The patron saint of Vallo di Nera is Saint John the Baptist, celebrated on 24 June, in the parish church dedicated to him, which preserves frescoes by Jacopo Siculo and a 1653 fresco depicting the Virgin between Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis, commissioned by the vicar Giovanni di Mascio and executed by Achille di Valerio.
In 1198 Duke Corrado was forced to cede the fiefs to the Church, and in 1217 Jacopo Capocci, podestà of the town of Spoleto, formally granted the local inhabitants possession of the hill of Flezano and the right to build a castle there, in exchange for protection and defence by Spoleto: thus was born the Castrum Valli, an important strategic point for controlling the roads, documented by a notarial parchment still kept in the State Archive of Spoleto. Between the 14th and 15th centuries, the fortified castle of Vallo was the most populous in the whole of Valnerina. In the small palace of Portella, one of the two entrance gates to the castle-town, stands today the Casa dei Racconti, a documentation centre gathering the area's oral literary heritage.
