How Perugia was built and evolved over time

Perugia is a city built on top of itself, and unusually the earlier versions are still walkable.

The Etruscan city

The ridge was walled by the Etruscans in travertine blocks laid without mortar. Long stretches survive, and so do two gates. The Etruscan Arch, also called Porta Augusta, is the showpiece: an Etruscan gateway carrying its own inscription with the Roman Augusta Perusia cut above it after Octavian's siege, and a 16th-century loggia added on one flanking tower. Three construction campaigns, two millennia apart, in one structure. The Pozzo Etrusco — a 3rd-century-BC well shaft roofed with enormous travertine beams — is the engineering equivalent, and you can descend into it.

The medieval commune

The free commune built upward and outward in pink-grey local limestone. The Palazzo dei Priori, begun in the late 13th century, is one of the great Italian town halls: it grew by stages along Corso Vannucci, which is why its façade changes rhythm as you walk it, and it has a fan-shaped staircase onto Piazza IV Novembre. San Domenico was built between 1394 and 1458, and its stained-glass window measures 23 m × 8 m — among the largest in the world. The façade of San Bernardino is by Agostino di Duccio, a coloured-marble relief front that has no real parallel in the region.

The fortress and the buried quarter

In 1540, after Perugia lost a revolt over the salt tax, Pope Paul III had the Rocca Paolina built over the Baglioni district. The quarter was not demolished — it was vaulted over and used as foundation. When the city pulled the fortress down in 1860 it stopped at ground level, so the medieval streets, doorways and house fronts are still there, under the modern Piazza Italia, lit and open to walk through.

The 20th and 21st centuries

Perugia's modern engineering answers the same problem the Etruscans had: the city is at the top. Four free mechanised routes of escalators and lifts climb from the car parks and the lower town, one of them threading through the Rocca Paolina itself. The Minimetro, open since 2008, is a driverless line of seven stations — Pian di Massiano, Cortonese, Madonna Alta, Fontivegge, Case Bruciate, Cupa and Pincetto — climbing the whole flank of the ridge in small automated cars: a funicular problem solved without a funicular.