Todi Travel Guide

Introduction

43km (27 miles) W of Spoleto; 40km (24 miles) S of Perugia; 203km (126 miles) S of Florence; 130km (78 miles) N of Rome

If you had to use the word "quaint" to describe any Italian town, Todi would be a front-runner. It's one of the most picturesque hill towns, a warren of narrow medieval streets twisting and plunging off at every angle, with many alleys whose graceful sets of shallow stairs flow down the center. It's a cobble of mottled grays accented with brick, all surrounding a picture-perfect central square celebrated as one of the finest medieval spaces on the peninsula.

Seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, aside from its almost Swiss cleanliness and pristine condition, Todi actually has much deeper roots. A backwater for the past 500 years or so, it headed its own small Umbrian empire for a while in the early 13th century, and during the long Dark Ages of Lombard rule in central Italy, the comune apparently maintained its independence from the Lombard dukes in Spoleto....