Città di Castello — Cloth and Print, Still Made by Hand

Fewer of our guests make it up to Città di Castello than we'd like, which is a shame, because it's the closest of Umbria's craft towns to Altabella and holds two of the more unusual stories in the region. Neither gets much attention outside Umbria, and both are still working businesses rather than preserved-for-visitors museum pieces.

Best time to go: Any season works — this is a short trip from the valley, so it's easy to slot in on a quieter day regardless of when you're staying. Weekday mornings mean the workshops are less busy and the staff have more time to talk you through what they're doing.

Tela Umbra, for cloth with a history behind it

Tela Umbra (Facebook) is a weaving workshop and museum set up in 1908 by an American heiress and her Italian husband, originally to give local women paid work at a time when there wasn't much of it to be found. The looms they installed are still running today, and you can watch the linen being made before buying a piece of it — tablecloths, napkins, runners, all woven the way they were over a century ago. The museum attached to the workshop fills in the rest of the story, including the social history behind why the place exists at all.

from the @tela_umbra Instagram

Grifani-Donati, for a printing house that never modernised

A few streets away, Tipografia Grifani-Donati (Facebook) has been printing since 1799 and still runs its historic presses. It's the only place we know of doing typographic, intaglio and lithographic printing all under one roof, which makes it as much a working museum of print technology as it is a functioning business. There's a small Museum of Graphic Arts attached, with workshops if you'd rather have a go yourself than just watch someone else work the machinery.

from the @tipografia_grifani_donati_1799 Instagram

How we'd plan it

Città di Castello is around 30 minutes from Altabella, with Umbertide closer still at roughly 15 to 20 — close enough that you could take in both the weaving workshop and Grifani-Donati in a single unhurried morning, with time left over for lunch in the old town before heading back. It's the easiest of our craft recommendations to fit into a lighter day — no need to build the whole itinerary around it the way you might for Assisi or Gubbio.