Pieve del Vescovo

Fortified building with an imposing structure, it stands on a hill above the valley of the Caina stream. Throughout its almost thousand-year history, the site has fulfilled religious, military and residential functions, each of which has left traces stratified in its architecture and in its decorative apparatus.

The first archival sources date back to 1206, when a papal bull of Innocenzo III attests the Plebs Sancti Johannis, the Pieve dedicated to San Giovanni, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Perugia.

In 1560, Cardinal Fulvio I Della Corgna (nephew of Pope Julius III) transformed the castle into a late Renaissance residence, commissioning Mannerist artists with the pictorial and plastic decoration of the halls and the castle's court of honor. Gardens with monumental access stairs, the fish pond, the caves with water games according to the taste of the time were created.

The function of summer residence of the Perugian Bishops, who used to move there the day before the feast of San Giovanni, continued until the last century (1923). During the XX century, the complex experienced a period of degradation, also following the World War II in which it became the base of the German army.

Since 1999, the Diocese has entrusted it to the Scuola Edile of Perugia (today CESF), which made it its educational site and oversaw its restoration. Finally reopened, the Castle of Pieve del Vescovo can be used upon reservation by contacting the CESF.