Spoleto

Spoleto is one of the most popular tourist destinations for its rich history, for the variety of its cultural heritage and for the importance of its artistic events. The oldest part of the town has kept intact its medieval structure. The Arch of Drusus and Germanicus (a Roman arch leading into the Forum, which was situated in the to-day’s Market Square), the Roman theater, the Basilica of San Salvatore (an interesting early Christian monument, whose origins date back to the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.), the Roman Bridge or “Ponte Sanguinario” (which means “Bloody Bridge”) and the amphitheater (II century A.D.) date back to the most ancient origins of Spoleto. A major monument of the city is the Cathedral: built in Romanesque style in the twelfth century, it preserves, among the many other works of art, an extraordinary cycle of frescoes by Filippo Lippi. Near Spoleto, there are two places of great naturalistic interest: the “sacred forest” of Monteluco, characterized by a dense tree vegetation, and “Villa Redenta”, which stands on the ruins of an ancient Roman villa, with its beautiful park of secular trees, among which the nobility of Spoleto walked between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Spoleto is also famous because it hosts every year (between June and July) a very important event, the “Festival dei Due Mondi”: in fact very talented artists (from the opera to the symphonic and chamber music, from visual arts to literary ones, from dance to theater) perform here in Spoleto on this occasion, attracting the attention of a steadily increasing international audience. Spoleto has ancient gastronomic traditions and offers a variety of tasty, but at the same time genuine, dishes. Wine, oil and food stuffs in Spoleto are very appreciated and of a very high quality: in fact this city is part of two Italian National Associations, that of the “Cities of Wine” and that of the “Cities of Oil”.