A hilltop town above the Upper Tiber
On paper, Montone is a comune in the Province of Perugia. Its statute names two frazioni, Carpini and the capoluogo where the town hall and the historic centre stand.
Carlo Fortebracci and the Santa Spina
The town remembers him through its most cherished tradition. According to the Comune, in 1473 Count Carlo received a thorn from the crown of Christ from the archpriest of Tugnano and gave it to the people of Montone, and a finely chiselled silver reliquary was commissioned for it in 1635.
The relic is venerated on Easter Monday and again in August, a second viewing that the Comune says was added after 1638 because so many pilgrims were coming. The Donazione della Santa Spina is staged as a historical pageant, with a procession led by a Count Carlo figure, drummers, archery, sword-fighting displays and a solemn Mass in the Collegiata. It is worship first and spectacle second, so treat it as the town's own celebration and keep a respectful distance during the rite.
San Francesco: church, convent and museum
A newer layer is the Fortebracci multimedia path, opened on 22 August 2024 and curated by the historian Marcello Simonetta. It draws on the theatrical scenes of the Santa Spina pageant and runs through four rooms: two for Braccio, divided by the Battle of Sant'Egidio in 1416, and two for Carlo, ending with his expulsion from Montone and the destruction of Braccio's fortress in 1478. An extra room shows animated historical photographs, including the archive of the journalist Paolo Ippoliti.
Two works to seek out
The other is a medieval wooden Deposition. The Pinacoteca keeps four figures from a group of about 1260 to 1270, made by a workshop of the Upper Tiber Valley. One is Joseph of Arimathea, whose carved head was found in 1956 by Francesco Santi in a woodshed beside the town's Romanesque parish church and was later reunited with the headless figure. The catalogue dates the head to about 1230 to 1260.
Festivals and the Upper Tiber table
The film festival is the most cosmopolitan of them. It turns the historic centre into an open-air cinema, and its organisers call it a community festival that has grown up together with the town.
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