Gubbio preserves one of the most precious testimonies to the Umbrian civilisation: the Eugubine Tablets, seven bronze tablets whose ritual formulas and religious ceremonies reveal the spiritual world of the people who lived here more than two thousand years ago. Beyond the medieval walls lies Roman Iguvium, whose theatre, built in the 1st century BC, is one of the largest in Roman Italy. With a capacity of around 6,000 spectators, it even surpassed the theatre of Pompeii.

Standing on its tiers, it is easy to imagine the excitement of the audience and the actors performing on stage, playing Greek heroes in tragedies or witty freedmen in comedies, much like the Hollywood stars of two thousand years ago.

The journey through Roman Umbria can continue at the nearby archaeological site of Tadinum, near Gualdo Tadino. Once crossed by the Via Flaminia, this ancient town still preserves the remains of its amphitheatre, baths and forum.

If Gubbio reveals Umbria’s Roman face, just outside Perugia you can travel even further back in time. The city preserves remarkable traces of its Etruscan origins, including the Etruscan Well and the Perugia Underground route. Yet to truly enter the world of this ancient civilisation, you must descend beneath the earth, almost as if crossing the threshold into the afterlife.

A long staircase leads to the Volumni Hypogeum, one of Italy’s most extraordinary Etruscan tombs. Carved in the 3rd century BC, it was built as the eternal resting place of the powerful Velimna family, later known by its Latinised name, Volumni. It is not simply a tomb: it is a house. The Etruscans did not regard death as an end, but as the beginning of a new existence, and for this reason they recreated the rooms of a home within the burial chamber, designed to last for eternity.

Carved ceilings imitating wooden beams, doorways, rooms and decorative details still evoke the appearance of an aristocratic residence. The funerary chambers preserve the family’s cinerary urns, among which that of Arnth Velimna Aules, the head of the family and probably the patron of the hypogeum, stands out. Reclining on the lid of his urn, he still seems to welcome visitors to the eternal banquet that, according to Etruscan belief, continued in the afterlife.

Beneath the streets of Assisi lies a remarkably well-preserved Roman city. The Temple of Minerva, now incorporated into the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, still overlooks the ancient forum, whose remains survive beneath today’s Piazza del Comune.

The daily life of the inhabitants of Roman Asisium is revealed above all by its elegant domus, including the House of the Lararium, named after the discovery of a lararium, a shrine dedicated to the household gods, and the so-called House of Propertius. Poetic verses carved on its walls have inspired the hypothesis that the Latin poet Sextus Propertius, who was born in Assisi, once lived here. One can even imagine him composing within these rooms the poems celebrating his impossible love for Cynthia.

Another fragment of the Roman city has survived almost unnoticed. Between Piazza Matteotti and Porta Perlici, the elliptical layout of the neighbourhood still follows the outline of the ancient amphitheatre, gradually transformed over the centuries into a remarkable residential quarter. Near Porta Perlici, whose medieval name Perlasio may derive from the Germanic Bera-Laika, meaning “place of bear fights", stands a small sculpture traditionally identified as a bear. Together, these two clues may preserve the memory of an arena that survived the fall of the Roman Empire and was perhaps reused during the Lombard period for animal combats.

Walking through the historic centre of Spoleto, it is still possible to recognise the traces of ancient Roman Spoletium. The theatre, built in the 1st century BC and still used today as a venue for performances, once stood beside the forum, the heart of public life, beneath what is now Piazza del Mercato. Nearby rises the Arch of Drusus and Germanicus, dedicated to the natural and adopted sons of Emperor Tiberius, both of whom died prematurely. Two heirs who never ruled, whose fate almost foreshadowed the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Yet when one dynasty comes to an end, another is about to make history. In Spoleto, this transition seems to take shape in the so-called Roman House, an elegant domus traditionally identified as the residence of Vespasia Polla, mother of the future Emperor Vespasian. It is easy to imagine this wealthy matron walking across the mosaic floors, crossing the grand atrium with its rainwater basin before entering one of the richly frescoed rooms. The remains of the peristyle still evoke the image of Vespasia Polla strolling through her private garden, perhaps unaware that in the turbulent year AD 69 her son would become Emperor of Rome and found the Flavian dynasty.

There are archaeological sites where imagination is needed to reconstruct what time has erased. At Carsulae, all you have to do is start walking. The Via Flaminia still runs through the ancient city, passing its forum, theatre, amphitheatre and the Arch of San Damiano.

Abandoned between the 4th and 5th centuries AD and never rebuilt, Carsulae has preserved the unique atmosphere of a city suspended in time. Yet its story begins long before Rome, in a place where history and legend intertwine. Rising above the village of Cesi is Monte Torre Maggiore, home to the remains of one of the most important sanctuaries of ancient Umbria.

This is also the setting for one of the region’s most fascinating legends: that of the Grotta Eolia (Aeolian Cave) and the underground kingdom of Crotona, said to have been inherited by the Umbrians from the ancient Pelasgian people. The Roman historian Livy recounts that during the Roman conquest more than three thousand Umbrians died in the siege, buried alive inside the caves. Legend, however, tells a different story: some escaped through a secret tunnel and founded Carsulae, whose name, according to an ancient interpretation, may mean "those who escaped death", preserving the memory of these distant origins.

If Carsulae was the city of the Via Flaminia, Ocriculum was Umbria’s gateway to the Tiber. Here, the great river met the Roman consular road, turning the city into one of the main trading hubs of Roman Italy, where river traffic and overland routes came together.

From the heart of the Roman city, still crossed today by the ancient Via Flaminia, the route leading to the Antiquarium of Casale San Fulgenzio reaches the so-called Oil Port, the city’s ancient landing place on the Tiber.

Pause here for a moment and imagine the scene two thousand years ago: boats arriving laden with olive oil, wine, timber, stone and fine ceramics, including those produced in the great workshops of the Tiber Valley, such as Scoppieto. Merchants negotiated prices and sealed deals, carts prepared to set off along the Via Flaminia, while new cargoes were loaded onto waiting boats. More than a simple river port, Ocriculum was a meeting place where people, goods and cultures crossed paths every day, and where the products of Umbria entered the vast commercial network of the Roman Empire.

The final stop on this journey through Umbria’s most adventurous archaeological sites brings us to Orvieto, one of the most powerful cities of ancient Etruria, dramatically perched atop its volcanic tuff cliff. Yet its greatest mystery lies at the foot of that very cliff.

For centuries, archaeologists and scholars searched for the Fanum Voltumnae, the federal sanctuary where representatives of the twelve Etruscan cities gathered to celebrate shared religious rites, forge alliances and make the most important decisions of the Etruscan League. Long known only from ancient literary sources and believed to have been lost, it is now identified by most scholars with the archaeological site of Campo della Fiera. Excavations, still underway, continue to uncover temples, altars, roads and thousands of artefacts, gradually revealing one of the holiest places in ancient Etruria.

But Orvieto is also home to another city: silent, orderly and timeless. At the foot of the cliff stretches the Necropolis of Crocifisso del Tufo, laid out between the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Its tombs are arranged along perfectly orthogonal streets, forming regular blocks much like a modern urban district. Above each doorway, the name of the family buried within is still carved into the stone—inscriptions that, after more than two thousand years, continue to whisper the names of those who dwell in this city of the dead.

And so this journey through the great civilizations of the ancient world comes to an end, among rediscovered sanctuaries and cities of the dead, where ancient spirits are best left to rest… or, at the very least, where you might prefer not to wander after dark!