Attractions and Places To See around Deruta - Top 20

Located near the village of Spina, the Rocca di Sant'Apollinare is a place rich in history and timeless images. Once a defensive fortress, it became a place of worship and production, and today it is immersed in a centuries-old olive grove. Getting there requires a bit of effort, but the reward is guaranteed.

Memory of the Renaissance Baglioni family

ARCHITECTURAL STRATIFICATIONS Visiting this area of the Rocca, where Via Bagliona meets the shorter Via alla Piazza Gran-de, the complex and fascinating interplay between the remains of the medieval quarter and the structures of the papal fortress can be seen more clearly. The limestone and travertine walls of the ground floor of the medieval buildings, the pointed arches of the entrances to houses and shops and the base of Gentile Ba-glioni's tower blend with the brick vaults that cover the streets and the great foundation columns of the fortress. The old buildings were gutted and the underground chambers of the Rocca Paolina made. The destruction of a large part of the city and the construction of the Rocca in its place was a tearing wound for Perugia, which thus lost the quarter with its most elegant houses and the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, which housed many tombs of noble families and remarkable works of art. The keystone of its entrance is still visible. One of the frescoes by Benedetto Bonfigli (second half of the 15th century) in the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori (now part of the National Gallery of Umbria) represents precisely this area of the medieval city and remains the most important evidence of how it was before the construction of the fortress.

ROCCA PAOLINA This underground structure, known as Rocca Paolina ("Pauline Fortress"), is the result of the building on buildings that took place in different eras. In the Middle Ages (12th-16th centuries) in this district stood the tower houses of some aristocratic Perugian families. In the 15th century the most important of these buildings belonged to the Baglioni family, the most powerful in Renaissance Perugia. In 1540, after the Salt War, which broke out following the rise in the price of salt and the refusal of Perugia to accept the rule of the Pope, Perugia lost its independence and was annexed to the Papal States. Pope Paul II had a fortress built to definitively subjugate the city and commissioned the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger to build it in this area, raising it above the medieval buildings. The fortress was called "Rocca Paolina" because Paul Ill ordered its construction. To speed up the works, which were completed in 1543, the fortress did not completely eliminate the existing buildings, but instead integrated them, preserving many parts (walls, corners, streets, arches), creating the effect of a practically unique underground city. The ancient road network, and in particular the long Via Bagliona that runs through the entire fortress, is still clearly visible today; in the Middle Ages these streets were of course open to the sky, and above the buildings rose tall towers, the instruments and symbols of power and prestige. Only one of the many towers that existed in the medieval city remains intact today in another area of the historic center, the Torre degli Sciri (or Torre degli Scalzi), but more or less considerable fragments can still be identified of about thirty of the forty towers remembered by tradition.

Piazza Italia is more like a park than a piazza. It is a very small green garden area with a winding path, park benches, colorful flowerbeds, old trees, statues and fountains. Its centerpiece is a large and imposing statue of Vittorio Emanuele II on horseback. At one end is a pond-like fountain with a graceful siren statue. At the other end is a matching fountain with the whimsical statue of a small child.

From the Partigiani car park, the big surprise! Escalators take you back a thousand years. You enter a medieval landscape with buildings and narrow streets that are as intact as they were centuries ago.

Indicated as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy, it stands around beautiful countryside on cycleable and very suggestive roads. You get there via easy climbs and from there you go in many directions. The abundant vineyards that come across embellish the landscape

Torgiano, which originates from an ancient pre-Roman and Roman settlement, is a fortified village, located at the confluence of the Chiascio and Tiber rivers, nestled among hills rich in vineyards and olive groves. Just outside the walls, reachable from Viale della Rimembranza, between two rows of cypress trees, stands the Baglioni Tower, made of sandstone.