ZTL zones in Umbria

Driving in Umbria

Umbria is the only Italian region with neither a coastline nor an international border, and it is built almost entirely on hills. Its towns sit on ridges and outcrops above the valley floors, which made them defensible and now makes them awkward to drive into: the approach is a series of hairpins, the gate is a gap in a medieval wall, and the streets beyond it are stepped or barely wide enough for one car.

Eight towns restrict their centres — Perugia, Orvieto, Spoleto, Todi, Gubbio, Narni, Foligno and Terni. Foligno and Terni sit on flat ground and behave like ordinary town-centre zones; the rest are hilltop centres where the restriction is almost incidental, because the geography would defeat you anyway. The main road through the region is the E45, a toll-free dual carriageway running north to south; the A1 motorway only clips Umbria near Orvieto.

The escalators, lifts and funiculars

This is the one region where the towns have solved the problem for you. Rather than let visitors grind up to the gates, several Umbrian towns built mechanical routes from car parks at the bottom to the historic centre at the top, and using them is easier, cheaper and considerably faster than trying to drive.

Perugia has two: the Minimetrò, a small automated railway from the Pian di Massiano car park, and a set of escalators that climb through the vaulted interior of the Rocca Paolina fortress from the car park at Piazza Partigiani — worth the trip for its own sake. Orvieto has a funicular from the station in Orvieto Scalo up to the edge of the rock. Spoleto runs a long mechanised walkway from the car parks at the foot of the hill up towards the Rocca, and Todi has escalators from its lower car parks.

In each case the intended way in is on foot from a car park outside the walls, and following it means the restricted zone never becomes your problem. Orvieto has a page of its own with the zone and its hours: ZTL Orvieto.

Festivals close the roads too

Umbria’s calendar is unusually full and its events take over whole town centres. Gubbio’s Corsa dei Ceri on 15 May, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto in early summer, Umbria Jazz in Perugia in July and the Giostra della Quintana in Foligno all bring temporary closures well beyond the normal restricted area, and parking near the centres disappears for the duration. If your visit coincides with one, assume the usual hours are suspended and that you will be parking further out than you expected.