Monte Igino
Outside Porta Romana, a left up Via San Gerolamo leads to the base of the funivia, a ski-lift contraption that dangles you in a little blue cage as you ride up the side of Mt. Ingino (you can also walk up steep Via San Ubaldo from behind the Duomo, a vertical elevation of 300m/984 ft.). It lets you off just below the Basilica di Sant'Ubaldo. The current structure is a 16th-century incarnation over whose high altar the withered corpse of the local patron saint, Ubaldo, is preserved in a glass casket. Usually stored in the aisle are the three giant wooden ceri used during the annual Corso dei Ceri.
You can take a path leading from the sanctuary farther up the mountainside to the traces of the 12th-century rocca fortress, sitting on the pinnacle of the 908m (2,952-ft.) mountain. The virtually unspoiled wide Saonda Valley lies beyond Gubbio, but even more spectacular is the panorama that opens up east across the surprisingly wild Apennine Mountains and the snowy peaks of Monte Cucco National Park at the Marches' border in the distance. A few trails run off here if you want to do some backwoods exploring.
On May 15 each year, the mountainside is the staging point for the Corso dei Ceri, when teams race up carrying 15-foot-long wooden battering ram–like objects called ceri, or “candles.” (The race is part of festivities honoring St. Ubaldo, the bishop who allegedly smooth-talked Frederick Barbarossa out of sacking the town in the 1150s and was sainted for his efforts.)
Outside Porta Romana, a left up Via San Gerolamo leads to the base of the funivia, a ski-lift contraption that dangles you in a little blue cage as you ride up the side of Mt. Ingino (you can also walk up steep Via San Ubaldo from behind the Duomo, a vertical elevation of 300m/984 ft.). It lets you off just below the Basilica di Sant'Ubaldo. The current structure is a 16th-century incarnation over whose high altar the withered corpse of the local patron saint, Ubaldo, is preserved in a glass casket. Usually stored in the aisle are the three giant wooden ceri used during the annual Corso dei Ceri.
You can take a path leading from the sanctuary farther up the mountainside to the traces of the 12th-century rocca fortress, sitting on the pinnacle of the 908m (2,952-ft.) mountain. The virtually unspoiled wide Saonda Valley lies beyond Gubbio, but even more spectacular is the panorama that opens up east across the surprisingly wild Apennine Mountains and the snowy peaks of Monte Cucco National Park at the Marches' border in the distance. A few trails run off here if you want to do some backwoods exploring.
On May 15 each year, the mountainside is the staging point for the Corso dei Ceri, when teams race up carrying 15-foot-long wooden battering ram–like objects called ceri, or “candles.” (The race is part of festivities honoring St. Ubaldo, the bishop who allegedly smooth-talked Frederick Barbarossa out of sacking the town in the 1150s and was sainted for his efforts.)
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