Monteleone di Spoleto: Chariots, Chickpeas and…. Farro

Monteleone. The picturesque hilltown’s name, “Mount of the Lion”, denotes force, domination and greatness. The name might seem pretentious for this tiny mountaintop village in the Val Nerina area of Umbria, not far from Spoleto, nearly abandoned, with two cafés and one restaurant But the sixth-century B.C.gilded bronze biga (chariot) – unearthed here in 1902 – and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – “was certainly owned by someone powerful,” local “chariot expert”, Roberto told us proudly. The chariot – of possible Etruscan workmanship – embodies a glorious past.
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