Perugia buried a quarter, and you walk through it

Between 1540¹ and 1543¹ the Rocca Paolina buried an entire medieval quarter of Perugia, and today you walk through those streets for free on the escalators that link the lower car parks to the old town.

A fortress built on top of a neighborhood

Pope Paul III had the Rocca Paolina raised between 1540¹ and 1543¹ to a design by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, and the construction did not clear the ground first: it enclosed the houses of the Baglioni family, the Santa Giuliana district and the church of Santa Maria dei Servi inside its own mass.

The result is a quarter with a roof over it. Streets, doorways, window openings and vaulted rooms are still there, underneath, in the dark, at the scale they were built.

Entry costs nothing. Nobody takes a ticket, because the space is a public thoroughfare as much as a monument.

The escalators run from 6:15 am to 2:00 am

The escalators through the Rocca operate from 6:15 am until 2:00 am (06:15 to 02:00 on Italian signs), and Porta Marzia opens from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm in 2026.

That timetable is the point of the place. The connection between the Piazza Partigiani car park and the historic center runs straight through the fortress, so most people who cross the buried quarter are on their way to work or to dinner, not on a visit.

Porta Marzia itself is Etruscan, 3rd century BC, and Sangallo dismantled and remounted it into the front of his fortress. A gate from the Etruscan city is now a decorative panel on a papal fortress.

The other way up: 3,020 meters of MiniMetro

The MiniMetro covers 3,020² meters from the Pian di Massiano car park to Pincetto in the old town, climbing 160.6² meters with a maximum gradient of 11.5%² and 5 intermediate stops.

Cars carry 50 people and pass every 2 and a half minutes, up to 3,065² people an hour at 25 km/h. Weekday service runs from 7:00 am with a last departure at 9:05 pm; on Sundays and public holidays it runs from 9:00 am to a last departure at 8:45 pm (2026).

The single fare is not published on the operator's page, and the tariff page returns an error, so this page cannot quote you a price. Buy at the machine and expect a standard urban ticket.

Perugia is a hill, and this is how the hill is solved

Perugia's old town sits 160.6² meters above the Pian di Massiano car park, which is why a city this size runs an automated metro line and a fortress full of escalators. Both are transport, and both happen to be monuments.

Plan your day around the vertical rather than the horizontal. The distance from Pian di Massiano to Pincetto is 3,020² meters on the MiniMetro and a serious climb on foot, and the same is true of every approach from below.

If you arrive by car, choose your car park by which mechanical route it feeds, because the two systems do not connect to each other and switching costs you the climb you were avoiding.

The Etruscan Arch, and a Roman correction

The Arco Etrusco stands 11 meters high in travertine blocks, built in the 3rd century BC as a gate in the Etruscan walls, and it carries the inscription Augusta Perusia cut roughly two centuries later.

That inscription is a piece of political editing. Augustus restored the city after the Bellum Perusinum of 41 to 40 BC left it wrecked, and his name went on the Etruscan gate.

The Comune does not publish the total length of the Etruscan circuit or the number of its gates, so this page does not count them. For the well underneath the same city, see two staircases that never meet.

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