Monteluco, just 8 km from the centre of Spoleto, with its Sacred Wood and the Convent of St. Francis, is an exciting place for bikers, trekkers and horse riders.
The lush vegetation, the natural environment of extraordinary beauty, and the dense network of trails and single tracks make it an ideal place for lovers of these excursions, as it offers a wide variety of routes.
The itinerary can be more or less challenging, both in terms of altitude and the presence of technical descents and challenging passages that require a great deal of attention. Magnificent for its views and unique features, the Monteluco - le Aie - le Porelle - Patrico route is particularly suitable for horse riding.
The Spoletina Mountain is criss-crossed by numerous walking trails of scenic, environmental and historical-artistic interest, which largely follow the historic roads of Spoleto.
The Spoletina Mountains embody thousands of years of religious history. Its geographical features, from its rich forest cover to the widespread presence of water and the very nature of the soil, have made it a privileged place for prayer and meditation. Made inviolable in pagan times by the Lex Spoletina, the Monteluco Forest became the site of one of the largest hermit movements of the time, starting in the 5th century.
The Abbey of San Giuliano flourished in Monteluco, a reference point for the vast hermit colony, which was transformed into a congregation in 1547 and subsequently began an inexorable process of secularisation.
The spiritual story of St. Francis found a similar fulfilment in these places. In the tradition of the Order, it was Francis himself who founded a primitive cenacle on Monteluco in 1218, the second in order of time after the urban one of Sant'Apollinare.
The Spoletina Mountain, of which Monteluco forms the northern tip, is a limestone ridge stretching from north to south, covering approximately 7,000 hectares, between the Flaminia state road and the Nera Valley. Small villages (Mustaiole, Sustrico, Acquaiura, Torrecola, Belvedere, Ancaiano, Le Cese, the ruins of Sensati, Vallocchia, Borgiano) are arranged in a ring around the massif; further inland and at higher altitudes are Monteluco, Le Porelle, Le Aie and Patrico.
The relief culminates at 1,337 metres above sea level at Monte Fionchi. It is carved by deep valleys with steep wooded slopes and sheer rock faces, and features some typical karst phenomena such as sinkholes, plains, small swallow holes and caves. Surface water circulation is therefore rather scarce, but where the water encounters impermeable rocks, it comes to the surface, forming springs and ditches such as Valcieca, Vallecchia and l'Intiera, carving out its course, smoothing out “potholes” and jumping into beautiful waterfalls.
The area is mostly covered by deciduous and evergreen sclerophyllous forests: formations of black hornbeam and manna ash, downy oak woods, chestnut woods, a few clusters of beech trees at higher altitudes, Aleppo pine forests and holm oak woods. Among the latter, the centuries-old Monteluco forest stands out. At higher altitudes, from 1,000 metres upwards, mountain pastures develop. The fauna of the Spoleto Mountains is rich and diverse, with at least 134 species of vertebrates present: 10 amphibians, 10 reptiles, 89 nesting and/or wintering birds and 25 mammals. Thirty-seven per cent of these animals are considered to be of great scientific and conservation value because they are rare and/or threatened, often at national and European level; among the mammals are the porcupine, the wolf and the wildcat.
The importance of the environmental characteristics of Monteluco and the entire Spoleto Mountain Range is confirmed, among other things, by the designation of Monteluco di Spoleto as a “Site of Community Importance” (SCI) and the Bassa Valnerina: Monte Fionchi - Cascata delle Marmore as a “Special Protection Area” (SPA).