Well, I started the "would you stay in Spoleto for one week" under the Hotel Carleni thread, but since I am moving on to another topic I thought
I would start a new post !!!

I have found some good rentals in or near Todi and Spoleto so now I have to decide would I spend a week in Todi or Spoleto. I have been to Todi on a day trip before and loved it. But I have never been to Spoleto....

Leslie

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kim,

Todi is smaller, sloping everywhere, and rather closed, for example speaking less foreign languages and less kindly disposed to them. It's a much better base if you intend to walk a lot; it's far quieter (less trafficky) than Spoleto.

Spoleto is larger, less individualistic, more touristy, and somewhat flatter. It's a better base if you intend to take the train, since the train line thru Spoleto is a major line, and that "thru" Todi -- past it is more like it -- is a minor line requiring changes for Rome or Florence for example, or indeed, almost anywhere else.

Hi Bill,

Nope, not planning on taking the train or going to Florence or Rome. We prefer the countryside and like to explore hilltowns we haven't seen before.

By the way, we will be going next March, so we won't be coinciding with the Spoleto festival.

Thanks again for the great insight!!!

Leslie

LESLIE:
Bill is, of course, correct in his analysis of the two towns. For what its worth, and in light of your small town preference, I would opt for the Spoleto area. I always spend a week in or around Bevagna, since I have friends of a friend to visit. The road connecting Spoleto with Perugia features a number of fascinating hill towns to investigate. From south to north they are: Trevi, Montefalco, Bevagna, Spello and, of course, Assisi. I don't believe that the Todi area has this array of sites. You'll also be closer to Norcia if you have an eating habit like me. I can also suggest a few knockout eateries in the area if you like. Ciao. DALE

Nothing like returning a compliment: Dale had the sense to answer your implicit question, which was "Where's the best overall place to stay for exploring Umbria?"

Had I thought to do the same, instead of taking you very literally ("Spoleto or Todi?"), I too would have recommended BEVAGNA hands down. It is a living typical town, yet is quite attractive with a number of interesting churches and Roman monuments, plus it has caffés and good restaurants, and it's a very few minutes away from Montefalco and Trevi which also do.
   Bevagna is flat and worth walking around in, your after-dinner walk for example. It is small and quiet, yet with a definite urban feel. It has relatively good parking. It is extremely central to what most of us usually wind up seeing in Umbria, while not being on a major highway.

In March Bevagna has one further advantage: it is not on a windswept hill, rather slightly the reverse, in a bit of a hollow.

And we have a highly recommended estate with apartments in Bevagna. We have two good reviews now and when Dale returns from his spring trip and if his review is also good, they will be added to "Our Special Picks". Here are the reviews we have:

http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/reviews/rev_107_112.htm

And if you are considering Spello, there are the In Urbe apartments. Steve and I stayed in a smaller one, but they have larger ones. We have two reviews:

http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/reviews/rev_036.htm

http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/reviews/rev_129.htm

Dale gave us some restaurant info for this area in another thread and I need to add them to our restaurant list. I will go hunt it down now.

Here is the thread with some restaurant info:

http://www.slowtalk.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000672&p=

I share Bill's enthusiasm for Bevagna: a delightful place, and just the right size for a week's stay. The reviews which Pauline mentions are for a place outside Bevagna, though. Certainly Gualdo Cattaneo itself is on top of a hill: I don't know about the Case Gialle place. But I agree that staying *in* Bevagna has advantages, and Dale's place, http://www.enotecaonofri.it/eng/who.htm
looked very nicely situated when we passed it last year. And very close to a jolly good restaurant which I haven't seen mentioned around here: Osteria del Podesta, in Corso Matteotti (the main street). Two excellent meals there last summer: very friendly people.

We spent a week just 2 miles outside Bevagna last year: Bill's right about it being well situated for the central Umbrian sites/sights. And Norcia is certainly driveable (not as close as it would be from Spoleto, though). Beautiful countryside on the way to Norcia, and santastic sausages, hams, truffles and the like when you get there.

Jonathan

Not speaking to the Case Gialle, which look pleasant --

Now Umbria is the woman I love: but if Montefalco is one of her eyes and Bevagna is her profile, well, the actual town of Gualdo Cattaneo is her elbow or the back of her knee... It has a great potential for being dismal.
   Spoken as a hiker mind you; in a car it's less remote, but it's a very small place with nothing particular to recommend it, other than being fairly close to Bevagna, of course.

I think you can't go wrong basing in either place. I find Todi itself more formally structured than Spoleto. More palazzos, less crazy nooks and crannies. Not all that many restaurants in the town itself. But the area around it has endless diversions, and it's closer to Orvieto, which, despite its proximity to the A-1 (and tourists) still is big fun, easy to get in and out of, and has one of the most beautiful churches in Italy. The back roads between the two cities, by the way, are some of the most beautiful I've seen.

Aha! I bought the book! "L'Antico Lago Tiberino" published by Corrado Sassi and bought at the street market for 30,000 lire. My Italian neighbors were stunned to see how much of Umbria was underwater. The lake stretched from Caprese Michelangelo to south of Terni.

The ancient lake accounts for lots of things in Umbrian history and the modern landscape, among them to some extent the hilltowns themselves, but more to the point, the near-total absence of towns on the flat. There is no town of even slight importance on the Tiber, for example: an impetuous river best stayed away from.
   Back to the female aspect, Umbria is a place of rebirth. Not only Francis and the rebirth of spirituality, but for example the ancients etymologized that the Umbri, stated by several Roman writers to be the oldest race of people in Italy, were the people who remained after the Deluge (imber, rain). What was not water was Umbria, rather like Ararat peeking over the receding waters of the biblical Flood: suggesting that that lake, which once connected with an enlarged Trasimeno and the wider Tiber, remnants of which can still be seen in the marshland wildlife reserve of Alviano, had been even larger in protohistoric times, and the "etymology" was in fact dim folk memory.

Another Umbrian body of water now gone is the lake formed by the Velino river up above Terni. The Romans took this bull by the horns and drained it by making an artificial waterfall -- in the 3c BC! -- which is one of the great sights of southern Umbria, the Cascata delle Marmore.
   (I wonder if a study has been made of what the aggressively male Romans had against lakes, whether under cover of flood control or otherwise; for example, they replaced one lake in Rome by the Colosseum, a place devoted to killing things.)
   Back to Umbria though, near Arrone, in Casteldilago (note the name and there is no modern lake near the town perched on its hill) I was told that down below there were mooring-holds cut into the rock in several places, for boats that used to navigate the now dry valley. I don't know whether this is true, and didn't have the time to go see them; it's on the list for next trip.

Begging your pardon, sir, after all those lovely images about females, but Citta di Castello is on the Tiber and I think it is a very important city to this area, if not to travelers. And that's a matter of opinion about the travelers.
At this moment, the first of the two Tiber canoe regattas proceeds. The canoe club is on the river. We have a terrific park along the Tiber, as well as a park dedicated to rearing swans that was the result of diverting part of the Tiber.
These things are almost unknown to visitors and rarely mentioned even in the excellent Cadogan guides. Signage is not the best, so I didn't figure out how to get to the Tiber park until I just decided I would walk over the farms if I had to, and that's how it is done -- a wide public course across the farms.
Since the Tiber is not navigable for freight this far north, its proximity would be most important for water, (and fish) and that spurts out of everything here.

I stand corrected, thanks! Yes, and Umbertide too, which also gets short shrift from the guidebooks (and Pauline, I seem to remember). The odd thing is that before posting, I checked my map of Umbria to double-check, and didn't so much as see N Umbria; not many people do, 'ts a mistake, isn't it?

Wow, such info!!! Thanks everyone!!! I didn't consider Bevagna as a possible base, but now
thanks to the link for Piazza Onofri I am. I like the look of the apartments and the idea of being right in the town itself.

How about TREVI or MONTEFALCO as a base??? Trevi
looks impossibly steep but very charming......

Thanks,

Leslie

LESLIE:
Spent a pleasant week in Trevi four years ago, at Agriturimo le Mandorli. As luck would have it, we were there at the end of a yearly medeival festa. It is a pleasant town that has a wonderful aspect from the highway, crowning a hill.
Regarding Enoteca Piazza Onofri, the food and wine are quintessentially Umbrian, heavy into truffles and local wine. The place rocks until at least midnight and is a great local favorite. Their apartments have been reclaimed from nearby buildings within the last few years.
Finally, one should not miss the Arnaldo Caprai winery, a few miles from Montefalco. The Sagrantino is primo.
Ciao. DALE

And don't forget to look at the review Dale wrote of the Bevagna apartments:

http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/reviews/rev_106.htm

Trevi can be looked at as if it were three towns.
   The lower town, Borgo Trevi, is flat, also less scenic, and very convenient to the train station: i.e., right near a lot of roads and highways.
   The upper town, older, more picturesque, is the part that looks steep, but: the steep part is only half of it. The top of the town is in fact pretty flat and has a nice large flat parking lot just outside, around the back.

I'm very fond of Trevi and have a friend living there; it's a beautiful town and with good restaurants: but it's probably a less good base than Bevagna, because it's less central. Directly E of Trevi is empty low mountains; the roads around Trevi essentially run N-S. Bevagna lies in the center of a web of interesting places, but Trevi is off to one side.

Montefalco is more central, is attractive, and the views are stunning (except for their own water tower!). Good restaurants, and in the ex-church of S. Francesco the second museum of Umbrian art, with its own worldwide reputation among specialists. Better walking country, I think, than either Trevi or Bevagna.