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Piegaro (Perugia province)

A town of W central Umbria: 42°58.4N, 12°05.2E. Altitude: 356 m. Population in 2003: 3700.

[image ALT: The elegant front door, of painted wood surmounted by a semicircular window with a bit of grillwork, in a doorway of massive blocks of stone. It is a 17c door of a house in Piegaro, Umbria (central Italy).]

17c door in the via Roma.

Piegaro is a quiet little place perched above the Nestore river, 34 km southwest of Perugia. No grand remains here, although some of the town's medieval walls have survived and one central tower. All around Piegaro though, the hiker will find hilltop castles, especially in the frazioni of Castiglion Fosco, Gaiche and Greppolischieto, and at Città di Fallera.

The name of the town is locally said to derive from a Latin name Plagarium, said to be attested in an inscription of the 6c B.C., which would mean "place of wounds", in reference to Rome's wars with Clusium (nearby Chiusi in Tuscany, 20 km to the northwest). This is sheer conjecture, however, and has a strong flavor of folk etymology and boosterism about it: among the problems is that no Latin inscription as early as the 6c is known to have survived anywhere, and that the Clusine Wars weren't fought until the 4c. . . .

A proper website will eventually appear here, since I've been to Piegaro, if briefly. In the meanwhile, you might conceivably find it marginally useful to read the brief paragraph in the Aug. 3, 2000 entry of my diary, which also has a photo of one of Piegaro's churches; for further (and much better) information, see the websites linked in the navigation bar at the bottom of this page.

Frazioni

Like most of the comuni in Italy, Piegaro includes in its territory some smaller towns and hamlets, of a few hundred inhabitants if that, with a certain administrative identity of their own: as elsewhere in Italy, these are referred to as the frazioni of the comune (singular: frazione, literally a "fraction"): a complete list of them follows. I haven't been to any of them yet, so any links will be offsite.

Castiglion Fosco • Cibottola • Colle Baldo • Gaiche • Greppolischieto • Ierna • Macereto • Oro • Pietrafitta • Pratalenza

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