The region is characterized by hills, mountains, valleys and historical towns such as the university centre of Perugia, Assisi (a World Heritage Site associated with St. Francis of Assisi), Terni, Norcia, Città di Castello, Gubbio, Spoleto, Orvieto, Todi, Castiglione del Lago, Narni, Amelia, Spello and other small cities.

The Topino, cleaving the Apennines with passes that the Via Flaminia and successor roads follow, makes a sharp turn at Foligno to flow NW for a few kilometres before joining the Chiascio below Bettona.

The Umbri, unlike the Etruscans, with few exceptions did not live in an urban society, but occupied small dwellings located in the Apennines.

The town of Gubbio houses today the longest and most important document of any of the Osco-Umbrian group of languages, the Iguvine Tablets, written in Umbrian at the turn of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.

[11] Allied Umbrians and Etruscans had to return home and defend each of their territories against simultaneous Roman attacks, leaving the Samnites without their help at Sentinum.

[11] During Hannibal's invasion during the second Punic war, the battle of Lake Trasimene was fought inside the borders of today's Umbria,[11] but the local people did not aid the invader.

In Pliny the Elder's time, 49 independent communities still existed in Umbria, and the abundance of inscriptions and the high proportion of recruits in the imperial army attest to its population.

Roman Umbria extended through most of what is now the northern Marche to Ravenna, but excluded the west bank of the Tiber, which belonged to Etruria.

[12] After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Ostrogoths and Byzantines struggled for supremacy in the region, and the decisive battle of the war between these two peoples took place near modern Gualdo Tadino.

[13] Soon after the end of the Gothic war, the Lombards invaded Italy and founded the duchy of Spoleto, covering much of today's southern Umbria, but the Byzantine were able to keep in the region a corridor along the Via Flaminia linking Rome with the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis.

[14] These cities were frequently at war with each other, often in a context of more general conflicts, either between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire or between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

[20] During WWII, the industrial centers of the region like Terni and Foligno were heavily bombed and in 1944 became a battlefield between the allied forces and the Germans retreating towards the Gothic Line.

In Terni there are also many multinational companies in the fields of chemistry, hydroelectric power, renewable sources of energy, and textiles (Alcantara, Cashmere).

Regional varietals include the white Orvieto, which draws agri-tourists to the vineyards in the area surrounding the medieval town of the same name.

[23] The food industry in Umbria produces processed pork-meats, confectionery, pasta and the traditional products of Valnerina in preserved form (truffles, lentils, cheese).

[27] Umbria has many small and picturesque villages, 31 of them have been selected by I Borghi più belli d'Italia (English: The most beautiful Villages of Italy),[28] a non-profit private association of small Italian towns of strong historical and artistic interest,[29] that was founded on the initiative of the Tourism Council of the National Association of Italian Municipalities.

Umbria was a former stronghold of the Italian Communist Party, forming with Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Marche what was then known as Italy's "Red Regions".

[34] As of 2008[update], the Italian national institute of statistics ISTAT estimated that 75,631 foreign-born immigrants live in Umbria, equal to 8.5% of the total population of the region.

The cerioli are clad in the distinctive colors of yellow, blue or black, according to the saint they support, with white trousers and red belts and neckbands.

They travel up much of the mountain from the main square in front of the Palazzo dei Consoli to the basilica of St. Ubaldo, each team carrying a statue of their saint mounted on a wooden octagonal prism, similar to an hour-glass shape 4 metres tall and weighing about 280 kg (617 lb).

The race has strong devotional, civic, and historical overtones and is one of the best-known folklore manifestations in Italy, and therefore the Ceri were chosen as the heraldic emblem on the coat of arms of Umbria as a modern administrative region.