The Scared Wood of Monteluco is full of evergreen oaks, a rarity in areas so far from lakes or the seashore, and they provide an ideal habitat for coleoptera beetles, green woodpeckers, great spotted woodpeckers, creepers and nuthatches.

There are plenty of hermitages and caves, including the one of Saint Anthony of Padua; they are easy to reach on foot over trails that wind through the woods behind the Sanctuary of Saint Francis (or the Franciscan Hermitage).

As you climb up Monteluco you'll find the church of Saint Peter, built in the early 5th century over an ancient villa, a fine example of Umbrian Romanesque architecture, and the Romanesque church of Saint Julian, which was constructed in the 12th century to replace a 6th-century building and then renamed after the saint. Further up is the Sanctuary of Monteluco, a Franciscan settlement they say Saint Francis himself founded in a place donated to him by the Benedictines along with a small church they had dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

French occupation brought the congregation of friars and monks to an end and, in the early 1800s, the hermitages themselves were sold to private individuals who transformed them into summer vacation homes.

The Sacred Woods of Monteluco was recently recognised as a European Commission Habitats Directive Site of Community Importance.