Sant'Eutizio and the villages of the Valnerina

Getting there

From Norcia you cross into the Val Castoriana and then go down along the Nera: a route done going down the valley, ending at the falls, where you sleep.

• From Norcia to Sant'Eutizio: you take the SP476 provincial road towards Preci, which passes through Campi and then Piedivalle, where the abbey stands; it is a two lane valley road. At Piedivalle there is a small car park about a hundred metres from the abbey, in via della Costarella, where with the building site open the works vehicles may be parked: with a long motorhome you are better off at the municipal area of Preci, a little further on, or at the Pro Loco's stopover in Campi, both among the stopovers on the Norcia page
• From Preci to the Nera: after Preci the road comes down into the Valnerina, and you follow it southwards: Triponzo, where the Corno flows into the Nera, Piedipaterno, the short provincial road that climbs to Vallo di Nera, Sant'Anatolia di Narco, Scheggino, Ferentillo and Arrone. The road follows the river along the valley floor, with bends and a few narrow stretches between the rocks: drive slowly and by day
• Stops along the way: at Scheggino there is piazza 23 Luglio, free, on the state road at the foot of the village; at Ferentillo the municipal area in via delle Macchie, free, with water filling and emptying and five places, a few minutes on foot from the mummies
• At the falls: the motorhome area is at the Belvedere Inferiore, the lower viewpoint, on the SS209, next to the main entrance, with 22 places; the operator's 2026 price list gives it at 20 euros for 24 hours, and car parks P1 and P2 are not for motorhomes. If it is full, at the Belvedere Superiore, the upper viewpoint, in the village of Marmore, motorhomes park in the Campacci car park, the former sports ground, free from 20:00 to 8:00. The nearest emptying point is the free motorhome service point of Arrone, on the way
• The return to Norcia, the next day, is made by going back up the same valley, or from Spoleto on the SS685 and through the Forca di Cerro tunnel
• The short version: those who want only half a day do Campi, Sant'Eutizio, Preci and the confluence at Triponzo, and go back to Norcia by the same road

Practical information

Sant'Eutizio, which you see from outside, and the villages are free; the Marmore Falls charge, and at the mummies there is a ticket whose price the museum does not publish.

Contacts

Where it is

Piedivalle, Preci · Umbria

You set off from

Notes

• What the abbey is like in October 2026: the Comune di Preci writes that it is temporarily closed and can only be visited from outside, on a page from July 2025. In February 2026 the head of the design team described three building sites: the church, with the roof finished, the presbytery consolidated, the facade almost finished and the works in the crypt begun, to be finished by the end of 2026 and returned to worship; the monastery, well advanced, to be finished a year later; and the cliff with the bell tower, with the works only recently begun, for about three years. That the church has reopened nobody writes: phone before going
• What you see from outside: the rebuilt facade with the rose window; above, the cliff where the caves of Sant'Eutizio and San Fiorenzo were, and where the bell tower will be rebuilt, which before the earthquake dated from the seventeenth century. The building site is large: scaffolding, fences and cranes are part of the visit
• What was inside, and will return: the Comune describes the single nave church with its raised presbytery, the crypt with vaults on two stone columns, the tempietto of 1514 holding the remains of Sant'Eutizio, attributed to Rocco da Vicenza, and the walnut choir by Antonio Seneca of Piedivalle. In the first courtyard there are two fourteenth century mullioned windows, in the second a fountain with an eighth century stone screen
• The history: according to Wikipedia Spes died in 510 and Eutizio in 540; in the early Middle Ages the abbot held feudal rights in Umbria and the Marche, and the abbey had a large library. In 1602 Cristoforo Roncalli, known as Pomarancio, painted the altarpiece of the high altar. The 1997 earthquake had already damaged it
• The surgical school of Preci: after the Lateran Council of 1215, which forbade monks to practise surgery, the monks taught the trade to the people of Preci, who already knew how to do it with pigs, the Comune writes. They were surgeons without a university, and they specialised in three operations: cataract, hernia and bladder stones. In the territory of Preci alone about thirty families of surgeons arose; Durante Scacchi wrote the "Subsidium Medicinae", his brother Cesare was called to England for the cataract of Elizabeth I, Orazio Cattani served the sultan in Constantinople
• Preci: the castle was destroyed by the people of Norcia in 1528, because it had rebelled against Norcia, and rebuilt from 1533. Inside the walls the families of surgeons had their palazzi built by master builders from Lombardy, and the village still looks as it did in the sixteenth century, with the lanes climbing to the square of the parish church of Santa Maria. In the village there is the Museo del Mulino, in a mill that partly still works. It is a gateway to the Monti Sibillini National Park
• Campi, on the same road, had the most damaged churches in the valley. The church of San Salvatore, from 1115, at Campi Basso, collapsed in 2016; in November 2024 the project to rebuild it was approved, and in February 2026 the first 3 million euros arrived. It is a building site, and you see it from outside
• Triponzo, where the road from Preci comes down to the Valnerina, is the confluence of the Corno and the Nera, with the remains of a Roman bridge and the old sulphur baths nearby
• Vallo di Nera is a walled village with towers, vaulted alleys and two gates; in the small palazzo of Portella there is the Casa dei Racconti, the House of Stories, an archive of oral tales. In the church of Santa Maria there are frescoes of the school of Giotto, and the best known is the "Processione dei Bianchi", the Procession of the Whites, by Cola di Pietro da Camerino, from 1401; in San Giovanni Battista those by Jacopo Siculo, according to Wikipedia. Whether the two churches are open after 2016 no source writes. The Sentiero degli Eremiti, the Hermits' Path, starts from here, a loop of about twelve kilometres by way of Castel San Felice and Sant'Anatolia di Narco
• Scheggino was born in the twelfth century as an outpost of the Duchy of Spoleto, and its triangular castle guarded the only bridge over the Nera; the village runs down to the river. This is the home of Urbani Tartufi: Costantino Urbani began sending fresh truffles to France in 1852, and today the family is in its sixth generation. The Museo del Tartufo Urbani, the truffle museum, is free; its website gives it as open Friday to Sunday and on public holidays, from 10:00 to 13:30 and from 15:30 to 19:30, and in August also on Wednesdays and Thursdays for three weeks, without giving the year. On request it organises truffle hunts in the woods with the truffle hunters and their dogs
• The mummies of Ferentillo: the crypt of Santo Stefano, in the hamlet of Precetto, is the thirteenth century church above which the Cybo family built Santo Stefano at the end of the fifteenth century. From the sixteenth century the village buried its dead there, in the earth along the walls; with the Napoleonic edict of 1806, when the graves were opened, the bodies were found mummified on their own, because of the soil, rich in calcium and clay, and the cool air from the windows that were always open. The last burial was in 1871, and the museum with the display cases dates from 1992. There are 24 mummies of men, women and children, 10 heads and more than 270 skulls
• The opening hours of the mummies: the museum's website gives it as open every day, from 1 April to 30 September from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 19:00, in October and March until 18:00, from November to February until 17:00, with last entry a quarter of an hour before; the year is not given. The website does not publish the price: ask on 328 6864226
• San Pietro in Valle, above Ferentillo, was founded in the eighth century by the Lombard duke of Spoleto Faroald II, and has one of the most important cycles of Romanesque frescoes in Umbria and the Lombard altar signed "Ursus magester fecit", according to Wikipedia. The monastery is a private hotel; the church, damaged in 2016, was reopened on 11 April 2026 after restoration. The opening hours since the reopening cannot be found in writing, and you go up from Ferentillo by a narrow road: with a motorhome ask first, on the number of the mummies museum, which also manages the church
• The Marmore Falls are 165 metres high, in three drops, and they are man-made: the Romans diverted the Velino into the Nera to drain the plain of Rieti. The water is released at set times, and the operator's 2026 calendar said: in July on weekdays from 11:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 18:00, on Saturdays from 10:00 to 13:00, from 15:00 to 19:00 and from 21:00 to 22:00, on Sundays from 10:00 to 19:00 and from 21:00 to 22:00; in August every day from 10:00 to 19:00 and from 21:00 to 22:00, with the park open from 9:00 to 22:30; in June and September in the evening only on Saturdays. The operator warns that the times may change
• Tickets for the falls in 2026: 12 euros from 10 years old, 10 euros from 5 to 9 and over 70, free under 5; with two parents and at least three children under 18 the children pay 6 euros. On days without water the ticket costs 6 euros, and the shuttle between the two viewpoints 4 euros
• Why this route, and not just the upper part: in 2026 Sant'Eutizio is seen from outside, Campi is a building site, and the Val Castoriana alone takes a morning; Castelluccio and the Marcite are on the Norcia page. Going down the Nera, on the other hand, the valley has things that are open: Vallo di Nera, the museum in Scheggino, the mummies, San Pietro reopened in April, and in summer the falls in the evening, with the motorhome area next to the entrance
• The best time is summer, from June to September: the mummies are open every day until 19:00, the truffle museum in August also in the middle of the week, and in August the falls are turned on every evening

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