Spoleto, Umbria

The summer festivals are in full swing here in Italy and one of the country’s best-known is the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. A two-week celebration of music, opera, dance and visual arts, Due Mondi was one reason we chose Spoleto to be our home for the next couple of months. Location was another.

About an hour south of the Regional capital, Perugia, Spoleto sits in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. Between the two cities you find some of Umbria’s most famous hill towns, Assisi and Spello among them.

Like its neighbours, Spoleto is small – and steep; just nipping out for bread in the morning is enough to get the heart rate up to exercise level. And it’s totally charming; a short trip on the local bus is a bit like a mobile community meeting where everyone – including the driver – catches up on the latest news.

Given that Umbria is surrounded by Tuscany to the west, Lazio to the south and Marche and Abruzzo to the east, Spoleto is also an ideal base for exploring these central Italian Regions.

So now that Due Mondi is over for this year, planning is well underway for excursions into some of these – for us at least – as yet unknown parts.

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2018 was the 61st Due Mondi Festival; founded by Italian-American composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, the inaugural event was held in 1958

The idea of the Festival of Two Worlds was to run concurrent festivals in Italy and Amercia, showcasing both countries' artistic cultures

The American festival lasted only 15 years, but the Italian version hasn't missed a beat (boom tish!); Spoleto's Piazza del Duomo hosts many of the festival's major events

There's a Melbourne link here too; in 1986 the first Melbourne series of Due Mondi was held

Four years later Melbourne's Spoleto Festival changed its name to the 'Melbourne International Festival of the Arts'

Spoleto was an important fortified settlement; it became a Roman colony in 241 BC; in this building on our street you can see limestone blocks from those original walls

The city is set into the side of a hill, so the streets here are narrow and steep

Like many hill towns, though, Spoleto has installed a series of very helpful escalators (percorsi meccanizzati) to facilitate movement through the city

While the moving walkways are useful at times, we tend to prefer more traditional thoroughfares

This is the little street that runs down beside our building (the morning bakery-run route)

And looking back the other way to Porta Fuga, one of the old city gates (13th century); it stands on the site of an even older Roman gate (you can see some of the original Roman paving at the side of the path)

Through the gate the path opens up to this little piazzetta (there's an interesting stairway to nowhere on the right); our front windows look down onto this area

One of many ancient drinking fountains in Spoleto

This one is part of the famous clock tower in Piazza del Mercato (once the site of Spoleto's Roman Forum)

The fountain and clock tower were were completed in 1748 (this little friend of ours tried out the fountain during a recent visit)

Piazza della Libertà, another of the city's main squares

Always lively, but especially when the monthly craft market comes to town

The other side of Piazza del Mercato; a lovely spot for aperitivo

Or gelato, especially from Gelateria Crispini on the corner; the pistacchio gelato in this cone is officially the 'World's Best Gelato' - the title was awarded last year after 1,800 gelato makers from around the world took part in a three-year competition - we approve of the judges' decision! 🙂

The historic centre of Spoleto is quite small and vehicle-free so it's easy to navigate

And it's pretty; the little streets that connect the squares are lined with shops and restaurants

Spoleto's location puts it within easy reach of walks in the Umbrian countryside

The city's most famous landmark, the Ponte delle Torri, an 80-metre high structure linking Spoleto with the slopes of Monteluco on the other side of the valley

The city's other significant landmark is the Rocca Albornoziana, a 14th century fortress which dominates the skyline (on the right here you can see one of the the covered mobile walkways - the others are mostly underground)

Built as a symbol of the Pope's authority, the Rocca later became the residence of the city's governors; from 1817-1982 it served as a prison

But at least one Spoleto landmark is slightly more contemporary; right outside the train station, Teodelapio is a monumental sculpture by American Alexander Calder; the work was donated to the city for the 1962 Festival dei Due Mondi

We don't think this beauty was ever part of Due Mondi, but tucked away beside a lovely park on the other side of Spoleto she certainly brings a touch of the exotic to the city