Spoleto

Spoleto is a town that turns into a stage every summer.

It climbs an Apennine foothill in the green south of Umbria, a tight knot of medieval stone crowned by a great fortress and tied to the next hill by the Ponte delle Torri, a soaring bridge of arches. You move up through it on escalators and walkways threaded under the old streets. The Duomo holds frescoes by Filippo Lippi. For two months each summer the whole place becomes the Festival dei Due Mondi, one of the finest arts festivals in Italy, when opera and theater and dance fill the piazzas and the world comes to Spoleto.