Free Walking Tour Spoleto: Roman Forum to Ponte delle Torri

Your Spoleto Walking Tour, from Forum to Fortress

1. 1

   Teatro Romano

   

   Start where Roman Spoletium went for its entertainment. The theatre dates from the 1st century BC; the whole building measured 114.40 m across, the seating bowl about 70 m. Look down at the orchestra: it still has its floor of coloured marble slabs, and in the front of the stage you can spot the holes where the poles of the curtain once stood. Part of the seating rests on a semicircular vaulted corridor, from which three passages led the audience to their seats, while the ends of the bowl were reserved for magistrates and leading citizens.

   The theatre had a rough life. Already in antiquity a landslide, perhaps after an earthquake, damaged it and it had to be restored. Later it served as a stone quarry, and in the 12th century the church of Sant'Agata was built over part of the stage. The Corvi family added their houses in the 13th and 14th centuries; at the end of the 14th, Benedictine nuns moved in, inherited the Corvi palace and turned it into a monastery, adding a cloister on octagonal pillars in the 16th century. From 1870 it served as a women's prison.

   The ruins were never quite forgotten: the Renaissance architect Baldassarre Peruzzi drew them in the 1500s. Yet the site was only identified in 1891, by the local archaeologist Giuseppe Sordini, a name you will meet again on this walk. Digging began in 1933 and continued in 1938, but the decisive excavations came between 1954 and 1960.

   Going in costs admission and is worth it for anyone curious about Roman Spoleto; the former monastery of Sant'Agata now houses the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. From here it is 310 m, about 5 minutes, to the Roman arch, passing the museum on the way.

   Hours

   Thu–Sun 08:30–19:30 (last admission 18:30), Mon–Wed closed

   Price

   4 EUR full, 2 EUR reduced (18-25 EU citizens), free under 18; Spoleto Card 7 days: 12 EUR full, 8 EUR reduced

   Website

   musei.umbria.beniculturali.it ↗

   Location

   Teatro Romano on Google Maps ↗

2. 2

   Arco di Druso e Germanico

   

   This single arch was the grand entrance to the Roman forum for anyone arriving from the Via Flaminia, spanning the town's main north to south street. It stands right against a Roman temple and the church of Sant'Ansano, and you can see how later houses simply swallowed its western pier.

   The local senate raised it in AD 23 for two princes of the imperial family: Drusus the Younger, son of Emperor Tiberius, and Germanicus, his nephew and adopted son. The occasion was Drusus's death; Germanicus had already died in AD 19. So what looks like a triumphal gate is really a memorial.

   Look at the details. The arch is built of squared blocks of local limestone, measured in Roman feet. Corinthian pilasters frame the outer corners, and the frieze above carries metopes decorated with ox skulls. Between the frieze and the curve of the arch runs the dedication inscription, fragmentary but readable enough to reconstruct. After Sordini found the nearby temple in 1900, excavations in the mid 1950s stripped away later additions and exposed one pier down to the ancient ground level.

   The arch is free and always accessible. Walk through it: 90 m, a single minute, and you are in the forum itself.

   Hours

   Open 24/7

   Price

   Free

   Website

   oldsite.comune.spoleto.pg.it ↗

   Location

   Arco di Druso e Germanico on Google Maps ↗

3. 3

   Piazza del Mercato

   

   Step through and you are standing in the forum. Not on its site, in it: today's Piazza del Mercato lies over the forum of Roman Spoletium, and the arch behind you was its front door. Two thousand years have rebuilt and renamed this square, but never moved it.

   This is the hinge of the walk. Behind you lie the theatre and the arch; ahead wait the Roman house, the churches and the way up to the fortress. Pause for a minute and decide how much you want to see inside today. The square itself is free and open at any hour.

   From here the Casa Romana is just 120 m away, about 2 minutes on foot.

   Hours

   Open 24/7

   Price

   Free

   Location

   Piazza del Mercato on Google Maps ↗

4. 4

   Casa Romana

   

   Beneath the town hall lies a wealthy Roman home from the early 1st century AD. It sits partly under the square in front of the Palazzo Comunale and partly under the building itself, whose foundations it occupies. Down here you walk through the heart of a Roman house: the atrium, a bedroom, the ala, the tablinum where the owner received visitors, and the dining room, the triclinium.

   Giuseppe Sordini found it in 1885 and 1886, first digging only in the open space before the town hall, helped by a modest contribution from the British ambassador. The work stirred a real controversy: would tunnelling under the Palazzo Comunale bring it down? Sordini's calculations proved right, and the rooms came to light without harming the building above. Money remained short, though. Work stopped in 1886 for about four years, and the rooms around the peristyle were only fully recovered in 1912; the excavations went on until 1914. Sordini reported every find in a local paper under the pen name Spoletanus.

   Who lived here? A fragment of inscription pulled from the house's well, a dedication to Emperor Caligula by a woman called Polla, led scholars of the German Archaeological Institute to link the house to Vespasia Polla, mother of Emperor Vespasian. She came from Norcia and owned land between Nursia and Spoletium.

   Entry is ticketed and worth it if the theatre left you wanting more of Roman daily life. Then continue 140 m, about 2 minutes, to Sant'Eufemia.

   Local name

   Casa romana di Vespasia Polla

   Hours

   Wed–Mon 10:30–18:00, Tue closed (Apr–Oct); Thu–Sun 11:00–17:00, Mon–Wed closed (Nov–Mar)

   Price

   5 EUR full, 3 EUR reduced (ages 18-25), free under 18; Spoleto Card 7 days: 12 EUR full, 8 EUR reduced

   Website

   spoletocard.it ↗

   Location

   Casa Romana on Google Maps ↗

5. 5

   Chiesa di Sant'Eufemia

   

   Sant'Eufemia hides in the courtyard of the archbishop's residence, right in the old centre. Inside, look at the carved capitals: their figures do not match the usual rules of medieval art. Some think the church is older than it seems; others point out that builders here often reused pieces of ancient monuments. Historians have never agreed on when it was built.

   The oldest records go back to the 10th century, when Spoleto was still the capital of a powerful duchy. This ground probably held the residence of the Lombard dukes and their palace chapel, dedicated to Saint Euphemia. A Benedictine convent was added, founded by an abbess named Gunderada. Around the year 980, under Emperor Otto II, she found the body of Spoleto's bishop John II, martyred under the Goths of Totila, and had it brought into the church. From then until the 15th century the church was known as San Giovanni.

   Her successor, Abbess Berta, commissioned a monk, John of Montecassino, to write the saint's life and spread word of the miracles after the transfer. That text, the Passion of Saint John, is the earliest document on the church and the convent.

   The basilica alone is reached through a coin turnstile; a combined ticket also covers the Museo Diocesano. A short, quiet visit that rewards anyone who likes Romanesque churches. The Duomo is 190 m on, about 3 minutes.

   Hours

   Daily 10:30–18:00 via turnstile (Apr–Oct); winter access follows Museo Diocesano (Sat–Sun 10:00–17:00; closed Dec 25 and Jan 1)

   Price

   2 EUR coin turnstile for Basilica only; 5 EUR full / 3 EUR reduced (18-25) for Isola Tue Santa Eufemia combined with Museo Diocesano; 10 EUR full / 8 EUR reduced for Complesso del Duomo

   Website

   duomospoleto.it ↗

   Location

   Chiesa di Sant'Eufemia on Google Maps ↗

6. 6

   Duomo di Spoleto

   

   Before you go in, stand back and take in the façade. It is divided into three bands: below, a porch added in the 15th century, with a finely carved doorway and a pulpit on each side; above, rose windows and pointed arches. At the top shines a mosaic of Christ giving his blessing, signed in 1207 by one Solsternus. He called himself, in Latin, supremely modern in his art, and he had a point: it took Roman church mosaics another half century to match his style. Nothing else is known about him.

   The cathedral is Romanesque and was built from the second half of the 12th century, after Frederick Barbarossa's troops had devastated the city and destroyed the earlier cathedral of San Primiano on this spot. The bell tower was completed in the 16th century; its older part reuses Roman and early medieval stones.

   Inside, the 17th and 18th centuries changed a lot, but the original Cosmatesque floor of the nave survives. Walk up to the apse: its four scenes from the Life of the Virgin were begun in 1467 by Filippo Lippi and finished two years later by his pupils Fra' Diamante and Piermatteo d'Amelia. Lippi himself is buried in the south arm of the transept.

   Entry is free, so there is no reason to skip it; give it half an hour. Then comes the longest stretch so far: 640 m, about 13 minutes, up to the fortress.

   Hours

   Daily 08:30–18:00 (Infopoint / monumental tour: Apr–Oct Mon–Fri 10:30–18:00, Sat–Sun 10:00–18:00; Nov–Mar Mon–Sun 10:30–17:00, Tue closed)

   Price

   Free admission

   Website

   duomospoleto.it ↗

   Location

   Duomo di Spoleto on Google Maps ↗

7. 7

   Rocca Albornoziana

   

   The fortress crowns the Sant'Elia hill above the town. Pope Innocent VI had it built as the main stronghold in a chain of fortifications meant to assert the Church's authority in central Italy ahead of the papacy's return to Rome after some seventy years in Avignon. Work ran from 1363 to 1367 under the Spanish cardinal Egidio Albornoz, who gave it its name, and the architect Matteo Gattaponi of Gubbio.

   Gattaponi designed both a fortress and a comfortable residence. The rectangle has four corner towers, and a central wing with two more towers divides it into two courtyards: the Cortile delle Armi for the troops and the Cortile d'Onore for the city's governors. Popes stayed here too, Boniface IX in 1392 and Nicholas V in 1449 while plague raged in Rome, and Lucrezia Borgia lived here on several occasions.

   In the Cortile d'Onore, look at the double loggia, which Vasari credited to Bernardo Rossellino, and the hexagonal well over a large cistern for rainwater. The passage between the two courtyards was frescoed between 1572 and 1575 with the arms of Pope Gregory XIII and views of six cities of the Papal States: Porto d'Anzio, Perugia, Orvieto, Ripatransone, Spoleto and one that nobody has yet identified.

   Today the Rocca houses the Museo Nazionale del Ducato di Spoleto. Admission is charged, with an extra combined ticket for the towers and ramparts; for history lovers it is the main visit of the day, so allow over an hour. Afterwards walk 820 m, about 11 minutes, to the aqueduct.

   Hours

   Daily 09:30–19:20 (last admission 18:45, May–Sep); Wed–Mon 09:30–19:20, Tue closed (Apr); Wed–Mon 10:00–18:30, Tue closed (Mar)

   Price

   7.50 EUR full, 2 EUR reduced (ages 18-25 EU citizens), free under 18; combined with panoramic towers & ramparts: 15 EUR full, 10 EUR reduced; Spoleto Card: included (towers supplement 8 EUR)

   Website

   musei.umbria.beniculturali.it ↗

   Location

   Rocca Albornoziana on Google Maps ↗

8. 8

   Ponte delle Torri

   

   The finale is the Ponte delle Torri, the Bridge of Towers, a medieval aqueduct spanning the valley of the Tessino stream. At about 76 m high, it rises well above any ancient aqueduct, and it runs some 230 m long. The Rocca you just left looms over its flank.

   Notice how it is built: massive piers at uneven intervals, linked only at three points by light arches. Their rubble cores are clad in better cut limestone, and you will see bricks here and there, possibly from later repairs.

   For a long time the aqueduct was credited to Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king who liked to stay in Spoleto and built here. It is more likely later: perhaps from the 14th century, when the papacy reclaimed central Italy and built the Rocca, or begun in the 13th century, possibly on Roman foundations. Nobody can say for sure. What is certain is that it carried Spoleto's water into the 19th century.

   The bridge is free and open at all hours, a fitting end to a walk that began with Roman Spoletium and finishes with the town's medieval water supply.

   Hours

   Open 24/7

   Price

   Free

   Location

   Ponte delle Torri on Google Maps ↗

Two Shorter Ways Through Spoleto

If you have only half a day, split the walk where the Roman town ends and the medieval one begins.

Roman Spoleto

Stops: 1, 2, 3, 4

For anyone who came for the Romans: theatre, arch, forum and the house of Vespasia Polla. Only 8 minutes of walking; the Teatro Romano and the Casa Romana charge admission, the arch and the square are free. With both visits, about an hour and a half.

Churches, fortress and bridge

Stops: 5, 6, 7, 8

For art and views: Sant'Eufemia, the cathedral with Lippi's apse, the Rocca and the aqueduct. 27 minutes of walking; Sant'Eufemia and the Rocca charge admission, the Duomo and the bridge are free. With the visits, plan about two and three quarter hours.

How Long Does This Spoleto Tour Take with the Visits?

The pure walking time is 38 minutes. The first five stops sit close together, never more than 5 minutes apart; the real distances come at the end, 13 minutes up from the cathedral to the Rocca and 11 minutes on to the bridge.

Allow roughly 40 minutes for the theatre, half an hour each for the Casa Romana and the Duomo, 20 minutes for Sant'Eufemia and over an hour for the fortress. That adds up to about four and a half hours. Outside only, the whole route takes well under two hours.

Before You Set Out in Spoleto

• Start: The recommended start is the Teatro Romano, but you can join the route at any stop.
• End: The walk finishes at the Ponte delle Torri, not where it began.
• Tickets: Teatro Romano, Casa Romana, Sant'Eufemia and the Rocca Albornoziana charge admission; the arch, Piazza del Mercato, the Duomo and the bridge are free. Keep a coin ready for the turnstile at Sant'Eufemia.
• Timing: The Teatro Romano and the Casa Romana do not open every day, and their days change with the season. Check them before you choose your date, and start early if you want all four visits.

Common Questions about Spoleto on Foot