Perugia is a city you visit almost entirely inside a single building. The Palazzo dei Priori takes up one whole side of corso Vannucci and holds the National Gallery of Umbria, the Collegio del Cambio, the Collegio della Mercanzia and the Sala dei Notari: four different visits, four different tickets, four different doors on the same façade.
It is also the reason why so many people leave having seen only one of them. I built this itinerary starting from there, that is from how you actually get into that palace, and then widened it to the two things that exist only in Perugia: a thirteenth-century fountain that is the masterpiece of Italian medieval sculpture, and an entire district walled up underground in the sixteenth century as a punishment.
Warning: the Ipogeo dei Volumni is closed. The Etruscan tomb of the Volumni family and the Palazzone necropolis have been closed to the public since 9 June 2025 for works; the reopening was announced for April 2026, but at the date of this article the Musei Nazionali have still not published any visiting hours. If your idea of Perugia went through there, check before you travel.
The calendar decides the order, and in Perugia the hour of the day decides it
Why can these two days not simply be swapped around? Because the Collegio del Cambio closes in the middle of the day, every day, and on Sunday it opens in the morning only.
| Stop | When it is closed |
|---|---|
| National Gallery of Umbria | open every day from 8.30 am to 7.30 pm, last admission 6.30 pm |
| Collegio del Cambio | closes between 1 pm and 2.30 pm every day, and on Sunday it opens in the morning only |
| Fontana Maggiore | it stands in the square, always visible |
| Rocca Paolina | open every day, free entry |
| Oratory of San Bernardino | closes between 12.30 pm and 3.30 pm, free entry |
A simple rule comes out of that. The first day should be spent inside the Palazzo dei Priori, starting early with the Gallery; the second on the free stops, which have no constraints. And if you arrive on a Sunday, the Collegio del Cambio has to be seen before lunchtime or it is lost.
Day 1, morning: the National Gallery of Umbria
The Gallery occupies the main floor and the third floor of the Palazzo dei Priori, and it tells seven hundred years of painting in a single region. It is not a museum you pass through: it is the most complete collection of Umbrian art that exists, and the first rooms are also the most surprising, because they show what was there before Umbria became the land of Perugino.
Look for the Guidalotti Polyptych by Fra Angelico, painted around 1447 for the church of San Domenico, and the Madonna and Child with Angels by Gentile da Fabriano of 1405, which is pure late Gothic, gold and fabrics. Then the sculptures by Arnolfo di Cambio from the fountain that stood at the foot of the square and was dismantled in the fourteenth century: three figures survive, and one is a thirsty woman with a jug who holds the most natural pose in the whole of thirteenth-century Italy.
Read also: The works to see at the National Gallery of Umbria, with the route room by room.
Day 1, midday: the Collegio del Cambio
You leave the Gallery, walk fifty metres along corso Vannucci and go in through another door, that of the Collegio del Cambio, which was the guild of the money changers. The Sala dell’Udienza was frescoed by Perugino between 1498 and 1500, and it is the only cycle of his left intact in the place it was painted for, with its wooden panelling, its benches and its floor.
There is one thing almost nobody notices on the way in. On a pilaster, in the middle of the wall, Perugino painted a frame hanging from a nail, and inside it his own portrait: broad face, red cap, not a friendly expression. Underneath, a Latin plaque praises him by saying that if the art of painting had been lost he would have found it again, and if it had never existed he would have invented it.
Read also: The Collegio del Cambio and the frescoes by Perugino.
Day 1, afternoon: the Fontana Maggiore and the Sala dei Notari
Coming out into piazza IV Novembre you have the Fontana Maggiore in front of you, built between 1275 and 1278 by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. It is free because it stands in the middle of the square, and it is the most important monument in Perugia: two polygonal marble basins with fifty reliefs telling the months of the year, the signs of the zodiac, the liberal arts, the history of Rome and two of Aesop’s fables.
Read also: The Fontana Maggiore by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano.
From the grand staircase of the Palazzo dei Priori you then climb to the Sala dei Notari, which is free and almost always empty: a fourteenth-century hall with eight great arches and walls covered in frescoes with biblical stories and the coats of arms of the podestà. It served the popular assemblies, and today concerts are held there.
Day 2, morning: the Rocca Paolina, that is a town inside a fortress
What happens to a district when a pope decides to punish a city? In 1540 Perugia rebelled against Paul III over a tax on salt. The pope defeated it in a few months and ordered a fortress to be built on top of the district where the Baglioni lived, the family that had led the revolt.
They did not demolish it: they buried it. The houses, the streets and the churches were filled with earth and walled up, and the Rocca was built on top of them. When the fortress was pulled down in 1860, the district reappeared underneath: cobbled streets, doorways, windows, arches, all in half-light and all still standing.
Today you walk through it for free, and you get there on the escalators that climb from piazza Partigiani: the strangest way of entering an old town that I know, because you cross a piece of the sixteenth century on your way to get a coffee.
Day 2, afternoon: the Etruscan Well and the Oratory of San Bernardino
A few steps from the cathedral you go down into the Etruscan Well, dug in the third century BC and about thirty-seven metres deep. It is not just any well: the covering is made of travertine beams up to five metres long, assembled to form a stone truss that has held for more than two thousand years. You go down on a walkway to within a metre of the water, which is still there.
Read also: Underground Perugia: the Rocca Paolina and the Etruscan Well.
It ends in piazza San Francesco, in front of the Oratory of San Bernardino. The façade is covered with reliefs in coloured marble carved between 1457 and 1461 by Agostino di Duccio, and it is the closest thing to a manifesto of the early Renaissance that you can see in the open air. Entry is free.
Read also: The Oratory of San Bernardino and the façade by Agostino di Duccio.
Practical information
Checked on 4 September 2026 on the official sites of the National Gallery of Umbria, the Nobile Collegio del Cambio, the Casa Museo di Palazzo Sorbello and the city council of Perugia. Prices and hours change: check again before you travel.
Tickets. The National Gallery of Umbria costs 10 euros when only the permanent collection is on view and 12 euros during temporary exhibitions; European Union citizens aged between 18 and 25 pay 2 euros. The Collegio del Cambio costs 6 euros. The Etruscan Well is visited with the combined ticket of the Casa Museo di Palazzo Sorbello, which costs 9 euros and covers both sites. The Rocca Paolina, the Sala dei Notari, the Fontana Maggiore and the Oratory of San Bernardino are free.
The card. The type A Perugia Città Museo card costs 14 euros, lasts 48 hours from the first admission and covers five museums of your choice within the circuit, among them the National Gallery, the Collegio del Cambio and the Etruscan Well. If you visit at least three, it pays for itself.
Opening hours. Since 16 March 2026 the Gallery has been open every day from 8.30 am to 7.30 pm, with last admission at 6.30 pm. The Collegio del Cambio opens Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm and from 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm, on Sunday and public holidays from 9 am to 1 pm only. The Casa Museo di Palazzo Sorbello with the Etruscan Well opens every day from 10.30 am to 6 pm, with last admission at 5.30 pm. The Oratory of San Bernardino opens from 8 am to 12.30 pm and from 3.30 pm to 5.30 pm. The Rocca Paolina is entered from Porta Marzia, from 7 am to 8 pm.
Free entry. At the National Gallery under-18s go in free. At the Collegio del Cambio children up to 14 go in free within a family group.
Getting there. Perugia has a railway station down in the valley, Fontivegge, connected to the old town by the minimetrò, which reaches Pincetto in about ten minutes. Anyone arriving by car leaves it in the piazza Partigiani car park and goes up to the centre on the escalators that cross the Rocca Paolina.
How long it takes. The full itinerary fills two whole days. The National Gallery alone asks two and a half hours, the Collegio del Cambio forty minutes, the Fontana Maggiore half an hour, the Rocca Paolina an hour, the Etruscan Well twenty minutes.
Where to go from here
Each of the five stops on this itinerary has an article of its own. If you have to choose one, start with the works of the National Gallery of Umbria: that is where ninety per cent of what Perugia has to say is kept.
And if you have a third day, the basilica of Assisi is half an hour away by train.
Photographs by Diego Delso, Zairon, Sailko and Georges Jansoone from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA licences. Reproductions of works of art are in the public domain.
