Now is the time for Umbria, not yet colonized like Tuscany and home to a cluster of masterworks. G. Y. Dryansky enjoys his Renaissance with added bucolic comforts.

The road most travelers take north from Rome is the Tuscan road. Tuscany, like Provence, has become the world's paradigm for heaven in a stylish Mediterranean setting. Next time, though, bear east and take the pilgrims' road. It leads to a region of landlocked green mountains knotted around a valley. Pilgrims have been heading there for centuries, because it is the homeland of Saint Francis, humble friend of all creatures, who held silence and nature above buzz and ostentation. His shrine is the basilica in Assisi, but the entire region around it—the navel of Italy called Umbria—is very much his kind of country.

Everywhere these days, of course, there are more people traveling for pleasure than there are pilgrims. Yet even now, on a bright late-spring afternoon in Assisi, you can walk along the narrow Via Giorgetti toward the basilica, pass no one on your way, and hear nothing but the rustle of leaves in the breeze from Mount Subasio. In the basilica, which houses 'The Life of Saint Francis,' one of the world's most astounding series of paintings, there's the murmur of a reasonable-sized crowd. Until, every few minutes, an appointed monk says into a microphone: 'Shhh. . . . Silenzio!'

Muted splendor—it's not stretching the point to see this as the title for whatever little chapter in your life Umbria might come to represent. This is also the homeland of Perugino, hailed in his time as the finest painter in Italy, the one artist whose signature appears in the Sistine Chapel. As his career went forward after the turn of the sixteenth century, he gave away his riches as a painter, just as Francis of Assisi did. Perugino's achievements are rooted in the elegance of understatement. He was quintessentially Umbrian.

In Umbria you're in the most cheerful mountain country I know. Trendsetters moving on from Tuscany are beginning to adopt this wispy Perugino landscape, where villas and an abundance of farmhouses with breathtaking views are for sale or rent. But the sprouting of real estate agencies in the walled towns that climb the lower ridges of the Apennines hasn't yet brought about great change. Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Spoleto, Todi—the towns still look much as they do in Renaissance paintings. So, too, do the smaller villages whose treasures are locked away in tiny churches, until you find the villager with the key. 'Professore!' I recall one of them once declaiming appreciatively, as he handed me a big iron key that opened the door to what I remember as a flaking Perugino Madonna and Child Enthroned, the fresco that is the pride of his village. In the etiquette of Italy, calling a stranger professore is the most polite form of address. Was that in Fontignano? It was long ago. On this latest trip, I didn't allot any time for searching villages for keys. It would still be very rewarding, but with all the looting Italy has known, the reception might be less warm and respectful.