Could anyone provide opinions/details on using this area as a "home base"? Pro's & cons would be appreciated. Also (forgive me if this is a silly question) but could someone explain the major differences between Tuscany and Umbria? Thanks.

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

I have answers for this one for sure - but have been offline all day today and am just about to make dinner. Tomorrow!! Anyone else want to start?

(Being offline for the whole day was horrible - but restful.)

Montone is just down the road from me. It is a hilltown with wonderful views. I took some opera glasses last time I visited. There's not a lot going on in the place, but there is a place to eat and sit in a piazzetta for a drink. Wandering through the town is rewarding, as there is a small park next to some cloisters with incredible views and resident cats, some attractive decorations still visible on some of the walls next to the perimeter walk. There's a museum and sometimes special shows in part of it among the fading freschi. It's just a really attractive place where much has been done up because of earthquake damage in the same quake that nearly destroyed Assisi.

It is not far off the E45 highway which takes you N-S through Umbria. Shopping would be done at Umbertide, not far away and your route to Gubbio, Trestina or Citta` di Castello. Dining in those places, Monte Santa Maria Tiberina, Citerna (Belvedere) and supposedly the best pizza in northern Umbria at San Giustino (Pensiero Stupendo, open only in the evenings.)

There is a small electric train that travels this same corridor and connects you with the mainline through Perugia. Buses (pullman) serve the entire area and also get you to the mainline in Arezzo. They are cheap and good and slow.

In general, I think Umbria is cooler and greener than Tuscany. Tourism has not been entrenched as long as it has been in Tuscany. There are still many hectares of wild country and Frutta di Bosco and game are still important products. This part of Umbria was a Papal possession during the time when Tuscany was experiencing the Renaissance and a trade boom, and wasn't rich enough to tear down the old and build anew, so there's more Medieval to be seen. For the most part, Umbrian people are warm and welcoming but shyer. They aren't tired of tourists. They aren't yet used to Americans and usually take one for German or English. Nearby Umbertide is a cluster of British expats, as a matter of fact.

From Montone you can see all of northern Umbria and part of Tuscany, as well as parts of central and southern Umbria. You can make a day trip into le Marches or go to the sea there as well.

There are many sagre and special festivals of film and music in our area. The center for adverts and tickets is probably Citta` di Castello, which is also the central city to this largely agrarian area, with the main hospital, many banks, large piazzas with cafes, movies and museums. There are markets Thursdays and Saturdays in the morning there.

If you have any more specific questions, please ask.

Wow, PR, there has been so much talk on this message board about that very subject. I did a search on "Tuscany vs. Umbria" and it didn't yield anything, but, believe me -- it feels like this topic has come up many times. Perhaps you might find some pertinent info and opinions if you look through some old threads.

Some questions: Where do you want to have access to, which parts of Tuscany and Umbria? If you're going to want to go to Florence, Chianti, San Gimignano, Siena, Lucca, Pisa, southern Tuscany, etc., you'll have a lot of driving to do from Montone. If, however, you want to be in Arezzo, Cortona, Citta di Castello, Perugia, Assisi, etc, this might be a very good location.

Is this your first visit to the area? Think about what you want to do while there, whether you like to drive a lot, etc. Then perhaps post some more specific questions, ok?

Best,

There are - or at least there were last year - 3 restaurants in Montone. It's certainly not a 'one horse town'.

The fact that we offer a rental apartment in Montone has not, of course, clouded my judgement!

Buona serata,
Bob

Tuscany and Umbria are different, but both are great. I always recommend Tuscany for the first time Italy traveler because it has the more popular tourist things (Florence, Siena, Lucca, Arezzo, Chianti), is more oriented towards tourism so people speak English more often and they are used to visitors who are not familiar with their ways. For me, the food is very different in Tuscany. Lots of choice for a vegetarian, while in Umbria I end up eating pasta with truffles way too often. But that is not a factor for most people

Montone is in northern Umbria. The area is lovely. But, we spent a week near there on our first trip to Italy (the first trip where we stayed in the countryside) and I wished we had been more central. Umbertide is not that interesting of a town. But, if you are happy driving, you are close to many great places. I would happily stay in this area now, having explored the central part of Umbria and many parts of Tuscany.

Margie, an American who has a second home in Montone, chose Montone after many trips to Italy - so it must have a particular charm of its own. Her house is also for rent:
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vrlist/montone.htm

Bob, I knew there was one restaurant in Montone, but I don't know the others. What and where are they? Anything special? I feel it's important that there be one nearby in case you're tired, but three is a bonus.
I've never actually been hungry in Montone so I've never looked.
Montone gives you the possibility of a cool and quiet place to sleep without being removed to a farm setting. When choosing a house, that would be important to me. It's only minus would be that it is NOT handicapped accessible. Most of the town is up and down with most parking outside the walls. There are some nice internal photos possible of winding staired streets among pretty houses.
Last year in September, Montone hosted at least one of the concerts in our month long music festival.

Thanks Pauline (and everyone else of course!) for your honest and stright forward opinions. The charm and beauty of Margie's house is what really capitvated me in the first place, but I do feel know that for a first visit (which it is for for 3 of the 4 of us traveling) it might be a bit too removed- especially since we definitely do not want to be married to our vehicle! Back to the drawing board!

This is surely my cue since you're talking about something most dear (and how I wish -near!)to me - Montone and my very house. Montone, in and of itself, fills me with more peace and pleasure than any other place I have known. More about this later.
As for its location and base for touring, I find Montone to be remarkably well-located for day trips to great towns and other wonders. It is tucked away 5 min from the E45 - the major N/S motorway. One fine thing is, you can't see Montone from the highway - so there are no passers-by saying "ooo - what's that? - let's go there!" The E45 becomes the convenient fast route to many places, but there are wondrous white roads thru the countryside to lovely locations, as well.
Some sample driving times in MINUTES from Montone to nearby towns:
Gubbio - 30
Assisi - 35
Perugia(to the top) - 30
Cortona - 35
Citta di Castello - 15
Sansepulcro - 20
Anghiari - 30
These are all fabulous places within about a half hour's drive or less that you'll want to visit again and again. (And, by the way, these are all places I chose to visit while staying in vacation rentals in various locations in Tuscany in past years.)One hour or less will put you DEEP in the heart of Tuscany or The Marche, or Arezzo or Todi, just to give you an idea of different points on the widening circle.
And then the great thing is - you get to come home to Montone! In the piazza,lively little Montone has a post office, 2 caffes, a bank w/ATM, a newspaper/magazine/local crafts,etc. shop, and a linen shop. There is Guido's butcher shop. He also has pasta, wine, the local bread, and much more. Guido makes (really, really good) porchetta on Tuesdays. There is also a farmacia. There is a new vegetable shop that's just opened about 2 doors up the street from my house. How convenient is that for hauling bottles of acqua minerale home? Getting fruit for breakfast? Going back for more vegetables while cooking at the same time? I'm thrilled about this new development!
Restaurants. Across the "street" from me, down a little walkway, there is a Sardinian taverna. One of their specialities is porchedu - roast suckling pig(usually ordered in advance) - and they have a full menu,good antipasti, Sardinian pasta,etc., and outdoor dining on the medieval wall with views out over the valley. A few steps off the piazza is the Locanda del Capitano, a tiny hotel and upscale restaurant with elegant indoor dining and a lovely outdoor dining terrace - owned and operated by a charming and out-going Italian, English-speaking couple. Gian Carlo has fabulous wines and can hook you up with great Umbrian wineries as well as organize truffle hunts and cooking classes,etc. Right outside the lower gate into the town there is a pizzeria/trattoria with good basic pasta, mixed grill, and nighttime pizza. (and another butcher, vegetable shop, flower shop, alimentari, the baker, and a gas station.) There's a pizza by-the-slice place in town, too. Claudio, the owner of the Herba Luna Caffe in the piazza, has been renovating his 2nd floor which years ago housed one of the best restaurants in Umbria. I haven't gotten the final word on what this new restaurant will feature. Both caffes offer food - the piazza is now filled with tables and chairs, and you don't pay a surcharge for the privilege of sitting there. In fact, you can just sit there and write postcards and not buy a thing!
Coming up are 2 festivals. July 9th to 14th is a film festival presided over by Terry Gilliam. The screen is set up in the piazza........kind of a medieval "walk-in"! I will provide links to this and other things when I figure out how to do that after I post all this. There is a site with last year's film festival schedule which included a few premieres! This is a great thing. August 12th to 18th is the Donazione Della Santa Spina - Montone's medieval competition and pagentry between its 3 regions. At the end of October is the Festa del Bosco and just last weekend (usually the last one in May) was the Festa Della Forgiatura hosted by our local gifted blacksmith. This one is perhaps my favorite.
Decobabe, in an earlier posting on this thread, you mentioned Montone's museums (there is an ethnographic museum, as well) and made other good observations. One thing you said I didn't understand, however. Montone seems to me to be quite handicapped-accessible. When I arrive with my luggage or lots of anything else, I drive right thru the main gate and thru the piazza to my door and then park nearby outside the walls. Perhaps you entered and exited on foot by the lower gate which has stairs? There are 2 other gates and they have no stairs. The main gate is just off the main piazza.
I could go on about horseback riding,great walks, swimming, and golf, and on and on. ......or the weekly town choir rehearsals held right across the street from my house - their glorious harmonies wafting thru the evening air - heavenly.
The page about my house, Casa Sora Chiara, that Pauline kindly put on SLOWTRAV, goes on about these things,too. Interestingly, most all of our renters thusfar have been first time travellers to Italy.

Cheers! Margie

On my next stay in Umbria, my fifth -- they average 2-3 months each -- I'm planning on renting something in Umbertide. Now that's not Montone. Montone is about 8km away. I don't drive, though, and thus depend on the train to get around: there is no station in Montone, but there's one right in town in Umbertide. If I drove, or if there were a station in Montone, Montone would be a better base for me.

Now what would it be a base for? (Or what, I hope, will Umbertide be base for?)
   It's a logical base for Northern Umbria and some extension into Tuscany. It's a very peaceful area of Italy, at least if you stay away from the highway from Perugia to Sansepolcro and on northwards.

My previous bases were Todi (W Umbria); Spello (central Umbria); Fossato di Vico (NE Umbria and the Via Flaminia into the Marche). The quadrant that remains is the one roughly centered on Montone.

Notice though the order I did them in: pretty much the standard tourist order, starting with the central "lens" (Perugia to Terni and the two railways/highways that connect them, the W one thru Todi; the E one thru Spoleto). The Fossato (Gubbio) quadrant and the Montone quadrant are not the first thing most tourists do.

So if you want typical Umbria, the usual, but not required, intro is further S than Montone; if you want something a bit more remote, or you want to hedge your bets with a piece of Tuscany, Montone is better.

A reminder of course that there is no particular magic in "Tuscany", by which most people mean a rather small area from Fiesole to Lucca/Pisa to Siena and back, including the Chianti region. That's about 1/3 of the administrative region called Tuscany. Some few other sub-areas of the Tuscany region are just as attractive; many others are not. Don't guide yourself by automatically thinking Tuscany: ask yourself where and what in Tuscany. The core of Tuscany is by and large not contiguous with Umbria; if you want a coherent trip, you should think about all that!
   If on the other hand you merely mean to dip into where fancy and your car will take you, it doesn't much matter where the center of your star-shaped excursions is. On those grounds, Montone is OK, but you could probably do better, unless you are really into remote, since the sector NE and E of Montone is very sparsely populated and has few churches and other cultural attractions, with the exception of Gubbio of course.

So Montone is, or is not, central; depending on what you want to do.

I'm ba-aaak! Hopefully having learned how to post URLs. And after a surfing expedition. So much of the Montone information is not current - photos, too - that it can all become a bit confusing if you're looking for a clear picture.

Here are a few things:

I don't know if the following site has been listed here. It lists lots of visual arts, cultural, and musical festivals and events in Umbria, month by month, in Italian. For June, for instance:
http://www.umbriavirtualtour.it/eventi-manifestazioni/giunio.htm
July:
http://www.umbriavirtualtour.it/eventi-manifestationi/luglio.htm
I couldn't get the site to open just going to umbriavirtualtour.it, but if I typed in the whole thing plus each month one by one (in Italian), the list for that month appeared - for 2002!

Here is the site for SISTEMA MUSEO - A system of museums in Umbria. You can click on each town to see something about its museum (in Italian). Here you'll find a bit about Montone's Museo Comunale. I know that you can buy a ticket that will admit you to all of the museums within a certain short length of time, but I don't know what it is in euro. Seems to me it isn't twice what the admission to one museum costs.
http://www.sistemamuseo.it

For more information about, and a virtual tour of, the Ethnografic museum in Montone which you can also visit with the same ticket in the same complex in the Ex Convento di S. Francesco, go to:
http://www.tamburoparlante.com

You can access last year's Montone film festival schedule (to give you an idea of what it's all about)here:
http://main.netemedia.net/filmfest/english.htm

Here's a new (to me, anyway) site that has information about Montone and festivals - you can get to the film festival this way, too. It has some fun photos if you click on all the stuff:
http://www.montone.info

And I found that Giancarlo has a new website for La Locanda del Capitano. There is nice information there about the town festivals and some lovely pictures. Also some of the things that they(or I)can set up for you if you settle into Montone for awhile:
http://ww.ilcapitano.com

Margie

Thank you Margie for the footwork! I've added The ProLoco site to the other offsite resources collected on my own small page on Montone.

That ProLoco site is a bit odd to navigate, though; to access everything, the easiest may be just to add
   /pagina_NNN.htm
to the end of that URI, where NNN = 1 thru 8. Lord knows why the pages are unlinked, except for 6.

Great notes on Montone Margie! Can I turn them into a Travel Notes for the web site?

Margie's house in Montone does look fabulous - and would be a most comfortable place. I am going to try and visit it this September when we are in the area.

It is very hard to pick a location for a trip. You have to think about what you want close by and what day trips you will do. Many travelers are much more energetic than me and Steve and would consider an hour drive to a place each day to be fine. But, I don't like to spend that much time driving.

When picking a location, I think it is best to think that you will probably be back for another vacation, so you don't have to see everything on that one trip.

Margie, why the heck don't you come back and stay? I've seen your house in photos, it's gorgeous. Just come back and swap books with me.
I meant getting through Montone actually. I have walked the whole town and lots of the streets are steps. It isn't hard at all for the upright, but could be impossible for some with canes or wheelchairs.
I understand Bill feeling this is a bit remote, because he walks, but there are buses. Shall I find you a moto, Bill? I don't get anyone else thinking this is remote! I could tour all month everyday around here without repeating myself. In one day from Montone I could see Assisi, Spello, Torgiano and Deruta and spend a months income on food, wine, truffles and ceramics. What more is there in life?

Oh and PS: no thanks, no moto! A horse, maybe: but here I confess to my only fear -- horseback riding. I was put on a horse at age 2, and finally managed to get myself off them at age 14. I've ridden them every possible way, including dragged by one foot from a stirrup, hanging by one hand from the tail, dangling from the neck facing into it and grasping it by both arms in a parody of a hug, and of course, the classic arms on one side, feet on the other, belly on the saddle position: NO MORE.

I've been shot at, held up three times, been driven thru 2-story-high flames in a race riot, been up in a fighter plane as a kaydet at the Air Force Academy, run into a burning building, been tear-gassed, swum about 1 km from shore to an island talking myself out of a cramp midway, hung from a helicopter, eaten English food, been in riots and violent demonstrations, slept outdoors about 100 feet away from a loose lion, walked from Washington DC to West Point, NY in the snow without tent or sleeping bag, been in two major earthquakes (slept thru Mexico City 1957, and thoroughly enjoyed Umbria 1997) -- but do not put me on a horse.

And then... if you promise to find me some aging, somnolent nag, and do me the honour of a tour of the Montonese, well...

You are on your own for the horse, you just are too dangerous around them! You'll scare the poor babies.
They finally got a shipment of electric scooters in....

As usual, Pauline has expressed succinctly what I wandered literally all over the map to try to say:

quote:

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Bill is only going to Umbertide now after months and months in the rest of Umbria.

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On the other hand, "vanity website" is excess modesty, Pauline. All authors have a big streak of vanity, fine: but you've provided a place for the vanity (and knowledge, and stubborn loves) of many people to meet.

I think it very much depends on what you want and need from your vacation, Pauline. At one time, when I was a kid, I wanted to get out and see everything everyday and not ever stop moving. Life and career got much more intense and I later began to need to unplug when I traveled. When I wanted excitement I would spend time hiking to Macchu Picchu, pass a week in Marrakech, or climb in the Andes, all of which are a challenge if you travel mostly within the "economy." Italy was for refreshing my soul, giving me back the creative power that made my work valuable. I no longer spent time in Firenze or Roma, but headed out to places where I could feel Italy everyday getting about the job of being Italian. Not oiling the gears of the tourist business, but reaping grain, sewing trousers and making olive oil. I could do the same thing in off-season Provence or an out of the way place in France, but for some reason, Italy does it better for me.
If seeing the Renaissance treasure is the goal, we are off the track in my neighborhood. If renewing one's inner self is the goal, we're IMO the right place still, because although as Bill says, it would be easier to stay nearer Spoleto and Todi to see some of the places I mentioned, you have to spend the major part of your time dealing with the many other visitors, as well. Going "home" to bed in a small, quiet place is my idea of a good time. Call me strange, everybody else does.
I'm thrilled that there are wild places all around me. I am studying the Sentieri Francescani and yesterday learned of unmarked sentieri in the neighborhood where I shared a 9 hour lunch with Italian friends. My neighbor walks over to me with funghi he has picked with his own hands nearby. Nearby folks drop by to tell us about where they've just discovered wild asparagus. This is my personal take on having an affair with Italy.

Decobabe:

That was quite eloquently put. Thanks much. This whole thread, I'm sure, has been helpful for anyone planning a slow trip and not sure, really, where to go -- most probably for lack of info. But your and Bill's and Margie's etc. ruminations of why northern Umbria feeds your souls are quite compelling.

As for Umbertide and:

quote:

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The bad press, on the other hand, that nearby Umbertide gets from just about everybody, including on SlowTrav, is undeserved:

I think all the bad press comes from me (Pauline)

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I think that I might have fed that fire as well. My impression of Umbertide is similar to Pauline's. It's a limited impression from just driving through and only stopping at the Coop for food shopping. I believe that much of the town was bombed during WWII (you can corroborate or elaborate or deny, Bill -- I'm sure you know more than I do), thus there seem to be a proliferation of boring, blocklike buildings in the town. But again, this observation only from whizzing through on the way to somewhere else.