Because of its enchanting location on the top of a pleasant hill (473 mt.) which raises right in the heart of the valleys of Clitunno, Topino and Tiber rivers, the town has been defined "The Balcony of Umbria".
The town is worth visiting also because of the frescoes of its churches, essential to know the Umbrian school of painting. Moreover, its sanctuaries are paramount to understand the Umbrian spirituality. Montefalco was inhabited even in the remotest past: maybe it was a country district and it still keeps a very rare epigraph of the marone (a magistrate of the ancient Umbrian people). During Roman times the hill was packed with patrician villas: this is witnessed by some place names, such as Assegnano, Camiano, Col Verano, Rignano, Satriano, Vecciano, etc. Many remains of epigraphs and sculptures are the memories of the least known period.

Christianity was supposedly introduced by Saint Fortunato, the area’s evangelizer, who lived during the 4th century. The Bishop of Spoleto, Spes, consecrated a basilica on his sepulchre, built as a votive offering of magister militum Severo (early 5th century). The basilica later became parish church of a vast territory, widely documented from the 11th century. During the Middle Age the built-up area was called Coccorone. According to a tradition, the place was named after an alleged founder, the Roman senator Marco Curione, but the modern historians think it derives from the Greek oros, mount. Coccorone was already a free commune in the 12th century: a typical “villas commune” or “parish church commune”, which enclosed the ancient pre-roman “pago”. In the autumn of 1185, Emperor Federico Barbarossa stopped here for a long period, and under those circumstances he reaccepted the town of Spoleto under his imperial grace, after he ordered its destruction 30 years earlier.

The place suddenly changed its name to Montefalco between late 1249 and early 1250, probably because of one of the falcons of Emperor Federico II, who stayed in Coccorone from the 9th to the 13th of February 1240. During the 12th and in the early 13th centuries the free commune was governed by consuls (1180-1235) and by boni homines (1180-1213); the Podestà governed after 1239, along with various councils (documented from 1227) and with the communal Bar (cited from 1195); the latter was bound to become the traditional magistracy.
The city charter is firstly remembered in 1282, with a retroactive validity of at least 50 years. It was repeatidly updated until the last version of 1425.

During the 14th century Montefalco was the preferred center of the rectors of the Dukedom of Spoleto (1320-1355). One of them, French-born Jean d’Amiel, build two mighty papal strongholds, with the technical help of famous Siena architect Lorenzo Maitani who was directing the works of the Orvieto cathedral. These important buildings were destroyed during the 15th century. Montefalco was later submitted to Foligno’s Trinci lordship (1379-1424 and 1438-1439). They tried to turn it into a bench mark of their dominance. The Church conquered it back with a vigorous intervention of Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi; it was later governed for a brief period by Niccolò Maurizi da Tolentino, who reorganized the administration and divided the territory in four districts. Since then Montefalco witnessed a very lively artistic and cultural activity, which uninterruptedly went on for about a century. This economic and civil prosperity was brutally interrupted by a serious happening. On October 18th 1527 Montefalco was attacked and sacked from a detachment of the Black Bands, led by Orazio Baglioni, which held the city for over a month. Serious plagues and a general deterioration of the economic situation followed.

In 1848, after the enlargement of the municipal territory with the inclusion of the castles of Fabbri, Fratta and S.Luca and after a pontifical restoration (1812), Montefalco obtained by Pope Pio IX (former Archbishop of Spoleto) the title of city. It is traditionally remembered as the native land of eight saints, among whom the Agostinian mystic S.Chiara della Croce (1268-1308). It was also native land to poet Nicola da Montefalco (15th century), author of the Filenico, a love lyrical output (the autograph version is kept in Ravenna’s Classense Library); painter Francesco Melanzio (1460-1519), scholar of Perugino and Pinturicchio; Cardinal Giovanni Domenico de Cuppis, deanof the Sacro Collegio, repeatedly predicted Pope on the conclaves he took part at; clergyman Don Brizio Casciola (1896-1954), friend to many illustrious personalities (Sabatier, Fogazzaro, Pascoli etc.).
Montefalco hosted between its walls Pope Giulio II in 1507 and it was chosen as an adoptive homeland from renowed musician and chorister Domenico Mustafà (1829-1912), permanent director of the Sistine Chapel.