Italy travel: the delights of southern Umbria

Orvieto in Umbria, Italy — Orvieto has an ‘almost mythical’ quality

(Image credit: Luca Antonio Lorenzelli/Alamy Stock Photo)

Less visited than neighbouring Tuscany, Umbria is “Italy’s unspoilt green heart”. Much of the region “consists of little but vineyards, olive groves and farms”, making for a “bucolic” landscape that is “freckled” with some of the country’s best-preserved medieval towns. And nowhere is more peaceful and idyllic than Umbria’s south, says Annabelle Thorpe in The Times. You can easily drive across it from Tuscany to Le Marche in a few hours, but you could spend much longer, stopping off in some of the excellent restaurants and hotels you’ll pass along the way. And there’s a real treat at the end – the Valnerina, perhaps the most beautiful of all Umbria’s mountain valleys.

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Perched on a huge outcrop of volcanic rock, Orvieto is one of Italy’s most extraordinary towns. It has an “almost mythical” quality: on misty mornings, “it seems to float above the valley floor, the jagged outline of the cathedral and the angular Torre del Moro rising above the rooftops”. It’s worth touring the network of ancient tunnels beneath it, where many locals took shelter during the fierce battles of 1944. But be sure to be out in the evening, when Orvieto “really comes alive”, as local families emerge for the passeggiata and flock to Di Pasqualetti, “the best gelateria in town”.

Heading on, you should stop again at Todi, a hilltop town centred on Umbria’s finest medieval square, and at Spoleto, which is “the epitome of faded grandeur” and now famed for its summer arts festival. East of Spoleto, the road passes through a long tunnel and emerges in the Valnerina, where the landscape feels positively Alpine, with its towering, “densely forested” peaks. Here, you might stay at the Torre del Nera – an albergo diffuso spread across 60 houses in the “picture-perfect” village of Scheggino – and, in the town of Norcia (which was tragically devastated by the earthquake of 2016), at the “luxurious” Palazzo Seneca, where the restaurant has a well-deserved Michelin star.