Umbria

Two peoples shared the land before Rome: the Umbri, east of the Tiber, whose bronze Iguvine Tablets preserved at Gubbio are the longest surviving text in the Umbrian language, and the Etruscans to the west, who founded Perugia and Orvieto. Rome conquered both by the 3rd century BC, built the Via Flaminia through Spoleto and diverted the Velino over a cliff into the Nera, creating the Marmore falls. After the empire, the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto controlled much of the area for over two centuries.

The Middle Ages were an age of communes at war with each other — Perugia against Assisi, Gubbio and Foligno — and of saints. St Benedict, founder of Western monasticism, was born at Norcia around 480; St Francis and St Clare at Assisi in the late 12th century; St Rita at Cascia. The Franciscan movement made Assisi a pilgrimage centre and drew Giotto and Cimabue to paint its basilica, while Perugino and Pinturicchio later made Perugia a centre of Renaissance painting.

The popes gradually tightened their grip, and after Perugia rebelled against a salt tax in 1540 Paul III razed a whole quarter to build the Rocca Paolina fortress. Umbria stayed in the Papal States until 1860, when Piedmontese troops took it and it joined the Kingdom of Italy. Terni grew into an industrial town of steelworks and arms factories, heavily bombed in the Second World War. Earthquakes have repeatedly marked the modern region: the 1997 quake brought down part of the vault of the upper basilica in Assisi, and in 2016 tremors destroyed the Basilica of San Benedetto in Norcia.

Umbrian identity is rooted in the individual towns, each with its own patron, festival and old rivalries, and in a religious heritage that makes the region a destination for pilgrims as well as tourists. The Franciscan message of poverty and peace shapes Assisi, the end point of the Perugia–Assisi peace march.

The great festivals are civic and ancient. On 15 May Gubbio runs the Corsa dei Ceri, in which three teams race huge wooden pillars topped by saints' statues up Monte Ingino; Assisi's Calendimaggio stages a musical contest between its upper and lower town in May; and Spello and other towns lay carpets of flower petals in the streets for Corpus Domini. Modern culture has its own calendar: the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, founded by the composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958, Umbria Jazz in Perugia every July, and Eurochocolate each autumn.

Crafts are strong: painted maiolica at Deruta and Gualdo Tadino, hand-woven linens, wrought iron and woodwork. Norcia gave the Italian language the word norcino for a pork butcher, and dialects vary between the Tuscan-influenced west and the more southern speech of the Valnerina.

About 850,000 people live in Umbria, making it one of Italy's smaller regions. Perugia has about 160,000 residents and two universities, including the University for Foreigners, which brings students from around the world to learn Italian. Terni, with about 105,000, is the industrial south; Foligno, Città di Castello, Spoleto and Gubbio are the other main towns.

The economy rests on small and mid-sized firms: specialist steel at Terni, cashmere and textiles, the Perugina chocolate factory, pasta and food processing, ceramics, along with farming of olives, vines, tobacco and cereals. Tourism is spread through the year thanks to pilgrims, art lovers and the rural holiday trade.

Life is unhurried and centred on the historic centres, many of them car-free, with long lunches, the passeggiata along Perugia's Corso Vannucci and summer evenings at village food festivals. The main issues are an ageing, slowly shrinking population, young people leaving for Rome and the north, and the slow reconstruction of the eastern mountain villages after 2016.

Umbrian cooking is plain, rural and based on pork, game, pulses, olive oil and bread. The black truffle, tartufo nero, found around Norcia and Spoleto, is shaved over pasta and eggs in winter; the more precious white truffle grows in the north around Gubbio and Città di Castello. Strangozzi are thick, eggless ribbons of pasta served with truffle, mushroom or meat sauces, and torta al testo is a flat bread cooked on a griddle and filled with cured meats or greens.

Norcia's butchers make prosciutto, salami and wild-boar sausages, and porchetta, whole roast pork stuffed with fennel and herbs, is sold from vans at markets. The small lentils of Castelluccio carry a protected status, and chickpeas, cicerchia and spelt appear in soups. Sweets include Baci, the hazelnut chocolates made in Perugia, the ring-shaped torcolo cake and rocciata, a strudel-like roll.

Wine is serious: Sagrantino di Montefalco is a tannic, long-lived red, Torgiano Rosso Riserva another prized red, and Orvieto a well-known white grown on the volcanic soils around the town. The olive oil of the hills between Assisi and Spoleto is among Italy's most highly regarded.

Perugia's old centre stretches along Corso Vannucci from the Rocca Paolina, whose underground streets escalators pass through, to Piazza IV Novembre with the Fontana Maggiore, the cathedral and the Palazzo dei Priori, which houses the National Gallery of Umbria. The Etruscan Arch and the Ipogeo dei Volumni tomb recall the older city. Assisi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has the Basilica of San Francesco with Giotto's fresco cycle, the Basilica of Santa Chiara, the Rocca Maggiore and, on the plain below, Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Nearby Spello, Bevagna and Montefalco are small walled towns on the edge of the valley, and Todi has one of Italy's finest medieval squares. Orvieto, in the south-west, has its cathedral, St Patrick's Well and an underground network of caves and cisterns. Spoleto has the Ponte delle Torri, the Rocca Albornoziana and a cathedral with Filippo Lippi's frescoes, and the Tempietto del Clitunno nearby is part of a UNESCO listing of Lombard monuments.

In the north, Gubbio has the Palazzo dei Consoli and a cable car up Monte Ingino, crowned by the basilica of Sant'Ubaldo; to the west, Lake Trasimeno has Castiglione del Lago, Passignano and the island of Isola Maggiore. In the east, the Marmore falls near Terni, the Valnerina and the Monti Sibillini National Park, with the flowering upland plain of Castelluccio above Norcia, make up the wilder side of the region.