The capital of Umbria — the central Italian region known as Italy’s “green heart” — Perugia is one of the country’s best preserved medieval cities. Established by the Etruscans (a pre-Roman civilization), Perugia became one of Europe’s most important centers for textile production during the Middle Ages, exporting their embroidered textiles to the royal courts of Europe.

That all changed in the 1500s when the Perugians rebelled against the pope’s tax on salt. As punishment, the pope forbade the city’s citizens from selling their textiles, plunging them into poverty. “We were relegated to oblivion from the 1500s until Italian unification,” explains Marta Cucchia, who runs the Atelier Giuditta Brozzetti, a textile workshop founded by her great-grandmother about a century ago.