Tourism in the Trasimeno district is a relatively recent phenomenon, even though the area was cause for admiration already in the XVIIIth and XlXth centuries for distinguished travellers such as Goethe and Stendhal.
The German writer, on his way to Rome in October 1786, made a halt in Perugia, saw Lake Trasimeno (then more generally known as "Lake of Perugia") and journeyed on to Assisi.
He wrote in his diary: "I left Perugia on a lovely morning, and experienced the joy of being on my own again. The city is in a beautiful position and the view of the lake is truly a delight: those sights are now well engraved in my mind's eye".
The author of "The Red and the Black", instead, crossed the lake by boat in 1828, which had been called "Silver Veil" by the english poet George Byron, and wrote in "Promenades dans Rome": "It takes about four or five days to journey from Florence to Rome, and it costs forty to forty-five francs. I prefer the Perugia route to that of Siena: one has a chance to visit Arezzo, where nothing seems to have changed since Dante's time, moreover, the surroundings of the Lake Trasimeno are of great beauty".
Little has changed since then from a scenic point of view, nor in the "exquisite kindness" of the inhabitants which Stendhal so appreciated.
Only the outskirts of the towns have spread slightly. The rare, but - again in the words of the author of ":The Charterhouse of Parma" - clean inns of the XIXth century have today been replaced by an adequate number of comfortable hotels, camping sites, tourist apartments, restaurants and farm-holiday facilities.
These are generally well managed family concerns, small to medium in size, which enable visitors both to enjoy the comforts of today, and to spend a holiday in an atmosphere of friendly and unobstreperous warmth.
Whether he opts for accommodation within the historic cores, with their intact flavour of the past, or whether he prefers to dwell in the countryside, where the natural beauty can be more intimately enjoyed, the visitor experiences a tranquil form of joy.