Piazza del Popolo is not only the center of Todi but also the center of an ideal: A balance of secular and religious buildings in transitional Romanesque-Gothic style that epitomizes the late medieval concept of a self-governing comune. On the south end of the piazza squats the brick-crenellated marble bulk of the Palazzo dei Priori, started in 1293 and finished in 1339 with the crowning touch of a bronze eagle, Todi's civic symbol. Some lunching Umbri (or Etruscans, depending on which version of the legend you choose) supposedly founded the town after an eagle nicked the picnic blanket out from under them and then dropped it on this hill. (Historically, though, the eagle as city symbol makes its first appearance in 1267.)
The paired Gothic structures running along the piazza's side are the battlemented Palazzo del Popolo (1213) and the Palazzo del Capitano (1290). They're linked in the middle by a grand medieval staircase onto which you might expect Errol Flynn to come swashbuckling down at any moment. Todi's Museo/Pinacoteca (tel. 075-894-4148), on the Palazzo del Popolo's fourth floor (elevator under the central arches), stars a modest lot of local 16th- and 17th-century pictures, plus an Incoronation of the Virgin (1507-11) by Lo Spagna that copies a Ghirlandaio work; Lo Spagna (nickname for the Spanish-born Giovanni di Pietro) seldom bothered coming up with anything original. Also here are a tiny Etrusco-Roman Museum and a 1592 canvas by local painter Sensini in which a gaggle of saints carry a scale model of 16th-century Todi on a plate. It's open Tuesday through Sunday (also Mon in Apr) as follows: April through August 10:30am to 1pm and 2:30 to 6pm; March and September 10:30am to 1pm and 2 to 7pm; and October through February 10:30am to 1pm and 2 to 4:30pm. Admission is 3.50€ ($4.55) adults, 2.50€ ($3.25) ages 15 to 25 and over 60, and 2€ ($2.60) children 6 to 14.
At the north end of the main piazza rises the Duomo's facade, which ran the stylistic gamut from Romanesque through the Renaissance but still came out blessedly simple in the end. Inside on the entrance wall is a Last Judgment frescoed by Ferraù di Faenza in 1596 that owes about 80% of its figures and design directly to Michelangelo's Last Judgment in Rome's Sistine Chapel. (Ferraù also lifted a few figures directly from Michelangelo's inspiration: Signorelli's version in Orvieto's Duomo.) In the right aisle, under the sprightly thin-columned Gothic arcade added in the 1300s, are a 1507 marble font, what's left of a Trinity (1525) by Lo Spagna (here he's cribbing from Masaccio), and an early-16th-century tempera altarpiece by Gianicola di Paolo.
Across the Piazza del Popolo, go around the right side of Palazzo dei Priori, and a right at Piazza Jacopone will take you to Todi's second major sight. The massive Franciscan shrine of San Fortunato was begun in 1291, but finishing touches dragged on to 1459. Rumor has it that the Tuderti, basking in medieval wealth, commissioned Lorenzo Maitani for a sculpture on the facade that would top even his own masterpiece on nearby Orvieto's Duomo. Jealous Orvietan authorities, not to be outdone by rival Todi, decided the most expedient way to prevent this was to have the artist killed. Cross the gardens to see the central doorway carvings, testament to the greatness the rest of the facade could have had. It's a late-Gothic tangle of religious, symbolic, and just plain naked figures clambering around vines or standing somberly under teensy carved Gothic canopies. The Annunciation statues flanking it are so pretty that several authorities have recently decided they must be Jacopo della Quercia works. Inside, the church is remarkably bright, as Italian churches go, and the whitewashed walls of the chapels sport many bits and pieces of what must once have been spectacular, colorful 14th- and 15th-century frescoes. The best of the surviving fragments are Masolino's 1452 Madonna and Child with Angels, the damaged Giottesque cycle, and the 1340 Banquet of Herod. The bones of Todi's main Franciscan mystic, Fra' Jacopone, lie in the crypt.
To the right of the church facade, a little path leads up to the town's public park, bordered by a low rambling wall and featuring a large round tower stump -- all that remains of Todi's 14th-century Rocca fortress. At the other end of this park starts the winding path that wends down to Todi's High Renaissance masterpiece, the Temple of Santa Maria della Consolazione. Like its cousins in Prato and Montepulciano, this 90-year effort of Renaissance architectural theory is a mathematically construed take on a classical temple, a domed structure on a Greek-cross plan. Construction began in 1508 under Cola di Caprarola, who may have had Bramante's help in the design. Before it was finished in 1607, its register of architects included Antonio Sangallo the Younger, Vignola, and Peruzzi, among others. It reposes in quiet, serious massiveness on a small, grassy plot. Although huge, it carries its mass compactly, with all lines curving inward and the domes and rounded transept apses keeping the structure cubically centered. The interior, however, is nothing special.
The walk back into town is along Viale della Consolazione, on the left as you head away from the temple (not the SS79 highway to the right). The road becomes Via Santa Maria in Camuccia as it passes the church of that name on the right. Stop in to see the wonderful 12th-century wood statue of the Madonna and Child in the third chapel on the left. At Via Roma, take a left, then an immediate right, just before the arch of Porta Marzia (a gate in the Etruscan walls, but this version is probably a medieval reconstruction). After the road curves to the left you'll see the best remnants of Roman-era Todi in the form of the Nicchioni, four deep travertine niches more than 10m (33 ft.) high that might have once formed the wall of an Augustan basilica. Pragmatic Tuderti recycled these "Big ol' Niches" as foundations for houses in the Middle Ages, and today they form the wall of a parking lot.
