Flat or close to it (within the town limits, though they be perched on hills): Citerna, Costacciaro, Assisi (except for the Rocca; and if you walk up from the train station like Gavin says your nurse will get some exercise), Bettona, Montefalco, S. Anatolia di Narco, Polino, Otricoli, Alviano, Lugnano in Teverina, Avigliano Umbro, Parrano.
Not flat: Montone, Gubbio, Fossato di Vico, Gualdo Tadino, Nocera Umbra, Spello, Gualdo Cattaneo, Spoleto, Vallo di Nera, Ferentillo, Arrone (also its beautiful frazione of Casteldilago), Montefranco, Cascia, Stroncone, Narni, Amelia, Giove, Baschi, Orvieto, Montecastrilli, Fabro, Piegaro, Panicale, Castiglione del Lago, Tuoro sul Trasimeno, Passignano sul Trasimeno, Magione, Perugia, Montecastello di Vibio, Collazzone. Also the frazione of Cesi, well worth visiting, just N of Terni.
Very steep: Trevi, Calvi dell' Umbria, Todi. Spoleto while not unusually steep is large, so that the hill seems to go on endlessly.
The joker of the pack is Cerreto di Spoleto, which comes in two parts, both fairly flat, linked by a mule-track down the side of a cliff. Much like Narni and Orvieto, except that the latter two (a) there are good connecting roads; (b) the lower town is of no particular interest.
I kinda thought you'd do that; I should prolly put it in tabular form and alphabetize it. As it is, it roughly follows geography clockwise.
A few other places, not comuni, might be added (the Reatine Falls, the Roman city at Collemancio, Piediluco, some of the other hilltowns that are more frequently visited -- or should be: Portaria, Montemolino, Collepino, Montecolognola, Pistrino].
Other board members, especially Judith, can fill in most of the remaining comuni.
OK Pauline, I've saved you some work, if you like: my site now has a Towns of Umbria accessibility page. Comments are more than welcome, especially the "missing" comuni and solid information about car parks, to which as a nondriver I paid very little attention.
Fantastic, Bill. As I'll be shepherding my parents around Umbria this summer, I'm quite appreciative. My mother's idea of a hill is the walk up Lexington Ave. to 89th street.
Personally, I don't think it's fair to label Orvieto as hilly. I mean, who cares about the lower, new town anyway? All you have to do is ride the funicular to the top, and it's flat in the old city.
Posts: 4922 | Location: Umbria | Registered: 29 June 2001
Sadly yes, I thought a bit more carefully; here's what I wound up saying on that page a few hours later: "The essential sights: flat."
But... (a) you're forgetting the walk up from the Piazzale Cahen where the cablecar drops you off: a long slope, several hundred meters. More importantly, yes if you just look at the Duomo and a bit of downtown, it's board-flat. If on the other hand you do a careful visit of the town, there's a lot of hill (the arm that goes past Pozzo della Cava down to S. Giovanni and S. Maria del Pianto etc., and even, to some extent, the arm that goes to the magnificent church of S. Giovenale.)
Finally, Orvieto is one of the places in Umbria involving the most indoors climbing. The very essence of the Pozzo San Patrizio is to walk down the thing and back up; the view from the top of the Torre del Morro is splendid; and all the tours of underground Orvieto require some climbing. (The Pozzo della Cava by the way, is really not worth the admission; best take the tours from the APT on the piazza del Duomo.)
Note, Jan 04: The Orvieto site slowly expanding; though I took several rolls of film on the Maitani reliefs alone, so far only 12 pages of them are online. Sample:
[This message was edited by Bill Thayer on 29 January 2004 at 06:44 AM.]
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