The Region of Umbria

We decided to spend our extra travel days in the Umbrian cities of Orvieto and Perugia.

We had considered visiting Milan or Bologna, but an ex tour guide who visited Marino & Elide convinced us that Umbria was the way to go. These cities were smaller and closer to our planned route. Knowing that we were headed to Florence and Rome afterwards, another big draw was that we would be putting off being surrounded by tons of tourists.

Nevertheless, Orvieto struck us as extremely touristy. It probably served as a good intermediary step between the little mountain village where we’d been living and the huge cities we’d see during the rest of our travel week. I’m not sure why Orvieto was so popular for the English-speaking crowd either. As far as we could tell, the only real tourist attraction there was the cathedral.

The cathedral of Orvieto

Other reasons that we were interested in Orvieto were that it was built on top of volcanic rock, that there is a cable car that connects the city “center” with the more modern part of the city below, and that there’s an old well that was built to defend the city against then-probable siege.

Lovely view from Orvieto

I do have an Orvieto gallery to thank for introducing me to Verdirosi, whose art I think is neat.

Orvieto was cold and drizzly during the one day that we spent there. That probably contributed to our mild disappointment in our visit. So the next day we moved on to Perugia, the capital of Umbria, where we had a much better time.

Perugia is famous for its chocolate. When planning our travels, we were disappointed to realize that we were going to miss the Eurochocolate Festival by less than a week, but rearranging our itinerary would have required spending more money and more time on trains, so we stuck to the original plan. We still got to look in at lots of permanent chocolate shops and to try some baci (literally “kisses,” but actually little morsels) ourselves.

The chocolate festival stands were already set up all over the downtown area of the city.

Window of a chocolate pastry shop. I love the hedgehog!

Nom nom fish-shaped pastry.

Two white chocolate Perugina baci

Another thing that Perugia is famous for is the fountain in the Piazza IV Novembre, created by a local architect. We spent some time identifying the zodiac signs, Roman histories, and Old Testament stories on the sculpted panels around the fountain.

Fontana Maggiore in the center of Piazza IV Novembre

We also ducked into the National Gallery of Umbria to see a comprehensive collection of Umrian art, mostly created by Perugino, the local star: A Renaissance artist who was Raphael’s master. Next door was the College of Exchanges full of frescoes completed by Perugino and Raphael.

After getting some culture, we wandered around the city to experience a ceramics market, a view overlooking the lower new city, and an escape from the crowded main street.

At a lookout from the raised historical center of Perugia

Chocolate and art and pretty views are and nice and all, but my absolute favorite part of Perugia were the escalators! Like almost all of the old cities we’ve visited in Europe, Perugia was originally built on the high point of the area for defensive reasons. Several centuries later, after the modern city had expanded into the surrounding area below, someone really smart realized that it would be nice to have escalators connecting the two parts of the city so that people wouldn’t have to hike all over town. So now there are random escalators leading up from the new city to the historical center above. When creating these escalators, ancient ruins were discovered. The ruins were cleaned up and lighting was put in, so now some Perugians walk to work via escalators and an underground park of ancient ruins. Can you imagine?!

Escalators into the ancient ruins in downtown Perugia

Perugia may have surpassed Florence as my favorite Italian city, but we had to pop into Florence next to make sure!