The city of Amelia sits on a defensive rocky spur, and is almost entirely surrounded by ancient Cyclopean walls believed to date from the 7th and the 4th centuries BC).

Ameria occupied a strategic location in the Second Latin War (340–338 BC), lying on a loop of the Via Cassia called the Via Amerina, which started at Falerii and crossed the Tiber at Castellum Amerinum (probably Orte).

Cicero's speech in defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus (the pro Roscio Amerino) describes Ameria as a flourishing place in 80 BC, with a fertile territory extending to the Tiber.

During the barbaric invasions, the city was besieged and badly damaged by the Goths, but was rebuilt by the time the Lombards descended from the north and asserted control over most of what is now Umbria.

The Lombards, in turn, were forced out by the Byzantines, and thereafter, throughout the Middle Ages, and up to the time of Italian unification in 1860, Amelia stayed more or less under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church within the Papal States.

During the period when the Lombards remained in control of the Via Flaminia, Amelia was an important stop on a vital alternative route, the so-called Byzantine Way, which connected Rome to the exarchate in Ravenna.

The Romans left other traces of their occupation, including a complex of ten underground cisterns, built in the first century AD, which collected rainwater to feed the city's water supply.

A larger-than-life gilt bronze statue of Germanicus was unearthed just outside the Porta Romana in 1963 and is now a featured object of the city's Museo Civico Archeologico.

Amelia Cathedral was built originally in 872, and totally rebuilt in Baroque style after a fire in 1629: its façade is of pink cotto and was completed only in the nineteenth century.

The interior has works by Federico Zuccari, Lavinia Fontana, Agostino di Duccio, an organ from 1600, and a Turkish banner captured at Lepanto.

Fornole is home to the Romanesque church of San Silvestro, with an interesting fresco cycle showing the saint freeing the town from the grasp of a dragon.