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umbertide |
| UMBERTIDE is largely modern and lightly industrial, having been bombed almost to oblivion in the last war, but - except in the tiny medieval centre - it doesn't come over as a place that had much going for it in the first place. It's useful for trips into the surrounding hills, but only if you have transport. The big castle, Civitella Ranieri , looms invitingly to the northeast, but it's privately owned, so don't be suckered into the steep climb for a closer look. Monte Corona (693m), 6km south, has some good views and the reasonably evocative remains of a fifteenth-century monastery. More worthwhile is the hill-village of MONTONE which harbours a surprisingly good collection of paintings and early medieval sculpture in the Museo e Pinacoteca Comunale (April-Sept Fri-Sun 10.30am-1pm & 3.30-6pm; Oct-March Sat & Sun 10am-1pm & 3-5.30pm; L6000/¬3.10) in Via San Francesco, housed in the fifteenth-century Gothic former church of San Francesco; there's a small and intermittently open tourist office at Piazza Caduti del Lavoro (tel 075.941.7099). Much further south - and with a car you could tackle this more easily as a day-trip from Perugia - is the Abbazia di Montelabate . While the immense adjoining church of Santa Maria is fairly ordinary, the eleventh-century crypt and fourteenth-century cloisters are medieval perfection. |