Strategically scenic
Many Umbrian hill towns, including Perugia, Assisi, Gubbio and Amelia, have been more or less continuously inhabited since the Bronze Age, first by the Etruscan and Umbri tribes — the pre-Roman peoples that dominated central Italy before the rise of Rome. Others, like Allerona, were developed later, or at least don’t appear on any maps or historical writing until somewhere between the 10th and 13th centuries. So while there may very well have been people occupying the site of Allerona and other strategically placed hills like it, their histories are hazy at best.
They chose those hilltops for a reason, and it wasn’t so travelers could “ahhh” when they turned a sharp curve and laid eyes on a picturesque town. Hills were vantage points from which you could spot your enemy approaching and have time to prepare a defense. Hills with walls? Even better, as you could bring people and livestock inside the walls and close the gates, and potentially rain down a barrage of stones, boiling water (or, if Monty Python is to be believed, insults), or anything that might impede an enemy assault. Ideally, you had enough supplies, a deep well, and a strong enough wall to wait out a siege, which could last for months. But in siege warfare, time is usually on the enemy’s side, and townspeople would often run out of food or water long before their attackers did.
Allerona, born of necessity
Hamsters and elderberries aside, Allerona’s history as a hill town most likely begins around the end of the Western Roman Empire — definitively 476 CE, but cumulatively a much longer decline. Archaeologists contend that about 2 kilometers outside the current town of Allerona, there was once a Roman city of up to 10,000 people. Traces of Roman roads, built over earlier Etruscan versions are still visible throughout the region, and even the current provincial road to Allerona likely follows an old Etrusco-Roman path. Amateur treasure hunters turn up Roman coins every once in a while, and farmers have been known to plow up parts of marble statues and ceramic shards in their fields.
A settlement like the one that predated Allerona could have hummed along uneventfully for centuries under the protection of the Rome, which controlled all of the Mediterranean, most of Europe, the Middle East and a good chunk of North Africa. There was no need for walls when your closest enemies were a continent away. But when the Roman Empire crumbled, waves of Visigoth, then Ostragoth and Lombard invasions meant the gentle slopes outside Allerona were no longer safe. So people went up the hill, and settled on the area that’s now Allerona, which was naturally protected by cliffs. It wasn’t impenetrable, but it offered more security than an open field.
Allerona, then and now
The walls of Allerona, portions of which are still standing, were built in the early 1200s, in the period known as the encastellation, when fortified towns were raised across Italy and much of Europe. Allerona had its main “castle”, which was the palazzo podesta, or feudal lord’s house, a church (where Paolo and I married and where Naomi was baptized), two wells, and two gates which could be closed with heavy wooden doors and iron grills.
There were houses inside the fortified walls and, in times of siege, those who lived on the perimeter of the town and farmers from the countryside (along with their livestock) could seek shelter inside the walls. Allerona also had a network of underground tunnels, or cunicole, or tunnels, that linked different locations in town and emptied out into the woods around town — escape hatches were the town to fall to a siege. You can still find traces of these tunnels in people’s basements, and in many, there’s a current of fresh air.
Though that’s a rather short summary of a thousand or more years of history, architecturally, Allerona and countless hill towns like it have changed little since the Middle Ages. It’s interesting to think of these charming medieval towns, which we now treasure for their beauty, antiquity, and tranquility, as having their origins in such violent, tumultuous times.
Our Villaggio Tours guests stay in accommodations inside Allerona’s old walls, in buildings that, while updated with modern comforts, have stood for centuries — the youngest probably dates to the 1600s. Though things are a lot quieter around here now, with no one flinging stones, arrows, or insults.
