Spoleto Day Trip

The Cathedral, with frescoes by Fra and Filippo Lippi, was the highlight of our visit. The restaurant we ate at, Osteria dell'Enoteca, was the best we were to visit the entire week.

Memorable moments in the day included: my husband's climb up on a fence on the steep hillside overlooking the cathedral to get the very best picture possible; being in the town during the famous bike race; the Giro d'Italia, swept through; visiting the waterfalls at the Cascata della Marmore; and enjoying the "three drops."

Quick Tips:

Spoleto is very walkable. Don't bother with a car. It has some steep streets, but not long steep streets. Feel free to lose yourself. It's difficult to get truly lost and easy to find your way back. Spoleto feels like a relaxed, easy town.

Best Way To Get Around:

Foot power is by far the easiest way to get along. I think the Giro d'Italia riders would opt for a bicycle, but I would not--too many steep streets.

The Osteria dell'Enoteca is a little bistro and a kind of wine bar. We enjoyed both in our lunch visit. I had a nice glass of Orvieto Classico, and Mark had a Russo (a generic, tasty red). For lunch Mark had linguine with truffles, and I had polenta with goat cheese and truffles. The food was wonderful, some of the best that we had during 18 days in Italy, and we ended up buying a bottle of the Russo wine. The ambience is very cozy, and the restaurant is located very close to the Duomo in Spoleto on a quiet street.

The restaurant has a website, with English, at http://www.osteriadellenoteca.com/.

George Byron was so impressed with this waterfall that he mentions it in his poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," and a replica of his cape and book remain in a memorial to the great poet.

Visitors today need to be sure to come at the right time. We stopped briefly just before 10am to check out the waterfall, with our guide telling us that he had not been here, but he knew that there were three drops. Of course he meant three separate waterfalls. (I counted four, but that's okay). They are on three levels; the bottom level seems to have two falls, but that may be because of the time of day.

We were not there when the hydroelectric plant, just upstream, was open, and there was limited water flowing over the edge. Indeed, this beautiful waterfall in a beautiful setting was only a trickle. Evidently they open the gates at noon every day, and it is very impressive. It was pretty, but there was not much water. We got postcards with pictures of the falls at their peak, as well as some pretty pictures of them with a trickle running through. And we left with a great joke about the "three drops," because that was what we saw.

It was a great stop though, with a few interesting stops and some great public restrooms (very important in Italy) at a good stopping point between Rome and Spoleto.

There is a ticket and a charge (about 6€) to see the waterfalls, but at 10am, no one was taking tickets.

Upon entering Spoleto through the main gate, you climb, past the roman theatre, to the Duomo. (Also called Santa Maria Assunta, not that it matters. No Cathedral is called by its name in Italy it seems. They are always The Duomo. Trivia question: What is the name of the Duomo in Florence? Answer in two more pages!) This is a beautiful cathedral with a single focal point, the fresco work by Fra Lippo, his helpers, and his son on the back wall. These frescos, centered on the life and myth of the Virgin Mary, were late works of Fra Lippi; indeed the fresco of the coronation of Mary was the last thing he did before he died (and finished by assistants after the fact). This is some of the best early Renaissance work.

The Cathedral itself, located in a valley as it were, is beautiful from the outside. Relatively plain compared to other churches we would see, it rises toward the sky with a beautiful painting on the facade, among eight (count them, EIGHT) rose windows, which all sit over roman arches. The bell tower is rather plain. It is not an extraordinary building, but it fits extraordinarily well into its setting.