The city of water
The hilltop on which, in the 6th century B.C., the Umbrian people established the town of Nocera Umbra is a natural connection between the narrow Topino Valley, the Via Flaminia road and the overhanging masses of the Pennino and Burano mountains.
Nocera Umbra has always played an important defensive role, which explains its long history of occupation, first by the Longobards, then by the cities of Perugia and Foligno, then definitively incorporated into the Papal State.
The only portion of the defence post that still stands today is the tower known as the Campanaccio (11th century), located on top of the city, where the concentric roads that cross through the built-up area converge.
Next to the tower is the Romanesque cathedral, rebuilt in 1448 and renovated in the eighteenth century. One artistic work of inestimable worth is the polyptych of the Nativity of Jesus (1483) by Niccolò Alunno, housed in the Museum-Art Gallery in the church of San Francesco.
Nocera’s surrounding environment is characterized by spring waters rich in bicarbonate and calcium found in Bagni that, together with the local alkaline clay, produce an excellent medicinal clay.