is a region of central
Italy , bordered by
Tuscany to the west, the
Marche to the east and
Lazio to the south. The region covers 8,456 km&
2 and has a population of 834,000 (
2003 census).
The region is named for the
Umbri tribe, who settled in the region in the
6th Century BC . Their language was
Umbrian , a relative of
Latin . The modern region of Umbria, however, is essentially a different region of Italy than that bearing the same name in Roman times (see
Roman Umbria ), which extended through most of what is now the northern Marche, to
Ravenna , but excluded the west bank of the Tiber — and thus for example Perugia — which was in
Etruria , and the area around
Norcia , which was in the
Sabine territory.
Umbria is mostly hilly or mountainous. Its relief is dominated by the
Apennines to the east — accounting for the highest point in the region at the summit of Mt. Vettore on the border of the Marche (2476 m = 8123 ft) — and the
Tiber valley basin, accounting for the lowest point at
Attigliano (96 m = 315 ft).
The Tiber forms the approximate border with the Lazio; although the remainder of its course northwards from its source just over the Tuscan border does lie in Umbria, the river is mercurial and thus over the centuries very few towns have been situated on it: the Tiber itself thus 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: they are responsible for much of the landscape of Umbria. Most of the course of the '', is widely considered by Umbrians the most scenic area of Umbria. While the Nera flows more or less in isolation between rather high mountains, the lower course of the Chiascio-Topino basin widens out into a fairly large floodplain, which in Antiquity was actually a pair of shallow, interlocking, swamp-like lakes, the
Lacus Clitorius and the
Lacus Umber . They were drained a first time by the
Romans over a span of 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 a span of five hundred years: Benedictine monks from various abbeys in the region started the process in the 13th century, and it was completed on the private initiative of 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 small place in it, the source of the
Clitunno River , treasured since Antiquity 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 notoriously green.
The regional capital is , with 59 comuni, and
Terni , with 33 comuni.
Notable towns and cities:
