Umbria and the Marche: Italy's Unsung Heartland

The medieval stone walls of Gubbio.

Photo: Stefano Amantini/Atlantide

We were tired of eating in restaurants where three-quarters of the diners didn't speak Italian. We had visited the great sights, waited in the interminable line at the Uffizi, seen Italy through the wrong end of the telescope. My wife, Elizabeth, and I were hungry for an Italy where the locals didn't feel watched, where tourism was not the major industry.

To satisfy our desire, for our most recent trip to Italy we chose to visit three small cities in the central part of the country: Gubbio, in the region of Umbria; and Ascoli Piceno and Urbino, in the Marche. All three are architecturally distinctive and gastronomically distinguished—and little visited by American tourists. Each retains much of its original medieval character—stone walls, stern gates—with a softening Renaissance overlay of fine palaces and public squares. Italy has developed a superb system of national parks and other nature reserves, and Gubbio, Ascoli and Urbino are ramparted by mountains close enough for excursions to wild countryside. At the end of every mountain day, we would seek out the hearty, highly local foods—cured meats, farmstead cheeses, wines and pastas unknown outside these regions—and we would sleep in quiet, elegant hotels.

GUBBIO

Medieval austerity, Renaissance exuberance, timeless beauty.

With only 32,000 citizens behind its forbidding walls, Gubbio is so singular that it evokes the ancient insularity of the city-state. Indeed, human habitation there goes back 35,000 years. Located a short drive from the Umbrian capital of Perugia, the city is set at the foot of the rugged mountains where Saint Francis sought his visions in the wilderness and where untamed wolves still live.

WHAT TO DO Gubbio's martial pride survives in the annual crossbow competition, the Palio della Balestra, held on the last Sunday in May for almost 600 years. Drum-and-trumpet corps march noisily between echoing stone walls. An orator on horseback, reading from a scroll, proclaims the history and purpose of the event. Teams of young men perform impossibly complex flag-tossing dances while phalanxes of gentlewomen stroll slowly through the streets, trailing pastel veils. In the contest itself, the crossbowmen fire their arrows with astonishing speed and accuracy across the wide Piazza Grande at a target mounted high on the wall of the Palazzo Pretorio. The whole event feels truly medieval.