The first inhabitants of the village were most probably the Umbrians, later driven back by the Etruscans to the other side of the Tiber. With the Romans, Passignano received its first military structure and maybe a tower, which together with the castle of Monteruffiano, controlled the famous "passo" (passage) to the North, the only means of communication for many centuries between northern and central Italy, hence the name of the village Passinianum, place of the passage. The village was a helpless witness to Hannibal's famous trap which cost the lives of Consul Flaminio and 15,000 Romans, in the year 217 BC. The "Rocca" was first built by the Longobards (5th-6th c.) and -which were later- added square walls. The present structure of the castle dates back to 1100, period during which Passignano passed under the dominion of Perugia and the road was included to ensure better control of the territory. The castle originally had three main entrances and numerous towers with open walls facing the lake; of all this, only the northern part remains, the rest having been destroyed at the beginning of the19th c.by the Papal States, to be used as building material to raise the road which was often flooded. Passignano's position as passage between Perugia and Florence, and also between the ports of the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian Sea, made Passignano from the Middle Ages onwards a vital and prosperous centre, with many taverns and hotels: a touristic vocation revived at the beginning of this century with the establishment of the Navigation Company of Trasimeno, whose only steamboat "Concordia" had the good fortune of transporting Queen Margherita of Savoia in 1907 on a trip around the lake, thus making famous the village.Later on, a flying school for seaplanes was created, and also SAI Ambrosini, famous not only for constructing aircrafts, but also for building boats such as "The Moor of Venice", Azzurra 3 and 4. and many others.