7 Umbrian towns to visit and where to stay in Umbria

Seven Umbrian towns are worth building a trip around, and they are not interchangeable. Two of them sit on a railway line and can be done from a station platform. Two have no station at all and need a car or a bus out of Foligno. The rest fall somewhere in between, and knowing which is which decides whether you base yourself in one town or move every two nights. This is the route my partner and I drove through Italy in September, starting in the mountains and finishing in Assisi.

Where is Umbria?

Umbria is the only landlocked region in central Italy, sitting between Tuscany to the west, Le Marche to the east and Lazio to the south. It has no coast and no motorway spine running its length, which is why it stayed quieter than Tuscany and why the hill towns still look the way they do. Perugia is the regional capital, Assisi and Orvieto are the names most people arrive knowing, and the Monti Sibillini mountains close off the eastern edge.

Because we were driving down from Belgium we broke the journey near Modena, which put the Enzo Ferrari Modena Museum and the Lamborghini Museum on the way south. If you have a full day to give Modena, here are more things to do there. From Modena it is a straight run down to Umbria, and our first stop was Preci.

Getting around Umbria without a car

Umbria has one useful railway spine, and four of these seven towns sit on it. Foligno is the interchange: it stands on the Rome to Ancona main line and on the branch that runs up through Spello and Assisi to Perugia and Terontola, so almost every rail journey inside the region touches it. Trains from Rome, Florence and Milan all connect there or at Orte.

The rail picture town by town is set out below.

• Spello: its own station, in the town, with a short uphill walk to Porta Consolare and the walled centre. The easiest of the seven by train.
• Assisi: a station in the flat suburb of Santa Maria degli Angeli, about 4 km (2.5 mi) below the hilltop centre, with the city bus line C running from the station forecourt up to Piazza Matteotti roughly every half hour.
• Spoleto: a station about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the centre, and free escalators and moving walkways from the edge-of-town car parks into the old town.
• Trevi: a station down in the valley about 3 km (1.9 mi) from the hill town, with a connecting bus up. The climb on foot is real, so plan around the bus.
• Montefalco and Bevagna: no railway station at all. Busitalia runs the buses that link both to Foligno station, and Bevagna is roughly 25 minutes out.
• Preci: no railway station, no realistic bus for a visitor, and mountain roads. This one needs a car.

Buying rail tickets in advance is worth the five minutes. Small Italian station machines are unreliable and the ticket window often has a queue, and Omio puts the different train operators and the long-distance buses on one screen so you can see whether the bus is actually faster.

Driving is still how most people do Umbria, and for Preci, Montefalco and Bevagna it is the honest answer. The roads are calmer than Italy’s reputation suggests, though the distances lie: a lot of them wind, so trust the time Google Maps gives you and ignore the kilometres. Every walled town makes you park outside the gates, which is normal and usually free or cheap. If you are pricing a hire car, comparing suppliers on DiscoverCars before you fly is cheaper than walking up to a desk at Perugia or Rome.

The 7 Umbrian towns to visit

These are the seven Umbrian towns in the order we drove them, from the mountains in the east to Assisi in the north. Each entry says what is actually there and how you would reach it without a car.

1. Preci

Why go: Preci is the gateway to the Monti Sibillini National Park, and it is the only town on this list where the reason to come is the landscape rather than the architecture. The park’s headline sight is the Piano Grande, a high plain above Castelluccio that turns red, blue and yellow when the wild flowers and the lentil crop come out in late June and July. The SP477 that climbs to it was wrecked by the 2016 earthquakes and repaired by the Province of Perugia, and the road is open again, though access is managed with parking restrictions and shuttle buses on the busiest flowering weekends.

Be honest with yourself about Castelluccio itself. The 30 October 2016 earthquake destroyed most of the village and it is still being rebuilt, with only a handful of permanent residents. The plain below it is as extraordinary as the photographs suggest; the village above it is a building site with a view.

The other reason to come is 20 minutes away at Sellano. The Ponte Tibetano di Sellano is a suspended footbridge 517 m (1,696 ft) long and 175 m (574 ft) high, linking Sellano to the hamlet of Montesanto, and it is the highest in Europe alongside its twin at Arouca in Portugal. It has a climb of 68 m built into the crossing, tickets are timed, and you can buy a package that walks you over and shuttles you back.

Getting there without a car: you cannot, realistically. Preci sits in the Valnerina with no station and thin bus service, and the mountain roads are the point.

Where we stayed: Agriturismo and Camping Il Collaccio, spread over ten hectares of terraced hillside on a winding road above Preci. It is not a normal campsite. Pitches are scattered along green terraces rather than packed into a field, and the locanda, a house with communal space and hotel rooms with balconies, is where we slept. There are two pools, tennis, football, volleyball, petanque and table tennis on site, the restaurant is called Al Porcello Felice and it does Umbrian mountain cooking, and guided treks, rafting, horse riding and canyoning are all arranged from reception. The site is run by the Baldoni family and has its own website at ilcollaccio.com, or you can check dates and rates on Booking.com.

We were there when the room shook one evening, one of the aftershocks that kept coming through the region that autumn. The next morning the roads into the park were barriered and a man in a high-vis jacket was turning cars around, so we lost the Piano Grande and spent the day by the pool instead. Before we left, the manager talked us through his plans to expand the place. Those plans happened: Il Collaccio now lists glamping units and new sports facilities, built with money from Next Appennino, the reconstruction programme set up for the areas hit by the 2009 and 2016 earthquakes.

2. Montefalco

Why go: Montefalco is a walled town on a ridge with a view down the Valle Umbra that earned it the nickname la ringhiera dell’Umbria, the balcony of Umbria. The reason to go inside rather than just look at it is the Complesso Museale di San Francesco. The church was built between 1335 and 1338, and Benozzo Gozzoli covered its apse in the 1450s with a cycle on the life of Saint Francis, the most important such cycle after the one in Assisi; he also frescoed the Chapel of San Girolamo in the same church. The museum opens every day and sells tickets online.

Montefalco is also the home of Sagrantino di Montefalco, a DOCG red made from a grape grown almost nowhere else, so the wine shops around Piazza del Comune are not a tourist affectation. The old town is small enough to walk in an hour or two, which makes it a good lunch stop rather than a base.

Getting there without a car: there is no station. Take a train to Foligno and a Busitalia bus from there.

Parking: a large free car park sits on the SP445, the main road below the walls, a few minutes’ walk from the gate. We used it three times and never struggled for a space.

3. Bevagna

Why go: Bevagna is the flattest and most central of the seven, which makes it the most practical base of the group, and it has a Roman layer the others do not. The mosaic floor of the Roman baths survives at the north end of town between Piazza Garibaldi and Via delle Terme Romane, worked in black and white with sea creatures, and it is part of the town’s museum circuit along with the Museo Civico and the little 19th-century Teatro Torti. Piazza Filippo Silvestri, the main square, is one of the most complete medieval squares in Umbria.

Time your trip right and Bevagna turns into something else entirely. The Mercato delle Gaite runs from 17 to 28 June 2026, when the town’s four historic quarters compete at medieval crafts, cooking and archery, and the workshops open as paper mills, candle makers, silk weavers and a rope walk.

Getting there without a car: no station here either. Foligno is the rail interchange and the bus takes roughly 25 minutes.

Parking: a large free car park sits just outside the walls. Coming from Montefalco, follow the SP316 towards Bevagna, turn left at the T junction to run along the city wall, turn left again at the next crossroads and the car park is on your right. Coming from Foligno, turn right at that T instead.

Where we stayed: four nights at B&B In Villa, using Bevagna as the base for day trips out and coming back to the pool in the late afternoon.

4. Spoleto

Why go: Spoleto is the one town on this list where the single sight outranks the streets, and that sight is back. The Ponte delle Torri is a 14th-century bridge and aqueduct roughly 230 m (755 ft) long and 80 m (262 ft) high, carried on nine piers linked by pointed arches, two of which are hollow towers. It was built to tie the Rocca Albornoziana fortress to the Fortilizio dei Mulini across the gorge and to bring water into the city from the Cortaccione springs. It closed on 24 August 2016 as a precaution after the Amatrice earthquake and stayed shut for over eight years, reopening in December 2024 after a restoration funded by the Ministry of Culture. You reach it from Piazza Campello, walking down Via del Ponte along the wall of the fortress.

We visited before the reopening and the centre underwhelmed us next to Spello and Bevagna. With the bridge open and the walk across to the Fortilizio and the water channels back in reach, the balance has changed.

Getting there without a car: the station is about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the centre on the Rome to Ancona line, so Spoleto is one of the easiest Umbrian towns to reach by train.

Parking: Spoleto solved the hill-town parking problem better than anywhere else in Umbria. Three car parks ring the edge of the historic centre, Spoletosfera, Ponzianina and Posterna, and each is connected to the old town by mechanised paths: underground moving walkways and lifts from Spoletosfera, escalators from Ponzianina up to the Rocca. They are free to use, and Spoletosfera has over 400 spaces with about 300 m of walkway that puts you near Piazza della Libertà in around ten minutes. There is also a free car park by the Ospedale San Matteo degli Infermi on Via Loreto, just outside the walls.

5. Spello

Why go: Spello is the prettiest of the seven and the easiest to reach, which is an unusual combination. Pink and white stone from the local Subasio quarries gives the whole town a colour the others do not have, and in summer the residents hang the alleys with flowers, which is not staged for visitors: Spello is the town that makes the Infiorate, the flower carpets laid overnight through the streets for Corpus Christi each June and walked over by the procession the next morning.

Two things are worth going inside for. The Cappella Baglioni in the collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore holds a fresco cycle Pinturicchio painted in 1500 and 1501, under an original majolica floor. Five minutes away, the Villa dei Mosaici di Spello preserves close to 500 m² of Roman mosaic floors across ten rooms of a villa from ancient Hispellum, with geometric panels and wild animals; it is closed on Tuesdays.

Getting there without a car: Spello has its own station in the town, on the Foligno to Perugia line, and it is a short uphill walk from the platform to the gate. Of these seven towns, this is the one to pick if you are travelling by train.

Parking: you park outside the walls and climb, as everywhere. The climb into the centre is steady rather than steep.

6. Trevi

Why go: Trevi is olive country, and the town is the photograph: a cone of houses spiralling up a hill above the olive groves of the Valle Umbra, which is why you see it on Umbria posters more often than you meet anyone who has been. The Complesso Museale di San Francesco, in the old Franciscan convent on Via Lucarini, holds the town art collection and the Museo della Civiltà dell’Ulivo, a museum of olive cultivation organised into four sections on botany, oil and the olive, the olive as a symbol of peace, and the history of the tree, with old presses and mill machinery. Tickets cost €6 (about $7, £5), reduced to €4 or €2 for children aged 6 to 12.

Check the day before you go. The complex opens Tuesday to Sunday from 1 April to 31 October and in December, 10am to 1pm and 3pm to 6pm, and in November, January, February and March it opens Friday to Sunday only.

Getting there without a car: the station sits in the valley about 3 km (1.9 mi) below the town, on the Rome to Ancona line, with a connecting bus up the hill. Do not plan on walking it.

Parking: a couple of paid car parks sit right outside the main gate into the old town. Trevi is small, so buy less time than you think you need.

7. Assisi

Why go: Assisi is the most visited town in Umbria and it earns it, though not for the reason most people expect. The Basilica of San Francesco is two churches stacked on each other with the saint’s tomb in the crypt below, and the Upper Church carries the fresco cycle on the life of Saint Francis long attributed to Giotto. Entry is free. The Lower Church opens 6am to 7pm, closing at 6pm on Wednesdays, the Upper Church opens 8.30am to 6.45pm, and the crypt opens 6am to 6.15pm, with an extra hour for private prayer from 9pm to 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

What surprised us was how much of Assisi has nothing to do with Saint Francis. The Temple of Minerva on Piazza del Comune is a Roman temple front from the 1st century BC with a church built in behind it, the Rocca Maggiore is a castle on the ridge above with the widest view in town, and the streets between them take an afternoon to get lost in. Down on the plain, the vast Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli was built to enclose the Porziuncola, the tiny chapel Francis rebuilt with his own hands.

Getting there without a car: the station is in Santa Maria degli Angeli, about 4 km (2.5 mi) below the hill town, and the city bus line C runs from outside it up to Piazza Matteotti roughly every half hour. That layout has an upside: the Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli is a short walk from the platform, so you can see it before you take the bus up. Perugia is about 30 minutes away and Lake Trasimeno about an hour.

Parking: Assisi has more and bigger car parks than the other six towns, several just outside the walls and a few inside them. They are all paid.

Where to stay in Umbria

Where you stay in Umbria depends on whether you want a base or a route. Bevagna is the strongest single base of the seven: it is flat, central, has a free car park outside the walls, and puts Montefalco, Spello, Trevi, Foligno and Assisi inside a 40-minute drive. Spello is the equivalent base if you are travelling by train, because it is the only town here with a station in the town itself.

Split your nights if you want the mountains as well. The Valnerina around Preci is 90 minutes east of the Valle Umbra towns and works badly as a day trip, so give it its own two nights rather than driving back and forth. That is what we did, two nights at Il Collaccio above Preci and then four in Bevagna, and the split was right.

On accommodation type, we normally rent apartments when we are road tripping and stayed in B&Bs on this trip instead, which is why we ate out every night. If you would rather have a kitchen and a base you can spread out in, whole-home rentals across Umbria are worth comparing on Vrbo against the small hotels, because an agriturismo with a pool and a kitchen often costs less per night than two hotel rooms.

Eating is part of the reason to be here and it is not expensive. Montefalco and Bevagna both have a handful of restaurants around their main squares where a proper meal with wine for two lands well under what the same would cost in Tuscany. Order the strangozzi, the thick hand-rolled pasta the region runs on, ask for the black truffle if you are in the Valnerina, and drink Sagrantino in Montefalco and Trebbiano Spoletino around Spoleto.

When to visit Umbria

September is the month to come. We had clear skies and temperatures around 30°C (86°F) for the whole trip, with one cool day up at Preci where the altitude makes its own weather. July and August are the hottest and driest months, May, June and September follow, and October usually still works with a higher chance of rain.

Winter changes the calculation. It gets cold in the valleys and snow falls in the mountains rather than the hill towns, museum opening hours shorten across the region, and several of them drop to weekends only. Two dates are worth building a trip around: the Infiorate at Spello for Corpus Christi in late spring, and the Mercato delle Gaite at Bevagna in the second half of June.

Umbria FAQ

Which Umbrian town should I stay in?

Bevagna is the one to pick if you are driving, because it is flat, central and free to park outside. Spello is the one to pick if you are not, because it is the only one of these seven towns with a railway station in the town itself.

Can you visit Umbria without a car?

You can visit Spello, Assisi, Spoleto and Trevi without a car, because all four sit on the railway, though Assisi and Trevi need a bus up from their valley stations. Montefalco, Bevagna and Preci have no station, and Preci in particular needs a car.

How many days do you need in Umbria?

Six to seven days covers these seven towns without rushing, split between two bases. Four days is enough for the Valle Umbra group of Montefalco, Bevagna, Spello, Trevi and Assisi if you skip the mountains.

Is the Ponte delle Torri in Spoleto open?

The Ponte delle Torri reopened in December 2024 after more than eight years closed, following the precautionary closure of 24 August 2016 and a restoration paid for by the Ministry of Culture. You can cross it again and reach the Fortilizio dei Mulini on the far side.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Five things we learned on this trip are worth passing on, and the first one is the most useful.

1. Give the Valnerina its own nights. Preci and the Monti Sibillini sit about 90 minutes east of the Valle Umbra towns on winding roads, and we wasted nothing by giving them two nights of their own. Trying to reach the Piano Grande as a day trip from Bevagna would have been a five-hour round trip before you stopped anywhere.
2. Buy less parking time than you think in Trevi. We overestimated Trevi badly, paid for more than two hours and used about one. The old town is genuinely that small.
3. Park below Montefalco, not in it. The free car park on the SP445 is a few minutes’ walk from the gate and we found space every time, which beats circling inside the walls.
4. Use Spoleto’s escalators rather than hunting for a space in the centre. The Spoletosfera, Ponzianina and Posterna car parks all connect to the historic centre by free moving walkways, lifts and escalators, and Spoletosfera alone has over 400 spaces.
5. Check what the mountain roads are doing before you drive up. We were turned back at a barrier the morning after an aftershock and lost the Piano Grande. The SP477 to Castelluccio has since been repaired and reopened, but access to the plain is still managed with parking restrictions and shuttles on the busy flowering weekends.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her September road trip through Umbria, from Preci and the Monti Sibillini to Assisi. The team covers Italy for independent travellers, including the agriturismi, B&Bs, apartments, hire cars and rail tickets worth booking around the Umbrian hill towns, and updates this page when prices, opening hours and road access change.