Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman municipia, encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours.  But of this there is no certainty to build upon.  All that can be affirmed with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno grew in power and became the chief commune of this part of Umbria.  It was famous during the last centuries of struggle between the Italian burghers and their native despots, for peculiar ferocity in civil strife.  Some of the bloodiest pages in mediaeval Italian history are those which relate the vicissitudes of the Trinci family, the exhaustion of Foligno by internal discord, and its final submission to the Papal power.  Since railways have been carried from Rome through Narni and Spoleto to Ancona and Perugia, Foligno has gained considerably in commercial and military status.  It is the point of intersection for three lines; the Italian government has made it a great cavalry depot, and there are signs of reviving traffic in its decayed streets.  Whether the presence of a large garrison has already modified the population, or whether we may ascribe something to the absence of Roman municipal institutions in the far past, and to the savagery of the mediaeval period, it is difficult to say.  Yet the impression left by Foligno upon the mind is different from that of Assisi, Spello, and Montefalco, which are distinguished for a certain grace and gentleness in their inhabitants.

My window in the city wall looks southward across the plain to Spoleto, with Montefalco perched aloft upon the right, and Trevi on its mountain-bracket to the left.  From the topmost peaks of the Sabine Apennines, gradual tender sloping lines descend to find their quiet in the valley of Clitumnus.  The space between me and that distance is infinitely rich with every sort of greenery, dotted here and there with towers and relics of baronial houses.  The little town is in commotion; for the working men of Foligno and its neighbourhood have resolved to spend their earnings on a splendid festa—­horse-races, and two nights of fireworks.  The acacias and paulownias on the ramparts are in full bloom of creamy white and lilac.  In the glare of Bengal lights these trees, with all their pendulous blossoms, surpassed the most fantastic of artificial decorations.  The rockets sent aloft into the sky amid that solemn Umbrian landscape were nowise out of harmony with nature.  I never sympathised with critics who resent the intrusion of fireworks upon scenes of natural beauty.  The Giessbach, lighted up at so much per head on stated evenings, with a band playing and a crowd of cockneys staring, presents perhaps an incongruous spectacle.  But where, as here at Foligno, a whole city has made itself a festival, where there are multitudes of citizens and soldiers and country-people slowly moving and gravely admiring, with the decency and order characteristic of an Italian crowd, I have nothing but a sense of satisfaction.