roman Mevania on the Umbrian plain at 225 meters, four medieval quarters that compete every June in a reconstructed market of the 13th century.

Campello sul Clitunno

Province: Perugia

Springs of the Clitunno and the Lombard Tempietto on the valley floor at 290 meters, the temple inscribed by UNESCO in 2011.

Cascia

Province: Perugia

Santa Rita's town at 653 meters in the upper Valnerina, in the seismic corner of Umbria that the 2016 earthquake reopened.

Castiglione del Lago

Province: Perugia

Trasimeno's western promontory, once the lake's fourth island, fortified by Federico II in 1247 and frescoed by Pomarancio for the Corgna marquises.

Citerna

Province: Perugia

A medieval borgo at 480 meters above the upper Tiber valley, holding the only sculpture by Donatello in Umbria.

Città della Pieve

Province: Perugia

A red-brick hill town at 508 meters above the Valdichiana, the birthplace of Perugino and the home of Italy's narrowest alley.

Città di Castello

Province: Perugia

The upper Tiber valley's Renaissance + 20th-c art capital — 38,000-resident walled town in the Alta Valtiberina where Raphael painted his first independent commissions, where Alberto Burri (1915-95) founded the Fondazione that now occupies the 14th-c Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco + the Palazzo Albizzini, and where the white truffle season + the Mostra del Tartufo in November are the year's headline food event.

Corciano

Province: Perugia

A walled medieval castello at 408 meters eight kilometers west of Perugia, where Saint Francis stopped on his way back from Isola Maggiore in 1223.

Deruta

Province: Perugia

A hill town at 218 meters on the left bank of the Tiber, the maiolica capital of central Italy since the late thirteenth century.

Foligno

Province: Perugia

A valley town at 235 meters on the Topino, where Dante's Divine Comedy was first printed in 1472.

Fossato di Vico

Province: Perugia

A medieval village on Mount Mutali at 581 meters, where the Via Flaminia's Roman waystation Hellvillum became a tenth-century castle still threaded by covered alleyways.

Giano dell'Umbria

Province: Perugia

A hill commune at 547 meters between Foligno, Spoleto and Todi, anchored by a Romanesque abbey founded over the tomb of a fourth-century martyr.

Gubbio

Province: Perugia

Pre-Roman Ikuvium of the Umbri at the foot of Monte Ingino, where seven bronze tablets carry the longest text of the Umbrian language.

Lugnano in Teverina

Province: Terni

A ridge town at 441 meters above the lower Tiber valley, with a 1230 Romanesque collegiata and a late-Roman infant cemetery on the hill below.

Magione

Province: Perugia

A hill town east of Trasimeno where the Knights Hospitaller built their twelfth-century maison and Machiavelli later foiled the Conspiracy of Magione against Cesare Borgia.

Massa Martana

Province: Perugia

Umbria's Via Flaminia BPB — a 3,613-resident borgo on the original Roman consular road between Rome and Rimini, with the intact 9th-c Abbazia dei Santi Fidenzio e Terenzio above town, a network of Roman-era catacombe Cristiane (Catacombe di Villa San Faustino, the only ones in Umbria), and the Borghi più belli inscription restored after the 1997 Marche-Umbria earthquake.

Monte Castello di Vibio

Province: Perugia

A fifteenth-century walled village at 422 meters above the Tiber, home to the world's smallest all'italiana theatre with 99 seats.

Monte Santa Maria Tiberina

Province: Perugia

An imperial-fief borgo at 688 meters above the Upper Tiber valley, held by the Bourbon del Monte marquises from 1250 to 1815.

Montecchio

Province: Terni

A small hill commune at 377 meters above the Tiber, sitting on top of one of Umbria's largest Etruscan-tied necropolises.

Montefalco

Province: Perugia

The hilltop wine capital of Umbria at 472 meters, where Sagrantino is grown almost nowhere else and Benozzo Gozzoli painted Francis in 1452.

Monteleone di Spoleto

Province: Perugia

Where the 6th-century-BC Etruscan parade chariot now in the Met was found — a 555-resident Borghi più belli d'Italia borgo at 978m in the upper Nera valley, with a replica of the Monteleone Chariot (the original is in New York), the medieval Rocca dei Brancaleoni, and a stop on the Cammino di San Benedetto pilgrim route.

Montone

Province: Perugia

A walled medieval hill town at 482 meters above the upper Tiber, birthplace of the condottiero Braccio Fortebracci.

Narni

Province: Terni

Italy's geographical centre and the etymological 'Narnia' — a 17,900-resident hilltop town on a travertine outcrop above the Nera valley, with the Rocca Albornoz papal fortress, a 30m Roman arch of the Ponte d'Augusto, a hidden underground complex containing a 13th-c Inquisition cell with original prisoner graffiti, and the documented Latin name (Narnia) that C.S. Lewis lifted for his fictional kingdom.

Nocera Umbra

Province: Perugia

A hill town at 520 meters on the Apennine slope, leveled by the 1997 earthquake and rebuilt, with mineral springs flowing since the sixteenth century.

Norcia

Province: Perugia

• 🍖Prosciutto di Norcia IGP

Birthplace of San Benedetto at 604 meters on a Sibillini plateau, leveled by the 2016 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone.

Orvieto

Province: Terni

Etruscan Velzna on a 325-meter tufa butte, the medieval refuge of popes and the home of Italy's most decorated Gothic cathedral.

Paciano

Province: Perugia

Walled hill town of 957 people at 391 meters above Lake Trasimeno, three parallel streets, eight towers and three medieval gates intact.

Panicale

Province: Perugia

A walled hill town at 431 meters on Monte Petrarvella, where a 1505 Perugino fresco covers the back wall of San Sebastiano.

Passignano sul Trasimeno

Province: Perugia

A near-peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, on the road Hannibal closed when he ambushed the Romans in 217 BC.

Pietralunga

Province: Perugia

A pre-Apennine hill town at 566 meters on the northeast Tiber ridge, ringed by truffle woods and white-potato fields.

Preci

Province: Perugia

A walled Valnerina village at 596 meters that ran Europe's leading school of surgery for three centuries until the 2016 quake brought the borgo down.

San Gemini

Province: Terni

A medieval borgo at 337 meters above the Via Flaminia, four kilometers below the ruins of Roman Carsulae.

Scheggino

Province: Perugia

Triangular castle village on the banks of the Nera at 280 meters, where the first commercial Italian truffle company was founded in 1928.

Sellano

Province: Perugia

A medieval village in the upper Valnerina at 641 meters, twice flattened by earthquakes, now linked to Montesanto by Europe's highest pedestrian suspension bridge.

Spello

Province: Perugia

Augustan Hispellum at 280 meters on Monte Subasio, where streets carry flower petals each Corpus Domini and Pinturicchio frescoed the Baglioni Chapel in 1501.

Spoleto

Province: Perugia

Lombard ducal capital at 396 meters under the Rocca Albornoziana, where a 230-meter aqueduct bridge crosses to Monteluco and Menotti founded the Festival in 1958.

Stroncone

Province: Terni

A walled medieval borgo at 451 meters eight kilometers south of Terni, with a Franciscan convent traditionally founded by Francis himself in 1213.

Todi

Province: Perugia

A walled hill town at 398 meters on the Tiber, with Etruscan, Roman, and medieval rings stacked up Colle Nidoli.

Torgiano

Province: Perugia

A walled river town at 219 meters at the confluence of the Tiber and the Chiascio, the first DOC and DOCG zone in Umbria.

Trevi

Province: Perugia

A walled town at 412 meters above the Spoleto valley, ringed by 200,000 olive trees that make it the Umbrian capital of olive oil.

Vallo di Nera

Province: Perugia

Castle village of 345 people at 467 meters in the upper Valnerina, granted by Spoleto in 1217 and barely changed since.