Umbria

The region is named from the Umbri tribe, who settled in the region in the 6th century BC. Their language was the Umbrian, a kind of Latin. The modern region of Umbria, however, is essentially a different region of Italy than that bearing the same name in Roman times, which extended through most of what is now the northern Marche, to Ravenna, but excluded the west bank of the Tiber (for example Perugia) which was in Etruria, and the area around Norcia, which was in the Sabine territory.

Umbria is mostly hilly or mountainous. Its relief is dominated by the Apennines to the east and the Tiber valley basin.
The Tiber forms the approximate border with the Lazio, the river is mercurial and thus over the centuries very few towns have been situated on it: the Tiber itself thus is not a major factor in the history and human geography of Umbria.
The same cannot be said of the Tiber's three principal tributaries, each flowing in a generally southward course: they are responsible for much of the landscape of Umbria, the Chiascio, the Topino (cleaving the Apennines with passes that in Antiquity made the Via Flaminia possible and the main successor roads even today), and the Nera, with Terni and its valley, called the Valnerina.

In tourist literature one sometimes sees Umbria called il cuor verde d'Italia (the green heart of Italy). The phrase, taken from a poem by Giosuè Carducci — the subject was the Clitunno river, treasured since Antiquity as a beauty spot — is to a certain extent appropriate since the modern administrative region is the only one to have neither a coast nor a border with a foreign country, and, except for August and September, is notoriously green.

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