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Sigillo (Perugia province)

A town of NE Umbria: 43°20N, 12°44E. Altitude: 486 m. Population in 2003: 2500.

[A blocky three-story building with seven rectangular windows on each of the upper two floors. The ground floor, reached from the street by a dozen steps, is taller and is preceded by an arcaded portico. The central arch of the portico is in turn preceded by a pilaster extension, supporting a balcony in front of the window over it, which is flanked by elaborate carved niches. The whole is surmounted by a square clock-tower and belfry. It is a view of the town hall of Sigillo, Umbria (central Italy).]

The Palazzo Comunale of Sigillo: its Town Hall.

Sigillo is a town on the Via Flaminia in the northeastern corner of Umbria, between Fossato di Vico (6 km to the south) and Costacciaro (3 km north). The area is particularly attractive, and includes the Monte Cucco National Park, famous the world over if you are interested in hang-gliding, and locally famous for a nice cave.

Unlike the other towns in the area, Sigillo is not medieval, but rather 18c, with low buildings on wide streets laid out in a grid pattern, reminding me a bit of Norcia; probably for the same reason, as a defense against earthquakes. Still, the immediate area boasts a few Roman remains, associated with the Flaminia: chief among them the Ponte Spiano, a small Roman bridge.

Most of the churches you'll see in Umbrian towns are medieval, but not in Sigillo. The earthquake of June 3, 1781 caused such damage to the town's churches — already weakened by a serious quake in 1750 — that the largest of them had to be rebuilt. That in turn led yours truly, not especially known for broadmindedness in things architectural, to ignore them altogether; onsite then, not the sizable neoclassical churches of S. Agostino and S. Andrea, but only the chapel of the Madonnella di Ponte Spiano right near the Roman bridge. I have far less good an excuse for missing S. Maria Assunta in the outlying frazione of Villa Scirca, or the church of S. Anna right in town: both of them with medieval frescoes. With luck, another trip to the area is in my future.

A proper website will eventually appear here, since I have walked the Flaminia thru the town, and did see the bridge. In the meanwhile, the Sept. 23, 1998 entry of my diary gives a bit of the flavor of the place.

Frazioni

Like most of the comuni in Italy, Sigillo 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've only been to Villa Scirca; any other links will be offsite.

Fontemaggio • Scirca (also, Villa Scirca) • Val di Ranco

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