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A town of W central Umbria: 43°3.5N, 12°45E. Altitude: 366 m. Population in 2003: 1400. |
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Detail of the belfry of the modern church of S. Pietro Apostolo. The photo isn't purely decorative: look closely and you will see damage from the 1997 earthquake, a few days before I took this picture. |
Valtopina is a small town on the west bank of the upper reaches of the Topino river (whence its name), more or less along the Via Flaminia in Umbria, between Foligno, 14 km to the south, and Nocera Umbra, 7 km north.
In fact, at this point of the Topino gorge, the Via Flaminia of Roman days was on the east side of the river; it is on the SS3, a modern successor road merely borrowing the name Flaminia, that the town lies. In the latter part of the 20c, a superhighway version of that same road was built, once again on the east side of the river, thus bypassing the town, so that now Valtopina is mostly a dormitory town for Foligno: pleasant, but with no particular signs of ancient habitation.
A proper website will eventually appear here, since I've been to Valtopina and walked the area several times. In the meanwhile, you might find it marginally useful to read the Oct. 10, 1997 entry of my diary (which does include a photo of a fresco in the hamlet of Marco Frate just outside the town).
Most of the comuni in Umbria include in their territories 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"). In Valtopina there are only two, and I haven't been to either of them, so any links will be offsite:
Giove (not to be confused with the comune by that name, a much larger town in the province of Terni) • Sasso
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A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information. |
Page updated: 27 Oct 17