COMUNE DI GUBBIO

Umbria Region, Italy

Municipality of Gubbio

While most of Umbria feels soft and rounded by the millennia, the Municipality of Gubbio is angular, sober and imposing. Perched along the steep slopes of Monte Ingino and and Monte Cucco, the Gothic buildings wend their way up the hill towards Umbria’s closest thing to an amusement park ride, its open-air funicular.

The Area is very mountainous of 525 km² (32998 inhabitants), bounded to the east and west by the Apennines from the Tevere Valley. It is rich in natural beauty and art treasures, where history, culture and landscape come together in a harmonic symbiosis. Next to the historic centers of extraordinary beauty and charm that retain excellent testimony to the medieval era, offers an uncontaminated nature with artisanal and artistic productions that witness the skill of an old-established uncontaminated tradition. During Christmas time, the side of the mountain becomes the world’s largest Christmas tree.

Gubbio is famous for its Eugubine Tablets, which date from 300 to 100 BC and constitute the best existing example of ancient Umbrian script. An important ally of the Roman Empire and a key stop on the Via Flaminia, the town declined during the Saracen invasions. In the 14th century it fell into the hands of the Montefeltro family of Urbino and was later incorporated into the Papal States.

The phenomenon of the depopulation in Gubbio's area is important causing social and economic problem. The local authority policies are aimed since years at fighting this trend ameliorating the services for the population and through accompanying measures such as the forest and the territory management, and  through the development of  tourist itineraries based on the mountain area and its traditions.  The actions taken are always aimed at valorizing the traditional economic activities characterizing its identity, also facilitating the active and interactive transfer of competences and skills through generations.