Porta Sole is one of the ancient gates in the Etruscan walls of the city of Perugia, and it gives its name to an entire district. Unlike the other gates, its position does not mark a break between the old quarter and the more recently built structures. It can be admired in via Bontempi, at the top of the steps that descend to via del Roscetto. It was (and often still is) called the Arco dei Gigli, since that is the structure's true name. The double name is a common phenomenon among gates that give their name to a district. The Arco dei Gigli is clearly not the original Porta Sole, but it must have become so when the monumental gate located in nearby via Alessi was demolished. The same happened with Porta Santa Susanna and Porta Eburnea, although in those cases the earlier structures still exist. Compared both to the Arco dei Gigli and to the gate that once stood at the top of via Alessi, the ancient Porta Sole mentioned by Dante Alighieri in the Paradiso must have stood even higher, perhaps almost at the summit of the hill of the same name.
The district of Porta Sole lies at the highest point of the city of Perugia, and it can be reached from via Bontempi, from piazza Matteotti, from via Bartolo, and by the striking flight of steps that connects the latter and via Pinturicchio with via delle Prome. To reach the highest point of Perugia one must go to Piazza Michelotti and continue the climb along via dell'Aquila, pass beside the house where Sandro Penna was born, and so arrive at the maximum altitude, 493 metres above sea level. In the contest of the "Sassajola" the two districts of Porta Sole and Porta Sant'Angelo, called the "parte di sopra", fought against Porta Santa Susanna, Porta Eburnea and Porta San Pietro, called the "parte di sotto".
The district of Porta Sole is the piano nobile of Perugia. Near the top of the district one comes upon an incredible strip of woodland, a great many noble palaces, one of which houses the Biblioteca Comunale Augusta, and the church of San Severo with frescoes by Raphael. From the belvedere of Porta Sole, near the Augusta, one can admire a spectacular view of Borgo Sant'Angelo and Borgo Sant'Antonio.
Having exhausted the tourist directions, let us return to the Arco dei Gigli. It is one of the gates opened in the Etruscan walls. In the medieval period it underwent alterations that removed the stone decorations. The stretch of wall in which it is set joined via della Viola to via della Pazienza, cutting across the hill as far as via Bartolo, where it connected with the Arco di Augusto.
Even considering that the names of gates are commonly transferred over time to the nearest gates of common passage, the identification of the Arco dei Gigli with Porta Sole has never met with much success, so much so that the citizens of Perugia refer to the monumental opening by its own name and not by that of the district. The arch was transformed into a pointed one in the 13th century. The area was fortified in the 14th century, but the military citadel, known as the fortress of Porta Sole, was demolished after a popular uprising in 1376. The arch is also known as the arco dei Montesperelli, after the noble family that lived nearby. It has been recorded as Porta del Giglio (or dei Gigli) since 1535, the year in which Pope Paul III Farnese visited the city and had the emblem of his own family, the lily, carved at the top of the arch.
Looking closely at the arch, one can notice the interventions that have affected the masonry on which it rests, from the large original travertine blocks of the Etruscan circuit to the finer medieval bricks. Along the outer opening, to the right of the medieval arch, one glimpses the start of the original round arch.
The elements that make up the coat of arms of the district, a radiant anthropomorphic golden sun on a white field, are connected to the topography of that part of the city, which faces east. The Camaldolese convent stood in the district, and so the Sun, and less often the effigy of San Romualdo, appeared in the Matricole. The anthropomorphic sun probably recalls the presence in the district of the ancient Etruscan temple of the sun. Some sources indicate that the white may be related to flour: Porta Sole, extending north-east towards the area of the Tiber, included the present-day hamlets of Ponte San Giovanni, Ponte Felcino, Ponte Valleceppi and Ponte Pattoli, all characterised by the water-wheel mills fed by the river's waters.

San Romualdo was the founder of the hermitage of Camaldoli and the promoter of the Camaldolese Congregation, a reformed offshoot of the Benedictine Order.
Around the year 1000, exploring the wildest areas of the central Apennine ridge between Umbria and the Marche, he set out to reform the monastic institution. A member of a noble family, he was the son of Duke Sergio degli Onesti of Ravenna and of Traversara Traversari.
Romualdo, shaken by a violent episode of bloodshed in which his father and a cousin were involved, decided to become a monk and entered the ancient monastery of Sant'Apollinare in Classe. He later went to a hermit, Marino, in Venetian territory. There he met the abbot Guarino, one of the most important reforming monks of the 10th century; the latter convinced the young hermit, not yet thirty, to follow him to the abbey of San Michele di Cuxa (in Catalan, Sant Miquel de Cuixà), in Catalonia, where Romualdo stayed for ten years and completed his training.
Having returned to Italy, he withdrew to the territory of Monte Fumaiolo and founded, where the village of Verghereto now stands, a monastery in honour of San Michele Arcangelo. Because of his continual disciplinary and moral admonitions to the monks, he was driven out, together with his disciples, with bestial fury and blows. For a time he lived in a cave (now called the Grotta di Romualdo) on the Canale di Leme near Parenzo in Istria.
Around 1014 Romualdo founded a hermitage at Sitria, at the foot of Monte della Strega, between Monte Catria and Monte Cucco, near the hamlet of Isola Fossara, in the municipality of Scheggia (PG), and, shortly afterwards, he added to it a small monastery (a cenobium) with a church: the abbey of Santa Maria di Sitria. He remained in Umbrian territory for almost seven years, the last before going to Camaldoli. At Sitria he prayed and fasted, in silence, in the company of a few devout followers, whom he instructed.
He died at about seventy-five years of age, between 1023 and 1027, in the abbey of San Salvatore in Valdicastro, in the locality of Valdicastro near Fabriano, in solitude. He was beatified just five years after his death and was declared a Saint in 1595 by Pope Clement VIII. Since 1481 his body has lain in the church of San Biagio in Fabriano. He is co-titular of the Cathedral Basilica of Sansepolcro. The abbey of Santa Maria di Sitria stands in the nature park of Monte Cucco, in the area of Gubbio, near Isola Fossara, a hamlet of the municipality of Scheggia e Pascelupo in the province of Perugia, almost on the boundary with the Marche region.
The church of Sitria is a religious building consisting of a single nave separated, in the Benedictine manner, from the presbytery by an 8-step stone staircase. In the late Romanesque style, it has a stone ogival vault and an altar embellished with trilobate arches, supported by 13 small columns, most of which were stolen in the 1960s and later reconstructed. In the semi-dome of the apse there is a 17th-century fresco depicting a Crucifixion, by an unknown artist.
The crypt below, reached through an entrance at the centre of the staircase, is very elegant and has a vault supported by a granite column with a capital, almost certainly coming from a pre-existing Roman-era building.
The adjoining cenobium, which, though dilapidated, still existed a century ago, is now almost completely destroyed, apart from a hall with a stone vault (perhaps the old chapter house) and another of the same construction on the upper floor. The church, restored in an exemplary manner, can be visited by asking the owners, the Camaldolese Benedictine monks of Fonte Avellana, not far away, on which it depends. In the church's undercroft, beside the crypt, is the so-called prison of San Romualdo, the narrow cell in which the Saint was shut up for six months by his own monks.
Among others, san Pier Damiani, sant'Albertino da Montone, the blessed Tommaso da Costacciaro and Leone il Precense lived in the abbey.
The district of Porta Sole is home to some of the principal monuments of the city of Perugia: the
Biblioteca Augusta, the Cappella di San Severo, the Pozzo etrusco, the Palazzo di Sorbello house museum.

The Biblioteca Augusta has been located, since 1969, in Palazzo Conestabile della Staffa. The building was commissioned by Ottavio Ferretti in 1629 from the Jesuit architect Rutilio Clementi, who was also active in Perugia in the Chiesa del Gesù.
In 1849 the palace became the residence of Princess Maria Bonaparte Valentini, daughter of Napoleon's brother, who here created a celebrated salon, which became a meeting place for members of the city's liberal and patriotic movement and drew a great number of men of letters and scholars. Towards the end of the century the palace passed into the hands of the Conestabile della Staffa family. An integral part of the palace is the Chiesa di Sant'Angelo della Pace, also called the Oratorio dell'Angelo della Pace, which since 2009 has been the "Sala Binni" of the Biblioteca Augusta.
The Library was founded in 1582 from the donation that the humanist Prospero Podiani made to the Municipality of Perugia of his own private library, comprising about 10,000 volumes. In 1623 it was opened to the public, and as such it is one of the oldest public libraries.

The cappella di San Severo stands adjacent to the small church of the same name. Inside it is preserved the only surviving work of the many that Raphael produced for the city. It is a fresco depicting the Trinity with Saints Mauro, Placido, Benedetto the Martyr and Giovanni the Monk, commissioned from him in 1505 by Bishop Troilo Baglioni. The work, left unfinished because of Julius II's summons to Rome, was completed in 1521 by the now elderly Pietro Vannucci. To him are due the Saints Scolastica, Girolamo, Giovanni Evangelista, Gregorio Magno, Bonifacio and Marta depicted in the lower part of the work.

The Pozzo etrusco, also known as the Pozzo Sorbello after the name of the family that still owns the palace above it, is incorporated into the underground levels of the 17th-century Palazzo Bourbon-Sorbello, located at the eastern end of piazza Danti. It is the most monumental of the city's water infrastructures. Built in the Etruscan period with the dual function of well and cistern, it offers, together with the Etruscan walls, important evidence of the urban development that Perugia had reached in the Etruscan age. Made of the same travertine as the city walls, it is dug into the so-called "tassello mandorlato", a conglomerate typical of the city. It has a cylindrical shaft more than 30 metres deep, with a maximum diameter of 5.60 metres, which narrows into a funnel in the lower section. It has a covering formed by two trusses, each made up of four large travertine blocks, two horizontal and two oblique, supported by a central keystone. This system, which has close technical affinities with the cistern in via Caporali situated at the opposite end of the city, served to support a paving of travertine slabs in which the mouth for drawing water was presumably cut. On the blocks of the facing, alphabetic signs can be read that relate to those of the city walls. On the walls of the travertine lining an opening can be seen, probably the well's feed mouth, from which it received water from the underground water table. The homogeneity of material and construction technique between the well, the cistern in via Caporali and the walls makes it possible to suppose that the well was built as a public infrastructure and presumably placed along the main road. The same covering is attested in an Etruscan cistern explored, again in Perugia, in via Caporali. The work is dated to the 3rd century BC, and its calculated maximum capacity amounts to 424,000 litres, making it the largest of the city's various wells and cisterns, which were also in use until the construction of the first public aqueduct in the 13th century.
It was the subject of speleo-archaeological exploration for the first time in 1965, down to a depth of 37 m below ground level, with dimensions of up to 12 m, a diameter of 5.60 m down to the narrowing to 3 m. In 1996 it was emptied of the water it contained in order to be surveyed and photographed.

Palazzo Sorbello was built at the end of the sixteenth century. It still belongs to the Marchesi Ranieri Bourbon di Sorbello, who have given it a museum function.
The palace was built, according to the architectural forms typical of the 16th and 17th centuries, at the wish of the Montemelini, one of the oldest and most influential houses of Perugia. Its prestigious position, adjacent to the city's main square, piazza IV Novembre, to the Palazzo dei Priori and to the cathedral, made it attractive as a principal residence. The future king Charles III of Spain, son of Philip V of Bourbon and Elisabeth Farnese, also stayed there before taking possession of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.
In 1780 the penultimate regent of Sorbello, Uguccione III (1748-1805), bought the building. In front of the residence the Pozzo etrusco (also called Sorbello) is visible: on the wrought-iron grate of the well-head one can notice the coat of arms of the house. The palace is built on three floors, but only the ground floor and the piano nobile still preserve the frescoed vaults. The entrance hall shows a rare example of external paving in wooden setts, made in order to soften the din of the wheels of the carriages entering and leaving.
The picture gallery, well stocked with works by important artists, holds the Annunciazione Ranieri, the only Annunciation with this subject painted by Perugino, which, given its small size, the marquis once always carried with him in a small case. The collection includes fine porcelain, eighteenth-century chandeliers, valuable furnishings and a priceless library with incunabula and rare texts, some published by Aldus Manutius, together with the original editions of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie and of Vittorio Alfieri's Tragedie.
The house museum, moreover, brings to visitors' attention the interesting collection of more than 500 embroideries and laces in punto umbro, or Sorbello stitch, commissioned by the American Romeyne Robert Ranieri. This lady, passionate about art and literature, founded at the villa of the Pischiello, in the surroundings of Passignano sul Trasimeno, a workshop school in which the Umbrian cloth, produced at Città di Castello, was worked and embellished.

Antonio Senatore is a writer and art critic. He has collaborated with magazines and museum institutions both in Italy and abroad. He currently works within the network of Perugia's civic museums and teaches History of Design at the NID, Nuovo Istituto di Design.