Umbria Events

Umbria runs an unusually heavy festival calendar for a region of under a million people, and the two largest are international rather than local. They fill their towns completely, so they are worth planning around in either direction.

Umbria Jazz, Perugia

Ten days in July, running since 1973, and one of Europe’s established jazz festivals. The ticketed concerts are in the Arena Santa Giuliana and the Teatro Morlacchi; a great deal else happens free in the streets and squares of the centre, more or less continuously. A winter edition runs in Orvieto from the twenty-eighth of December to the first of January, ending with a New Year’s concert.

The Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto

Late June into mid July. Founded in 1958 to pair an American and an Italian programme, it covers opera, theatre, dance and concerts, with the closing concert in the Piazza del Duomo. Spoleto is a small town carrying a large festival for three weeks, and accommodation reflects that.

Assisi’s two dates

Calendimaggio falls in the first week of May: the town divides into its upper and lower halves and competes across three days of processions, singing and crossbow. It is a local contest with an audience, not a performance for one. The fourth of October is the feast of Saint Francis, patron saint of Italy, and a national occasion held where he is buried.

Autumn in Perugia and Orvieto

Eurochocolate takes over central Perugia for about ten days in October, in a city that has made chocolate industrially for over a century. In Orvieto, Corpus Domini in late spring brings out a procession in fifteenth-century costume behind a relic the cathedral was partly built to house.

Rooms in Spoleto and Assisi go early for the festival weeks, and Perugia fills for both July and October. Outside those windows the same four towns are quiet and considerably cheaper.