Bologna To Perugia: A Zigzag Route

The logic of going the long way

There's an instinct, when planning a trip, to look for the most direct connection between two points and build the itinerary around minimizing travel time. That instinct makes sense for business trips and makes considerably less sense for a week in Italy, where half the value is in the towns most through-routes bypass.

This particular zigzag adds a day or two of extra travel compared to a direct Bologna-Perugia route, in exchange for a Byzantine city, a mountain town most travelers have never heard of, and Assisi, which needs little introduction but rewards a proper stay rather than a rushed day trip.

Ravenna, for the mosaics alone

Ravenna was once the capital of the Western Roman Empire and later of the Byzantine exarchate in Italy, and it has the mosaics to prove it: eight sites across the city, collectively a UNESCO World Heritage listing, with the Basilica of San Vitale and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia generally considered the highlights. The blues and golds in these mosaics, some over 1,500 years old, are startlingly well preserved.

A day is enough to hit the major sites, though Ravenna's flat, bikeable layout makes it a relaxed place to spend a second day if your schedule allows, especially since it's a genuine detour east from the rest of the route and worth savoring rather than rushing through.

Doubling back toward Gubbio

Getting from Ravenna to Gubbio takes some patience: there's no direct train, and most routes involve a change in Fabriano or a bus connection from a larger nearby station. It's the least convenient leg of the trip, worth knowing in advance so it doesn't feel like a wasted day when it happens.

Gubbio itself justifies the effort. Built up a steep hillside in gray stone, with a funicular (really an open-air cable basket) running to the Basilica of Sant'Ubaldo at the top, it's one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Umbria and gets a fraction of Assisi's visitor numbers.

• The funicular ride up to Sant'Ubaldo for the view over the valley
• Palazzo dei Consoli, the town's dominant medieval civic building
• The Roman theater at the edge of town, still used for summer performances

Assisi, given the time it deserves

Assisi is often visited as a rushed day trip from Perugia or Rome, which does a disservice to a town that has genuine depth beyond the Basilica of San Francesco, itself worth two hours alone for Giotto's fresco cycle depicting the saint's life. Staying overnight means seeing the basilica without the day-trip crowds, in the early morning or the last hour before closing.

The town beyond the basilica is worth wandering too: steep stone streets, views over the Umbrian valley, and a quieter pace once the tour buses have left for the evening.

Ending in Perugia

Perugia, Umbria's regional capital, is a bigger and livelier city than the towns preceding it, with a university population that keeps its bars and restaurants busy well past the hours smaller Umbrian towns tend to go quiet. The historic center, perched on a hilltop with the Corso Vannucci running through its spine, is a good place to end a route that's spent most of its time in smaller, stiller places.

It's a fitting last stop: less obviously photogenic than Assisi or Gubbio, but with more going on, and a reasonable base if you're flying out of a nearby regional airport rather than backtracking to Rome or Florence.