Borgo di Vallo di Nera

Vallo di Nera preserves a medieval castle plan on a wooded hill above the Nera. Its elliptical walls, gates, lanes and three Romanesque churches reflect the village's development as a fortified settlement in the Valnerina.

Why it matters

Spoleto authorised the inhabitants of Vallo to rebuild a castle on the hill in 1217. Documents from the following centuries describe it as one of the most populous and best-fortified castles of the Valnerina. The stone houses, walls, steep lanes and underpasses preserve much of the medieval settlement's form. Fields beyond the walls retain traces of Roman centuriation and the old road between Spoleto and Norcia.

What to notice

Two gates, Portella and Portaranne, stand on either side of the main tower added in the fifteenth century. The village's streets follow an elliptical plan around the hilltop. The house-tower associated by tradition with Petrone, leader of the 1522 rising against Spoleto, and projecting stone corbels used for drying corn and hanging cloth reflect domestic and defensive life. Three churches mark the village: San Giovanni Battista has a 1536 fresco of the Death of the Madonna by Jacopo Siculo; Santa Maria, begun in 1273, contains the Processione dei Bianchi painted by Cola di Pietro in 1401 and a Martyrdom of Saint Lucy by a fifteenth-century Camerino painter; Santa Caterina, dated 1354, now serves as an auditorium.

Context and history

The name derives from Castrum Valli, a fortified place of the valley. The river was added to the name after Italian unification; the Nera takes its name from the valley's ancient people, the Naharci. The castle's 1217 charter tied Vallo to Spoleto. In 1522–23, Petrone da Vallo and Picozzo Brancaleoni led a revolt against the papal governor; the revolt was followed by fire, occupation and plague. In the fifteenth century, a second ring of walls absorbed the Franciscan settlement, while the Borgo dei Casali grew outside the gates in the sixteenth century.