Italy Country Guide - Umbria
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Umbria is one of the 20 Regions of Italy. The capital is Perugia. It has an area
of 8,456 km² and about 900,000 inhabitants.
The agriculture of the region produces olives, grapes, wheat and tobacco. Industry
is based on the steel factories of Terni that harness the hydroelectric power of
the Marmore Falls created by the Romans, the food industry of Perugia (e.g. Perugina-Nestlè),
the production of olive oil (Spoleto and Trevi) and wine (Lake Trasimeno, Montefalco).
Tourism is an important factor in the regional economy, especially in the districts
of Perugia, Assisi, and Spoleto.
The Tiber forms the approximate border with Lazio; although its course northwards
from its source just over the Tuscan border lies in Umbria, the river course is
changeable and thus few towns have been built on it: the Tiber itself is not a major
factor in the history and human geography of Umbria. The same cannot be said of
the Tiber's three principal tributaries, each flowing in a generally southward course.
The course of the Chiascio takes it through relatively uninhabited areas until Bastia
Umbra, and about 10 km later it flows into the Tiber at Torgiano. The Topino, cleaving
the Apennines with passes that the Via Flaminia and successor roads follow, makes
a sharp turn at Foligno to flow NW for a few kilometres before joining the Chiascio
below Bettona.
The third river is the Nera, flowing into the Tiber further south, at Terni; its
valley, called
the
Valnerina, is widely considered to be the most scenic area of Umbria. While the
upper Nera flows more or less in isolation in the mountains, the lower course of
the Chiascio-Topino basin is a fairly large floodplain, which in Antiquity was a
pair of shallow, interlocking lakes, the Lacus Clitorius and the Lacus Umber. They
were drained by the Romans over several hundred years, but an earthquake in the
4th century and the political collapse of the Roman Empire resulted in the reflooding
of the basin, which was drained a second time over five hundred years; Benedictine
monks started the process in the 13th century, and it was completed by an engineer
from Foligno in the 18th century.
In tourist literature one sometimes sees Umbria called il cuor verde d'Italia (the
green heart of Italy). The phrase, taken from a poem by Giosuè Carducci — the subject
of which is not Umbria but rather a specific place in it, the source of the Clitunno
river, treasured as a beauty spot — is to a certain extent appropriate since the
modern administrative region is the only one to have neither a coast nor a border
with a foreign country, and, except for August and September, is famously green.
Some of this information has been provided by
Wikipedia.
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