Although the Basilica di Sant'Ubaldo , perched high up on Monte Ingino, is a perfectly lovely church, the real adventure is reaching it on the funivia , as exhilarating as any roller coaster. The word funivia suggests an enclosed cable car, but it's actually a ski lift of sorts, whisking visitors up the mountain in precarious-looking metal baskets.
In order to board you have to stand on a red dot and then get thrown into a basket by the operator as it whizzes past – health and safety be damned. Once the giddiness has worn off, you can watch Gubbio, which moments before had seemed so impossibly hilly, gradually transform into a flat little toy town far below. The entire valley spreads picturesquely before you from the top.
The basilica, which can't help but come as a bit of an anticlimax after the approach, displays the body of St Ubaldo, the 12th-century bishop of Gubbio, in a glass coffin above the altar. It also has a small museum dedicated to the Corsa dei Ceri , the town's most popular festival, where you can see the massive statues that are carried through the streets during this festival. There's a cafe on top of the hill by the funivia entrance, but the nicest way to spend the day is to bring a picnic and have a wander.
