Guides to the area
Gualdo Tadino and Nocera Umbra
These are our two home towns, on the old Via Flaminia, at the foot of the Apennines. Few tourists, many stories. Gualdo is the town of lustreware, gold and ruby, and of one of the most widely drunk mineral waters in Italy; Nocera is the town of waters, rebuilt stone by stone after the 1997 earthquake. They make a good single day.
Distance from the Casale
Gualdo Tadino 15 minutes, Nocera Umbra 25.
Parking
Gualdo: Piazza Mazzini. Nocera: the bus station, outside Porta Nuova.
How long
A day, at an easy pace: Gualdo in the morning, Nocera in the afternoon.
Tips
In Gualdo there is a single ticket for the museums. Bring a water bottle: you can drink at the springs.
Morning · park in Piazza Mazzini
Gualdo Tadino, the town of lustre
The main street
From Piazza Mazzini towards the centre
How to get thereLeave the car in Piazza Mazzini. The square opens onto the main street of the centre: take it uphill. It is a single straight line that climbs from the Porta di San Benedetto to the Rocca, changing name as it goes — Corso Piave, Corso Italia, Viale della Rocca — and crosses Gualdo's four squares: Mazzini, XX Settembre, Martiri della Libertà and Garibaldi.
Gualdo has this straight shape because it is a refounded town. Roman Tadinum stood on the plain, near the Flaminia; after a fire in 1237 the town moved to the hill of Sant'Angelo and was rebuilt with walls and a fortress.
Piazza Martiri della Libertà
The heart of the town
How to get thereContinue along Corso Italia to the big square, the third one you come to.
On one side is the Cathedral of San Benedetto, with its thirteenth-century façade, three portals and a rose window with a double ring of small columns; on its right side, a fountain from 1573. Opposite is the Gothic church of San Francesco, with frescoes by Matteo da Gualdo. Also on the square is Casa Cajani, with the Ceramics Museum and the Archaeological Museum of the Ancient Umbrians.
Curiosity
The crypt of the cathedral holds the urn of the Blessed Angelo, who died in 1324, the saint the people of Gualdo love most. And the square as you see it today was redesigned after the 1751 earthquake: the town hall dates from 1768.
The Emigration Museum
Palazzo del Podestà, Piazza Soprammuro
How to get thereThe civic tower and the Palazzo del Podestà stand behind the buildings on the left side of Piazza Martiri della Libertà, in the small Piazza Soprammuro.
The regional emigration museum, named after Pietro Conti, tells the story of the great exodus that, from the late nineteenth century to the sixties, took millions of Italians to «distant lands»: more than twenty-seven million departures. It is spread over three floors, at the foot of the thirteenth-century tower.
Rocca Flea
At the top of the hill
How to get thereGo back to Piazza Martiri della Libertà and take Corso Italia again along the right side of the cathedral, to Piazza Garibaldi. From there Via della Rocca climbs in steps: cross Piazza Dante and you are in front of the fortress.
The fortress is first recorded in the twelfth century and was rebuilt by Frederick II in 1247. In the sixteenth century it was the residence of the pope's legates. Since 1999 it has been the Civic Museum: the fifteenth-century polyptych by L'Alunno, paintings by Matteo da Gualdo, and a section on lustreware. This is where you buy the single museum ticket.
Curiosity
Before it became a museum it was a prison for a long time: a women's prison in the early nineteenth century, and from 1888 a district jail.
Opificio Rubboli
Via Pico Discepoli 16
How to get thereAt the Rocca ticket office they will tell you the way to the Opificio: the visit is included in the same ticket. Then you go back to Piazza Mazzini down Via della Rocca and the main street.
Lustreware is the pottery with gold and ruby reflections that in the sixteenth century made Mastro Giorgio famous in Gubbio. In the nineteenth century Paolo Rubboli brought the technique back to Gualdo, in his workshop. Today it is a museum, opened in 2015: the family's tools, books and photographs, the works and the kilns.
Curiosity
The heart of the workshop is the «muffle» kilns, where the delicate final firing of the lustre was done. Rubboli built the five original muffles following a sixteenth-century treatise, «The Three Books of the Potter's Art» by Cipriano Piccolpasso: a book three hundred years older, used as an instruction manual.
Afternoon · park at the bus station, outside Porta Nuova
Nocera Umbra, the town of waters
Porta Nuova and the Portici di San Filippo
The way into the old town
How to get thereLeave the car at the bus station, outside Porta Nuova. Go in under the gate and turn right straight away: this is where the Via dei Portici begins.
It is a seventeenth-century walkway built on top of the old walls, with a row of round arches. It leads to the church of San Filippo, neo-Gothic, built in the nineteenth century by the architect Luigi Poletti — the same man who rebuilt the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli after the 1832 earthquake. All around are old wells, porticoes and wash-houses.
Curiosity
From San Filippo, along Via San Martino, you reach the public wash-houses built in the thirties: Nocera is the town of waters even inside its walls.
Piazza Caprera and San Francesco
The main square of the old town
How to get thereFrom San Filippo go back to Corso Vittorio Emanuele and follow the paved slope up: it ends in Piazza Caprera.
This is the square where the life of the town has gathered for centuries. Here are the church of San Francesco, now the town picture gallery, and the Biblioteca Piervissani, with thirty-five thousand old volumes and illuminated choir books. The most important work in the gallery is the polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin by Niccolò Alunno, from 1483; on the walls, frescoes by Matteo da Gualdo, the same painter as in the Rocca Flea.
Via San Rinaldo and the Archaeological Museum
Towards the top
How to get thereFrom Piazza Caprera turn right into Via San Rinaldo, which climbs towards the highest part of the town.
On the way up is the Archaeological Museum, in the former town hall, opened in 2010: the history of Nocera from prehistory to the Lombards. The most precious part comes from the Lombard necropolis of Il Portone, a few kilometres from the town.
The Cathedral and the Campanaccio
The top of the hill
How to get thereVia San Rinaldo ends at the top, in front of the cathedral and the tower. To get back to the car, go down the same way to Porta Nuova.
Of the Romanesque cathedral only the portal remains; the church was rebuilt in 1448 and inside it keeps the body of San Rinaldo, the patron bishop, who died in 1217. Next to it is the Campanaccio, the eleventh-century civic tower, the only thing left of the fortress that protected the town.
Curiosity
The old cathedral was destroyed by Frederick II in 1248. A year earlier the same emperor had rebuilt the Rocca Flea in Gualdo: a few kilometres apart, within a year, he rebuilt a fortress and destroyed a cathedral. And the Campanaccio, damaged by the 1997 earthquake, has become the symbol of the town's reconstruction.
In practice, from the Casale
The day
Gualdo in the morning, Nocera in the afternoon, heading south along the Flaminia. In Gualdo you park in Piazza Mazzini; in Nocera at the bus station, outside Porta Nuova.
The springs, by car
Between one town and the other, a stop at the water is worth it. Just outside Gualdo is the Rocchetta, with its little fountains where you can drink; around it, Santo Marzio, Capodacqua and Vaccara, with meadows and woods. At Bagni di Nocera is the Sorgente Angelica, the oldest spring, already visited for cures in the sixteenth century; near Schiagni, the Cacciatore spring, where you drink straight from the source.
When
On the last weekend of September Gualdo holds the Giochi de le Porte, the contest between its four districts for Saint Michael the Archangel: three days of parades, taverns and races. In September, in Nocera, the Cavalcata di Satriano. The exact dates change every year.
And in the evening
You are already home. Dinner at the Casale is served between 7:30 pm and 8:00 pm, by reservation.
Our two home towns, and dinner when you get back.
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