How Spoleto was built and evolved over time

Spoleto is a vertical construction in local limestone, built in four campaigns up one hillside, each reusing the one below.

Roman

The colony of 241 BC gave the town its armature: the Teatro Romano cut into the slope, the Arco di Druso, Casa Romana with its mosaic floors, and stretches of wall in massive polygonal blocks that later builders simply carried on upwards. The theatre is still a performance venue, which is the best possible evidence that the engineering was sound.

Late Roman and Lombard

San Salvatore, raised between the late 4th and the early 5th century, is the key building and the strangest. It is early Christian architecture built out of salvaged classical material — columns, capitals and entablature taken from Roman structures and re-erected — and the Lombards who made Spoleto a ducal seat from 576 adapted it rather than replaced it. UNESCO inscribed it in 2011.

Medieval

After Barbarossa burned the city in 1155, the town rebuilt, and the Duomo was reconsecrated by Innocent III in 1198. Its façade is the local idiom at its best: banded stone, a row of rose windows, a Romanesque porch, and a gold-ground mosaic above — assembled over generations and the better for it. The sloping square in front was built as the approach, and functions as an auditorium.

The fortress and the bridge

From 1353, Cardinal Albornoz rebuilt papal control in stone. The Rocca Albornoziana crowns the hill at 453 metres around two courtyards, and served in turn as fortress, papal residence and — from 1817 to 1982 — prison.

The Ponte delle Torri is the engineering that makes Spoleto famous, and its history is less tidy than the postcards suggest. It “si innalza su nove possenti arcate, ha una lunghezza di 230 metri e un'altezza di 80” — nine arches, 230 metres long, 80 metres high. It reached its present form at the end of the 14th century, with detailing that points to the work after 1363 and to Albornoz's architect Matteo Gattaponi. It probably stands on earlier Roman work, but “attualmente nulla sembra rimasto dell'età romana” — nothing Roman appears to survive in what you see. It is not a Roman bridge, whatever you may read.

It was also not only a bridge. Channels along the top carried water from the Cortaccione and Patrico aqueducts into the city, and a fort at the far end, the Fortilizio dei Mulini, was “eretto per vigilare il ponte e attivo come mulino fino al XIX secolo” — built to guard the crossing and working as a mill until the 19th century. After the August 2016 earthquake the bridge was closed to pedestrians by municipal ordinance; its access has been governed by ordinance since, so check locally before planning to walk it.