Spoleto: town of the arts, roman history and the best pistacchio ice cream in the world

Unfortunately, this summer has turned out to be really hot in Italy and in the rest of Europe due to global warming. This is a sensitive subject that I feel very passionate about. I am very sorry and almost angry that it is not taken into consideration and not given the importance it deserves since, in my opinion, there is still time to address the situation and not make it worse in a definitive way.

With @lezra I was thinking of a way to combat the excruciating heat at home, and so we decided to take a weekend trip to Umbria, a predominantly mountainous area. A place where we could find some coolness. We booked a nice air conditioned hotel for two days in the town of Spoleto (thanks to the advice of an Umbrian friend of mine) with a swimming pool just a few meters from the historic town center.

We went there by car and after a short stop in the town of San Sepolcro, which we will talk about in another post, we finally arrived in Spoleto. Our first impression of the city was really good.

The "SpoletoSfera", a structure at the beginning of the city (I have no idea of what is it's meaning or purpose 😅)

Some views from the park at the beginning of the city. An interestin thing we saw was that some of the benches in the park has some inscriptions in one of their horizontal bars (which was made in metal)

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Spoleto is practically built on the façade of a mountain, about 400 meters high, (so I don't know if you can call it a mountain, or perhaps better to call it a hill). To get from the old part to the new part of the city there is obviously a bit of a difference in height to be covered, so it's also a good way to get a bit of exercise, which is absolutely necessary as in Spoleto you eat really well and all the dishes are very plentiful.

a view of the "Chiesa di Santo Angioletto" with a nice fountain that you can use if you feel thirsty

The first evening in town we decided to take a quick tour of the various alleyways and look for a nice place to have an aperitif.

Usually when we have to look for a place to stop I like to Google it first and look for those with the best reviews, so as not to end up in places that could be rip-offs. Another strategy I use, if I have friends in the area, is to ask them directly, and that way I'm sure I'm on the safe side... in this case, however, it was a totally different thing we did. While walking randomly in town, we saw some people having an aperitif sitting on these very nice cushions resting on a staircase with a very beautiful historical building next to it.

Enraptured by the beauty of this place, I asked @lezra if she would like to sit there even without having an idea of how the place was ranked on google, because I really liked the location. We decided to give it a try and go with our guts the good old fashioned way.

So we sat down and had the waiter bring us the cocktail menu. We had two very special drinks and I must say that I was really very satisfied.

I then asked my friend, who lives near Spoleto, to suggest places where I could have other excellent cocktails the following day. I did not tell him about the place we went to, just to see if he liked it too. And the first suggestion he gave me was precisely the name of this cocktail bar, though he did give me a warning, namely that this bar makes excellent cocktails especially when it is not very busy, when there are many tourists in town and they too have many customers, in the rush to serve everyone, the quality of the cocktails drops dramatically. So if you find yourself in Spoleto on holiday and want to drink an excellent cocktail in a perfect location I leave the name of the bar below so you know where to find it.

A CASA MIA Cocktails and Wine Bar

At the foot of the fortress of Spoleto, which we will describe in another post, you can visit the cathedral, which is truly impressive.

The Rocca seen from the city center

The Cathedral seen from the Rocca

The peculiarity of this building (an anecdote my friend told us) is that the facade is actually composed of the tombstones of a cemetery. Observing from afar you cannot recognize this detail, but actually if you approach the cathedral and look closely you can still read the inscriptions on the gravestones. I found this detail really fascinating and also a little disturbing. So if you happen to visit the cathedral, which I highly recommend, as it is very beautiful, remember this little anecdote and look closely at the stones on the facade.

a detail of the Cathedral (if you look closely on the left part of the pictures you wil see some of the funerary inscriptions on the facade)

Obviously, as I said before, Umbria, like Italy in general, is famous for its food. Among the things I recommend in Spoleto, a delicious Carbonara al tartufo in the restaurant whose link I leave below:

Ristorante Bar canasta

really Yummy 😋

and above all the best pistachio ice cream in the world, and I am not saying this just because of my personal taste (since I actually really liked the ice cream), but because the ice cream shop whose link I leave you below won the award for the best pistachio ice cream in the world.
Incidentally, while we were inside the ice-cream shape itself, there was a very funny scene as one of the customers who was right before us was intrigued by the name of one of the flavors present, the 'Vietnam coconut' ice-cream. A name that doesn't really leave much to the imagination, but this customer nevertheless asked the shop owner what it was, and the owner, probably a little taken aback, replied simply: 'it's a Vietnam coconut'. Very amused by the scene, I decided to try this flavor myself, and I was really delighted, so if you pass by this ice-cream shop, I definitely recommend you try the pistachio and coconut combination. As a side note, this ice cream shop is present in two parts of the city, one in the historical center where there are also other flavors besides pistachio, the other a little outside the historical center but still inside the city, in particular in the new part, where there are only pistachio ice creams but with lots of variations (this last shop in particular is the one that actually won the award in 2017 as the best pistachio ice cream in the world) while the other was opened exclusively.

Gelateria Crispini

The shop in the city center

On a more historic note, Spoleto is famous for other artistic and historical reasons. This town is connected with electric escalators that take you all the way to the castle from the city center. When going through these stairs, you get a chance to learn from the artistic scenery this town has offered Americans and artists of all disciplines around the world. It is the “festival of the two worlds”. Famous people have stepped on Spoleto stages such as Pavarotti and Andy Warhol.

Also, if you are in to roman architecture and history, Spoleto can be a fun place to visit. You have an incredibly well preserved aqueduct, and remains of roman constructions. There is one, for example, right next to the cocktail bar we were writing about before.

Final words to the wise budget-friendly traveler:
Also in the historical center, if you want to have a cheap aperitif, but obviously falling a little short in the quality of the cocktails, we recommend the Caffè degli Artisti, which is usually very crowded, but where cocktails cost around €5, which is a lot less than the price of cocktails in the bar 'A casa mia' (the one we mentioned earlier, where it costs around €10). However, I would like to stress again that the quality of cocktails compared to the others is much poorer.