Luxury Villas in Umbria & Le Marche

Umbria and Le Marche are the green, quiet center of Italy, a pair of neighboring regions of hill towns, Renaissance art, and some of the country's best food, still largely undiscovered by international travelers. Landlocked Umbria is the greener and more famous of the 2, all medieval towns, olive groves, and vineyards; Le Marche, over the Apennines to the east, adds a Renaissance jewel in Urbino and a stretch of Adriatic coast. Together they offer much of what draws people to Tuscany, with fewer crowds.

Neither region has a major intercontinental airport, so most guests arrive through Rome, Bologna, or Florence and drive in, or fly regional into Perugia or Ancona.

Rome Fiumicino (FCO) is the usual gateway for Umbria and the south, approximately 205km / 128 miles from Perugia and roughly 2.5 hours by car, with Orvieto much closer at about 1.5 hours.

Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi (PEG), the small regional airport also known as Umbria International, sits approximately 15km / 9 miles from Perugia, about 20 minutes by car, and has seasonal flights from a handful of European cities.

Ancona Falconara (AOI), on the Adriatic, is the gateway to Le Marche, roughly 30 minutes from the Conero coast and about 1 hour from Urbino, with regional European and domestic flights. Bologna (BLQ) is the larger hub for the north of both regions, around 2 hours by car. Fast trains from Rome reach Orvieto in about 1.25 hours, and the Adriatic line serves Ancona. A car is essential for exploring either region once you arrive.
 

Perugia and Assisi
Perugia, the Umbrian capital, is a handsome Etruscan and medieval city on a hilltop, known for its chocolate, its summer jazz festival, and a well preserved old center built above ancient walls. A short drive away, Assisi rises in pink stone on the flank of Monte Subasio, its Basilica of St Francis, frescoed by Giotto and Lorenzetti, among the most important in Italy and a place of pilgrimage for 800 years. To the north, the stone town of Gubbio climbs steeply toward a medieval palace, one of the best preserved towns in the region.

Spoleto, Montefalco, and the wine country
The broad Valle Umbra south of Assisi is Umbria's heartland of hill towns and vineyards. Spoleto, host each summer to the Festival dei Due Mondi, holds a great Romanesque cathedral and a soaring medieval aqueduct; nearby, the smaller towns of Spello, Bevagna, and Trevi are among the loveliest in central Italy. At the center sits Montefalco, the hilltop home of Sagrantino, one of Italy's most powerful red wines, with cellars that open to visitors along the surrounding slopes.

Norcia and the Valnerina
In the mountainous southeast, the Valnerina is a valley of steep gorges, Benedictine abbeys, and the Cascata delle Marmore, a waterfall created by Roman engineers that is among the tallest in Europe. Its capital is Norcia, the birthplace of Italian pork butchery, whose name became the Italian word for the craft, and the gateway to the black truffles and mountain lentils of the Piano Grande, a high plain that fills with wildflowers in early summer. It is the wildest and most dramatic corner of Umbria.

Orvieto, Todi, and Lake Trasimeno
On the western side of the region, Orvieto sits on a plateau of volcanic rock, crowned by one of the great Gothic cathedrals of Italy and honeycombed by Etruscan tunnels below, and gives its name to a crisp white wine. Todi is a smaller, compact hilltop town above the Tiber valley, while Lake Trasimeno, the largest lake in central Italy, offers islands, castles, and a gentler, watery landscape near the Tuscan border.

Urbino and the Montefeltro
Over the mountains in Le Marche, Urbino is one of the high points of the Italian Renaissance, a UNESCO listed hill city whose Ducal Palace, built for Federico da Montefeltro, holds masterpieces by Piero della Francesca and Raphael, who was born here. The surrounding Montefeltro is a country of green, rolling hills and fortified villages, with the clifftop fortress of San Leo and the Frasassi Caves, among the largest cave systems in Europe, within reach. It sees a fraction of the visitors of comparable towns in Tuscany.

The Conero Riviera and the coast
Le Marche is the rare central Italian region with a coastline, and its finest stretch is the Conero Riviera, where a limestone headland drops to coves of white pebbles and clear water at Portonovo, Sirolo, and Numana. Behind it, the port capital of Ancona keeps a Roman arch and a Romanesque cathedral, and inland the hills of the Castelli di Jesi produce Verdicchio, one of Italy's best white wines. The coast is an easy addition to a trip built around the hill towns, and a favorite of Italian families in summer.

Ascoli Piceno and the Sibillini
In the south, Ascoli Piceno is a graceful town built almost entirely of pale travertine, with one of the most beautiful main squares in Italy and the birthplace of olive all'ascolana, the fried stuffed olives now eaten across the country. Westward, the Monti Sibillini rise into a national park of peaks, high meadows, and remote villages shared with Umbria, while the towns of the Marche interior, Macerata with its open air opera, Recanati, and Fermo, hold art and quiet in equal measure. This is the least known corner of an already underexplored region.
 

The best time to visit Umbria and Le Marche depends on what you are looking for, but May through October is the ideal stretch, taking in green spring hills, warm summer festivals, and the harvest-rich early autumn that many regulars love most.

April and May open the year with green hills, wildflowers, and mild days across both regions, and by late June the high plain of Castelluccio erupts into one of Italy's great flower blooms. July and August are warm and full of life, with Umbria Jazz, the Spoleto Festival, and the open air opera at Macerata filling the calendar, the Conero coast at its best for swimming, and the hill towns staying comfortable well into the season. September and October bring the grape and olive harvests, the first black and white truffles, mushrooms, and chestnuts, with warm days and an easier pace. Outside this window, winter is quiet and cold, with snow in the Sibillini and the Apennines, though the towns keep their festivals and Gubbio lights what it calls the world's largest Christmas tree on its mountainside.

Few parts of Italy offer this much within so short a drive and so far off the standard route. Umbria and Le Marche hold the hill towns, art, and landscapes that draw millions to Tuscany, along with deep Etruscan and Roman history, a Renaissance city in Urbino, high mountains, and even a stretch of coast, all of it quieter and, relative to Tuscany or the famous coasts, markedly better value. For guests who have done the obvious and want the Italy that Italians tend to keep for themselves, this is it.

The food is a large part of the draw, and it is deeply regional. Umbria is a land of black truffles and the cured pork of Norcia, of Sagrantino di Montefalco, one of Italy's densest reds, and the crisp white of Orvieto; Le Marche answers with Verdicchio, among the country's finest whites, the fried stuffed olives of Ascoli, spreadable ciauscolo salami, and the Adriatic fish stew known as brodetto. The olive oil across both regions is exceptional, and truffle season stretches from autumn deep into winter.

Wherever your villa sits across Umbria and Le Marche, the Essenza Escapes network fills the week with the best of the surrounding area. Truffle hunts in the woods around Norcia with the dogs and their handlers, private tastings at the Sagrantino and Verdicchio estates, guided visits to the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi and the Ducal Palace in Urbino with art historians, cooking lessons in the local traditions, and tickets and timing for the summer festivals at Spoleto and Macerata. The hosts, cooks, and guides in the Essenza Escapes network here know a countryside that few foreign visitors ever reach, and that is exactly its appeal.