Why American Travelers Are Looking Beyond Tuscany: Umbria Is the New Tuscany of Italy’s Slow Travel
- Barbara Iandolo
- Aug 19
- 10 min read
As Italy welcomes more American travelers than ever, a quieter transformation is taking place. Beyond the famous cities and celebrated Tuscan landscapes, another Italy is beginning to attract those who want to stay longer, travel slower and experience the country differently.
For generations of American travelers, the dream of Italy has followed a familiar geography.
Rome first. Then Florence. Perhaps Venice. And somewhere between them, a few precious days among the vineyards and cypress-lined roads of Tuscany.
It is a beautiful journey, and there are good reasons why it has become a classic.
But Italy is changing. Or, perhaps more accurately, the way people want to experience Italy is changing.
After years in which travel was often about seeing as much as possible in the shortest possible time, another idea of vacation is beginning to emerge.
Stay longer. Move less.
Rent a house instead of changing hotels. Go to the local market.
Discover places whose names you didn't already know before leaving home.
And, occasionally, have absolutely nothing planned for the afternoon.
For American travelers in particular, this different way of experiencing Italy is becoming increasingly relevant.
And one of the places quietly benefiting from that change is Umbria.
America's love affair with Italy is far from over
If anything, Americans seem to be falling even more in love with Italy.
Official Italian tourism figures confirm just how important the United States has become.
According to ENIT, Italy's National Tourism Agency, the United States was among the country's leading international tourism markets in 2025.
Final figures show around 2.1 million tourist arrivals by air from major US airports to Italian destinations during 2025. American travelers are interesting for another reason, too.
They don't generally cross the Atlantic for a weekend.
ENIT reports an average stay of 8.6 nights, while 88% of US arrivals are travelling for leisure. American visitors also tend to plan ahead, booking their journeys an average of more than three months before departure.
Something else stands out: around 27% travel in groups of three to five people.
These are travelers with time to explore.
And increasingly, exploration doesn't necessarily mean visiting more places.
Sometimes it means experiencing fewer places better.
When everybody dreams of the same Italy
Italy's success creates an interesting paradox.
The places everyone dreams about are increasingly the places everyone visits.
Rome will always be Rome. Florence will always be extraordinary.
Venice deserves to be seen at least once.
And Tuscany's reputation is hardly accidental.
But their enormous popularity has also encouraged experienced travelers to start looking slightly beyond the obvious. Not necessarily for an undiscovered Italy — in a country with thousands of years of history, almost nowhere is truly undiscovered — but for an Italy where everyday life remains more visible.
A town where people still know each other.
A restaurant where lunch isn't designed around a sightseeing timetable.
A landscape where you can drive for twenty minutes without feeling that every beautiful view has already become a famous Instagram location.
This search for somewhere quieter is becoming part of a broader change in European travel.
Even international travel publications increasingly discuss alternatives to Italy's busiest destinations and ways of experiencing the country away from its most crowded places.
And that brings us to an interesting question.
What if the Italy many travelers are searching for isn't somewhere new at all?
What if it has been sitting quietly between Rome and Florence all along?
Umbria: Italy's green heart begins to be noticed
Umbria occupies an unusual place in the imagination of international travelers.
It is right in the middle of Italy.
Yet many first-time visitors barely know it exists.
Look at a map and its position is almost surprising.
Rome lies to the south.
Florence to the north.
Tuscany immediately to the west.
And between them is a region of hills, olive groves, vineyards, forests, lakes and medieval towns.
Umbria.
It is the only region of peninsular Italy without either a coastline or an international border.
Perhaps this geographical position has helped preserve something distinctive.
There is no Mediterranean beach tourism here.
There is no city on the scale of Rome or Florence.
Instead, Umbria's identity is spread across places such as Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Orvieto, Gubbio, Spoleto, dozens of smaller villages and the countryside connecting them.
For years, that relative anonymity was sometimes perceived as a disadvantage.
Today, it may be becoming one of Umbria's greatest strengths.
The numbers are beginning to tell the story
This isn't simply an impression.
Something measurable is happening.
Official figures from the Regione Umbria show that the region recorded more than 3 million tourist arrivals and almost 8 million overnight stays in 2025.
Compared with 2024, total arrivals increased by 9.1%.
But the most revealing number concerns international visitors.
Foreign tourist arrivals increased by 23.5% in just one year.
Go back to 2022 and the change becomes even more striking: international arrivals in Umbria have risen by more than 70%.
And Americans aren't sitting on the sidelines of this transformation.
During the first five months of 2025, the United States was the leading foreign market for arrivals in Umbria, alongside strong demand from Germany and Poland.
In other words, the idea of Americans beginning to look beyond Italy's most famous destinations is no longer merely anecdotal.
You can see it in the numbers.
Perhaps Tuscany doesn't need an alternative
Whenever Umbria begins to attract international attention, one comparison inevitably appears.
Umbria is the new Tuscany.
It's catchy. But it's also slightly unfair to both regions.
Umbria doesn't need to become Tuscany.
And travelers don't need to choose one against the other.
The more interesting possibility is to experience both.
This becomes particularly apparent around Lake Trasimeno, on the western side of Umbria.
Here, the regional border almost loses its meaning.
Cortona and Tuscany are nearby.
Perugia and the Umbrian countryside lie in the other direction.
A traveler can have breakfast overlooking an Umbrian landscape, spend the day exploring Tuscany and return home in the evening without ever feeling that they have undertaken some enormous expedition.
The border is administrative.
The landscape simply continues.
And that changes the logic of an Italian vacation.
The old vacation: seven cities in ten days
There is a particular style of European vacation familiar to anyone who has crossed the Atlantic.
You arrive in Rome.
Two nights.
Train to Florence.
Two nights.
Rent a car.
Tuscany.
Return the car.
Train somewhere else.
Another hotel.
Another check-in.
Another breakfast room.
Another suitcase opened and closed.
By the end of the trip, you have seen extraordinary things.
You may also need a vacation from your vacation.
For first-time visitors, there can be genuine pleasure in this kind of journey.
But returning travelers — and increasingly first-time visitors too — are discovering another possibility.
Choose a region rather than a checklist.
Stay.
Let one place become familiar.
And explore outward from there.
The return of slow travel
“Slow travel” can sound like another fashionable expression invented by the tourism industry.
In reality, the idea is remarkably simple.
Travel less.
Experience more.
Instead of measuring a vacation by the number of destinations visited, measure it by the depth of the experience.
Spend enough time somewhere to recognize the road home.
Go back to the same café twice.
Shop at a local market without knowing exactly what you're going to cook.
Have lunch somewhere because you happened to drive past it.
Change your plans because the weather is beautiful.
Or because it isn't.
Spend an afternoon reading.
Travel slowly enough for accidents to become part of the itinerary.
In Italy, this approach feels particularly natural.
Because Italian life itself has always understood something that modern tourism occasionally forgets:
time can be part of the experience.
Why a house changes the way you travel
This also helps explain another shift taking place in Italian tourism.
The appeal of apartments, country houses, agriturismi and private villas has grown alongside the desire for more independent travel.
The statistics in Umbria are revealing.
In 2025, more than half of all tourist nights in the region were spent in non-hotel accommodation.
International guests staying in this type of accommodation remained for an average of 4.29 nights, considerably longer than the average hotel stay.
That distinction matters.
A hotel encourages you to go out and see the destination.
A house can become part of the destination itself.
There is somewhere to come home to.
Someone makes coffee.
Someone else goes for a swim.
Lunch doesn't have to be booked.
Children don't have to sit quietly in a restaurant every evening.
Friends disappear for the afternoon and meet again at sunset.
You aren't simply sleeping somewhere.
For a short while, you are living somewhere.
The Italian villa vacation is changing too
The traditional image of an Italian villa vacation was once associated with a certain kind of luxury.
Grandeur.
Formal gardens.
Perhaps a chauffeur waiting outside.
Today, luxury can mean something rather different.
Privacy.
Space.
Silence.
A swimming pool that belongs only to your group.
A kitchen.
A landscape.
Enough bedrooms for everyone to be together without being together every minute.
And above all, time.
The freedom to decide at ten in the morning that nobody actually wants to go anywhere today.
For groups of friends and families travelling from the United States, that freedom has particular value.
Crossing the Atlantic is a significant journey.
Once you arrive, perhaps the goal doesn't have to be to keep moving.
Lake Trasimeno: another side of the Italian lake experience
Italy's lakes have become international icons.
Como.
Garda.
Maggiore.
But Central Italy has its own lake landscape.
Lake Trasimeno lies in Umbria, close to Tuscany, surrounded by hills, small towns, olive groves and countryside.
Its character is very different from the dramatic Alpine lakes of northern Italy.
Here the landscape is softer.
More rural.
More intimately connected with the hill towns and agricultural traditions of Central Italy.
There are islands in the lake.
Small beaches.
Fishing traditions.
Walking and cycling routes.
And towns such as Castiglione del Lago, Passignano sul Trasimeno, Tuoro and Panicale nearby.
But perhaps Trasimeno's greatest attraction isn't a particular monument or activity.
It is its position.
Somewhere between Rome and Florence
Look again at the map of Italy.
This time don't look at the famous names.
Look at the space between them.
For travelers staying around Lake Trasimeno, some of Central Italy's most fascinating places become possible day trips rather than separate vacations.
There is Umbria.
There is Tuscany.
There are medieval villages and Renaissance cities.
There are wineries and olive producers.
There are places famous throughout the world and places whose names you may only learn after arriving.
And then, at the end of the day, you return to the same house.
This is perhaps one of the quiet secrets of choosing a base in Central Italy.
You can travel widely without constantly travelling.
A day without an itinerary
Imagine one day of an Italian vacation with nothing booked.
Breakfast lasts longer than expected.
Someone suggests driving into Tuscany.
Someone else wants to stay by the pool.
Nobody can quite decide.
Eventually you drive to a nearby village.
There is a market.
Lunch takes two hours.
On the way back you see a sign for a winery.
Plans change again.
By late afternoon everyone is back.
The sun begins to drop.
Dinner will be later.
Nobody is particularly concerned about what time.
Nothing extraordinary has happened.
No world-famous monument has been visited.
And yet this may become the day everyone talks about when they return home.
That is slow travel.
Not doing less for the sake of doing less.
Leaving enough space for a place to surprise you.
An Italy beyond the algorithm
There is another curious consequence of modern travel.
We have access to more information than any generation of travelers before us.
And yet that information can lead everyone to exactly the same places.
The same viewpoint.
The same restaurant.
The same village.
The same photograph.
Umbria offers an opportunity to rediscover a little uncertainty.
You can certainly research Assisi or Perugia before arriving.
But you can also encounter a village whose name wasn't in your guide.
Take the road you hadn't planned to take.
Stop because something looks beautiful.
Some of Italy's most memorable experiences have never needed a ranking.
And what about Villa Primaluce?
For us, this changing way of travelling feels very familiar.
Villa Primaluce sits in the countryside of the Lake Trasimeno area, in exactly that landscape where Umbria begins to look towards Tuscany.
Over the years, we have watched guests arrive with ambitious itineraries.
Rome.
Florence.
Assisi.
Cortona.
Wine tours.
Restaurants.
Villages.
And then something interesting happens.
A few days into the vacation, plans begin to disappear.
An excursion is postponed.
Lunch becomes longer.
Someone decides to stay at the villa.
The swimming pool becomes more tempting than another museum.
The group gathers again in the evening.
This isn't a failure to see Italy.
Quite the opposite.
It is often the moment when people begin to experience Italy rather than simply visit it.
A quieter Italy, but not a hidden one
Calling Umbria a “hidden gem” is tempting.
But perhaps the phrase no longer quite fits.
Umbria isn't hidden.
Assisi has welcomed pilgrims for centuries.
Perugia is an important historic city.
Orvieto's cathedral is one of Italy's great works of architecture.
Lake Trasimeno has been part of European history since Hannibal defeated the Roman army here more than two thousand years ago.
This isn't undiscovered Italy.
It is simply an Italy that international mass tourism has not defined as completely as some of its neighbours.
And perhaps that distinction is precisely what modern travelers are beginning to appreciate.
The future of Italian travel may be slower
Italy certainly isn't becoming less popular.
Quite the opposite.
ENIT reported that international travelers generated more than 255 million overnight stays in Italy during the first eleven months of 2025, while Americans remain one of the country's most important international visitor markets.
For the first half of 2026, ENIT data indicated further growth in expected US arrivals.
So the question isn't whether people will continue coming to Italy.
They will.
The more interesting question is:
How will they choose to experience it?
Perhaps the next evolution of Italian tourism isn't about discovering another famous destination.
Perhaps it is about changing the pace.
One house instead of four hotels.
One region instead of six cities.
A week instead of two nights.
A local road instead of another train.
Umbria instead of automatically following everyone else.
Or even better:
Umbria and Tuscany, without feeling the need to choose between them.
Italy is still full of room for discovery
The great pleasure of Italy is that there is never really a final itinerary.
There is always another road.
Another village.
Another landscape.
Another reason to return.
For American travelers beginning to look beyond the traditional route, Central Italy offers something increasingly precious: the possibility of experiencing extraordinary places without making every day extraordinary.
Some days can simply be beautiful.
Perhaps that is why Umbria's moment feels different.
It isn't about replacing Tuscany.
It isn't about finding the “next” destination before everybody else does.
It is about rediscovering an older idea of travel.
Arrive.
Unpack.
Look around.
Stay awhile.
And let Italy come to you.
Villa Primaluce Trasimeno lake view
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