Agriturismo Le Torri di Porsenna
Le Torri di Porsenna dall'alto al tramonto: l'ex convento, la SPA con la piscina coperta, il gazebo nel parco e la Val di Chiana fino alle montagne

Seasons, places and time well spent

L'Almanacco

Guides, itineraries and notes on Lake Trasimeno, the Val di Chiana and the villages straddling Umbria and Tuscany, written with the people who live here all year.

2 articles
A brick stepped street descending between houses in Perugia at dusk, with the city rooftops and hills beyond
LatestPlaces10 min read

Things to Do in Umbria, Italy: A Local's Itinerary

Perugia, Assisi and Orvieto are under an hour away; the rest of Umbria is a separate trip. Honest driving times from someone on the Tuscan border.

Why L'Almanacco exists

The same advice we give over breakfast

For years we gave our guests the same advice over a coffee. Which island is worth the ferry, which village to go back to, when to drive to Cortona, which road to take in the afternoon for the best light.

At some point we wrote it down. It is not a list of the usual sights, and it is not a guide assembled from information found elsewhere: these are roads we drive every week and towns where we do the shopping.

There is one rule. We write only about what we actually know: when we give advice it is our own experience, when we publish an opening time or a ferry we check it against the official source, and when there is no certainty we change the sentence rather than invent one.

We publish it in five languages because the people who sleep here come from Italy, but also from Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain.

The language changes. The way we tell it does not.
Who writes L'AlmanaccoThe story of the house
Bruno e Marisella

Who writes L'Almanacco

Bruno e Marisella Batinti

Owners and hosts of Le Torri di Porsenna

Bruno and Marisella Batinti own Le Torri di Porsenna, the abbey they found derelict in 2014 and brought back as a charme agriturismo on the Umbria-Tuscany border. They live here all year: the roads, villages and seasons L'Almanacco writes about are the ones they drive every week.

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