The National Gallery of Umbria has a problem with its name. Anyone who reads “regional gallery” expects a collection of local painters, and instead here you find Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Gentile da Fabriano, Duccio di Buoninsegna and Arnolfo di Cambio. It is the most important museum in central Italy between Florence and Rome, and it sits on the third floor of a town hall.
I put this route together because the rooms follow a chronological order, and in a museum like this one that is both the best thing about it and the trap: you start with the thirteenth century while your head is still fresh, and you reach Perugino, the reason many people came in the first place, after two hours on your feet.
If you are short on time, here are the three you should not miss: the Guidalotti Polyptych by Fra Angelico, the thirsty woman by Arnolfo di Cambio and the Madonna and Child with Angels by Gentile da Fabriano.
The museum opens every day. Since 16 March 2026 the Gallery has dropped both the Monday closure and the seasonal timetable: you go in between 8.30 am and 7.30 pm, seven days a week, with last admission at 6.30 pm.
The thirteenth century: before Umbria was Umbrian
The first rooms explain something that articles about Perugino usually skip: in the thirteenth century the art you saw in Perugia came from elsewhere, and the people of Perugia bought it from the best names on the market.
There is a Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna, the Sienese master who started it all, and there are the gold grounds of local painters learning by looking at him. The Perugia of those years is a wealthy commune that calls in artists from Siena and Pisa, and that explains why the fountain in the square was made by the Pisano family.
Arnolfo di Cambio and the fountain that is no longer there
What becomes of a monumental fountain when a city decides it is in the way? Between 1278 and 1281 Arnolfo di Cambio carved a second fountain for Perugia, alongside the one by the Pisano family, and placed it at the foot of the square, in front of the podestà’s palace. In the fourteenth century it was dismantled, and the pieces ended up scattered.
Three figures from it survive in the Gallery, and one is worth the journey: a thirsty woman who holds the jug with both hands and drinks with her neck bent, her body twisted into a pose nobody attempts in the thirteenth century. She is not a saint, she is not an allegory, she does not look at the viewer: she is a person who is thirsty.
Arnolfo is the same architect who started the building site of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, and his story is in Arnolfo di Cambio.
Gentile da Fabriano and the last gold
The Madonna and Child with Angels that Gentile da Fabriano painted around 1405 for the church of San Domenico is pure late Gothic: a gold ground worked with a punch, an ultramarine blue robe, angels in a row, no depth at all. Look at it knowing that twenty years later, in Florence, Masaccio would paint the Trinity.
This is not backwardness. It is another system, one in which the value of a painting lies in precious material and in the fineness of the hand, and Gentile was its European champion. Step close and look at the gold behind the angels: it is incised, not painted, and it changes as you shift your position.
The Guidalotti Polyptych by Fra Angelico
What does a Dominican friar paint when he is paid well? This is the most important piece in the museum. Fra Angelico painted it between 1447 and 1448 for the Guidalotti chapel in San Domenico, while he was working in the Vatican for pope Nicholas V, and it shows: the enthroned Madonna in the centre, the saints at the sides, and an Annunciation above.
The thing to look at is the floor. Angelico builds it in perspective with an architect’s precision, and he sets the throne on it so that the vanishing lines carry your eye exactly to the face of the Child. This is the same friar who at San Marco painted bare cells for meditation, here at work on a well paid public commission.
In the predella there are the stories of saint Nicholas of Bari, small scenes with buildings, boats and landscapes that read better than the large panels.
Piero della Francesca and the polyptych that ends in the sky
The Sant’Antonio Polyptych was painted by Piero della Francesca between 1467 and 1468 for the Franciscan nuns of Perugia. Below it is a traditional polyptych, with the Madonna and four saints on a gold ground, because that is what had been ordered. Above, in the pinnacle, there is an Annunciation that looks as though it belongs to another century: a loggia of columns receding in perspective towards a background of sky, with the two figures at either end.
It is the painting that best shows the double life of fifteenth century artists: the part the patron had asked for, and the part where the painter does what interests him.
Perugino, and the eight San Bernardino panels
The last rooms belong to Perugino and his workshop, and this is where the museum turns into a monograph. There are altarpieces, processional banners, detached panels: the repertoire of a painter who at one point ran two workshops, one in Perugia and one in Florence, and produced on an industrial scale.
But the piece I suggest you look for is not his. It is the eight panels of the Miracles of San Bernardino, painted in 1473 by a team of young artists for the Oratory of San Bernardino, and attributed in part to Pinturicchio. They are eight small square paintings with clear Renaissance architecture, columns, flights of steps and little crowds of people in contemporary clothes: the Perugia those painters had in front of them, painted while they were building it.
How to organise the visit in two and a half hours
The chronological order is the right one, with one adjustment: if Perugino is the reason you came, skip him on the way in and go and see him first, then turn back and start again from the thirteenth century. The rooms are in a line and you can walk them in either direction.
One hour for the Middle Ages and the early fifteenth century, half an hour for Angelico and Piero, one hour for Perugino and the panels.
Practical information
Details checked on 4 September 2026 on the official website of the National Gallery of Umbria. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you leave.
Tickets. Full price is 10 euros when only the permanent collection is on view and 12 euros during temporary exhibitions. European Union citizens aged 18 to 25 pay 2 euros. The annual pass costs 25 euros and lasts 365 days from the first visit.
Opening hours. Since 16 March 2026 the museum has been open every day from 8.30 am to 7.30 pm. Last admission is at 6.30 pm.
Free admission. Under 18s go in free.
Getting there. The entrance is at corso Vannucci 19, inside the Palazzo dei Priori. From the station of Perugia Fontivegge you take the minimetrò to Pincetto and walk five minutes.
How long it takes. Two and a half hours for the full route. An hour and a half if you stop at the three main works.
Where to go next
In the same building, fifty metres further along the same street, there is the Collegio del Cambio with the frescoes by Perugino, the only cycle of his that has stayed in the place it was painted for. The eight panels in this museum, on the other hand, came from the Oratory of San Bernardino, which you can visit for free.
The full two day itinerary is in What to see in Perugia in 2 days.
Photographs by Sailko from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY licence. Reproductions of works of art are in the public domain.
