Here's a quick confession: I'm Tuscan. It's where my surname originates. It's where I first came to love Italy. It's in my bones, in my cooking repertoire, and (sadly) in my accent. Yet when I picture the Central Italian countryside, my brain immediately hops to Umbria.
Umbria is a feast for the senses: rolling green hills cresting over a valley of kelly, gold, and forest fields, bejeweled with a sprinkling of vibrant red, buttery yellow, and rich purple wildflowers. The air smells like sun-warmed grass, a faint but often present hint of smoke, and happiness. There’s no place I’d rather be for a country trip.
I’m used to seeing Umbria from the hill towns outside of Perugia, over the meandering rivers and streams feeding the Tiber as it wends its way down to Rome. This last visit, I finally made the journey east to Gubbio, one valley over, after years of trying to find a way out there.
Gubbio is a pristine, formidable, medieval town, built atop Monte Ingino, a hill in an Apennine no man’s land between Perugia and the equally formidable and equally medieval Urbino in Le Marche, the neighboring region.
A quick aside: that region's name is sometimes translated when discussed in English, as opposed to the standard anglicization à la Florence (Firenze), Venice (Venezia)... Leghorn (Livorno, truly the worst of the bunch). I remember a guide book my parents had twenty or so years ago called Umbria and the Marches, and I could not for the life of me figure out what parades had to do with a region of Italy and why they were so important as to merit inclusion in the title.
There are views to be had from the winding streets that work their way slowly up the mountainside, but the best viste are from the top. And what better way to get up there than a two-person cage? Enter the Funivia Colle Eletto.
I had anticipated a standard funicular as you see not uncommonly across the peninsula, but the funivia is something unto itself... somewhere between ski lift and go-go cage, flying over the greenery of Monte Ingino.
The ride alone was thrilling, but of course the real reward came after disembarking and getting a view of the whole valley from on high.
Beyond taking in the panorama, there is a bar and a restaurant, along with the church of the patron of Gubbio, Sant'Ubaldo. Sant'Ubaldo himself rests in his own church, displayed in a glass sarcophagus before the altar, complete with a mitre that makes him look more wizard than bishop.
