Made inviolable in the pagan era by Lex Spoletina, the wood of Monteluco becomes home, starting from the fifth century, one of the largest hermit movements of the time whose birth is to be related to the figure of St. Isaac, arrived from Syria . Numerous monks follows his example and soon the mountain becomes the seat of an immense monastery where life is carried out in isolated cells or caves dug into the rock.
In Monteluco, the Abbey of San Giuliano blooms, the first point of reference for the vast eremitical colony, later transformed into a congregation, and subsequently launched to an inexorable process of secularization.
Also according to the tradition of the Order, St. Francis founded in 1218 a primitive cenacle on Monteluco, second in order of the city of Sant'Apollinare. And the Franciscans themselves were the protagonists of the last tremors of mysticism when, at the end of the eighteenth century, the blessed Leopoldo da Gaiche tried to drive away the French troops who climbed the mountain to plant the tree of freedom.

Monteluco contains millennia of religious history. The name of the village derives from the Latin term lucus, or Bosco Sacro, which bears witness to the religious importance of this place since ancient times. Lucus was considered by the Romans to be home to deities and superhuman powers, mostly related to nature, such woods were usually provided with a celebratory altar, as in the case of Monteluco.
At the entrance to the forest, the so-called Lex spoletina was placed in Roman times (currently the original copy is exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Spoleto), the first example of forest rule composed of archaic Latin inscriptions engraved on stone, dating back to the late 3rd century BC , which establish the penalties for the desecration of the sacred wood dedicated to Jupiter.

Around the 5th century, Monteluco became the seat of one of the largest eremitical movements of the time: a group of eastern hermit monks (among whom St. Julian † 302) led by St. Isaac of Antioch, who later became St. Isaac of Monteluco, a religious of origin. Syrian, they founded a colony on the mountain, living in caves and forbidding access to women.
Subsequently the abbey of San Giuliano is erected in Monteluco, the first central point of reference for the vast eremitical colony, later transformed into a congregation.

Even St. Francis, according to the tradition of the Order, founded in Monteluco in 1218 the chapel of Santa Caterina, a primitive cenacle at the limits of the sacred wood.
In 1788, the cenacle of San Francesco was chosen by Leopoldo da Gaiche as a spiritual retreat of strict observance and was solemnly inaugurated on 1 November. It was then suppressed by the Napoleonic troops in 1809; Fra Leopoldo himself attempted to drive away the French troops from the mountain to plant the tree of liberty.

With the Napoleonic occupation, the isolation ended and since then the access is open to everyone.

In 1556, the artist Michelangelo stayed briefly in those places to restore himself.

THE NATURE:

The Montagna Spoletina, of which Monteluco forms the northern end at 780 m s.l.m, is a calcareous ridge stretched from north to south, covering about 7,000 hectares, between the Flaminia State Road and the Nera Valley. The area is mostly occupied by deciduous forests and evergreen sclerophyllous: formations of black hornbeam and flowering ash, oak oak woods, chestnut woods, some beech nucleus at the highest altitudes, pine trees in Aleppo pine and holm oak. Among the latter, the secular one of Monteluco stands out. The composition of the woods is very varied; in addition to the dominant tree species, maples, turkey oaks, white hornbeams, hazelnuts, apple trees and wild cherries, rowanberries, labyrinths, strawberry trees and many shrubs such as viburnum, fillirea, alaterno, heather multiflora, dogwood, sanguinello, hawthorn, euonymus, juniper, odorous broom and bramble. In some stations, there are rare rate and holly. On some sunny sides, there are olive groves and around the small settlements, even in the mountains, are located arable land and meadows. The fauna of the Spoletina Mountain is rich and diversified, with at least 134 species of vertebrates present: 10 of amphibians, 10 of reptiles, 89 of nesting and / or wintering birds (the nesting are 79) and 25 of mammals. 37% of these animals are considered of great scientific and conservation value, because they are rare and / or often threatened also at national and European level.

The importance of the environmental characteristics of Monteluco and of the whole of the Spoleto Mountains is sanctioned, among other things, by the identification, in accordance with EEC directives and the Bioitaly Project, of the 'site of Community interest' (SCI) Monteluco di Spoleto and special protection zone '(ZPS) Lower Valnerina: Monte Fionchi Marmore Falls.

Monteluco is also part of the 'Natura 2000 Sites' of the municipality of Spoleto, which aims to catalog the rich natural heritage of the Municipality of Spoleto.