Spoleto
Umbrian Hill Town With The Ponte Delle Torri Aqueduct Bridge, A Cathedral Of 1175 Holding Filippo Lippi'S Last Frescoes, And The Papal Rocca Albornoziana · Spoleto, Umbria
Spoleto is a steep Umbrian hill town with two things that lift it above the dozens of others. The first is a bridge: a wall of stone arches carrying an old aqueduct across a wooded gorge on the edge of the town, eighty metres high and two hundred and thirty long, walked by Goethe and drawn by everyone since. The second is the cathedral, which sits at the bottom of a wide sloping piazza you come down into rather than up to, with a gold mosaic across its front and a Filippo Lippi fresco cycle in the apse, painted at the end of his life and finished by other hands after he died here. Above both stands a papal fortress later used as a prison. Since 1958 the town has hosted a large summer arts festival that fills every square with staging, which is either the reason to come or the fortnight to avoid, and a chain of escalators now carries people up through the hill. Check whether the bridge is open before travelling for it, because it has been closed for structural work for years and the gorge path below is the fallback.
Piazza del Duomo, Spoleto, Umbria, 06049, Italy
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the cathedral opens daily and free with a long early-afternoon interval and closes for services. The Rocca Albornoziana and the Roman theatre keep museum hours with a weekly closing day. THE PONTE DELLE TORRI HAS BEEN CLOSED FOR STRUCTURAL WORK FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD and its status must be checked separately from any opening time. The escalators run from early morning to late evening and stop overnight. Streets, squares and gorge paths never close. Confirm the bridge first.