This past week we went on an overnight trip to two towns in the Umbria region of Italy. The first, Perugia, is the chocolate capital of Italy. The second, Assisi, is the home of St. Francis. My general assessment of Umbria was that it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I will go over a few of the highlights from each place!
Perugia:
We spent our first day in Perugia, a small town north of Rome. The old part of Perugia is high up on a hill, but the bus parking lot was at the bottom of the hill. This meant that we got to experience Perugia's public transportation--the MiniMetro!! Yes, it was actually called the MiniMetro. The car was quite small, and looked a bit like a funicular. It was not underground, but ran above ground on little tracks. There were about four stops as we made our way all the way up the hill to the old Perugia.
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| MiniMetro cars! |
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| In the MiniMetro tunnel |
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| On the MiniMetro |
When we arrived in Perugia, we had several hours of free time to wander around. What I noticed about the town was that it had several beautiful public spaces. There were two small public parks and a central piazza with a pedestrian way leading up to it. Around the edge of the city were wide sidewalks with spectacular panoramic views. Perugia was made up of stone streets, archways, and wooden doors. It truly felt idyllic. As a group, we looked at the fountain in the piazza. The carvings around the edge of the fountain depicted the labors of the month, Aesop's fables, the liberal arts, and the legend of Romulus and Remus. We then visited several of the historic offices of the commune, or civic government of Perugia. In the offices of the merchants and money changers, the walls and ceilings were made of intricate wood carvings (sadly, no pictures allowed). Before heading out, I picked up some Perugian chocolate (it is the chocolate capital after all!).
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| Welcome to Umbria! |
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| Snow in the mountains |
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| A view of the town |
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| I was there! |
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| In town |
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| Victor Emmanuel--he unified Italy |
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| One of the public parks/town squares |
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| I found an antique bookstore |
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| The Piazza |
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| The fountain |
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| Carvings on the fountain |
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| Even the pigeons are prettier in Perugia |
Assisi:
After leaving Perugia, we headed to Assisi, another Umbrian town. After checking into our hotel, we went on a brief walking tour of the city before dinner. Like Perugia, Assisi is a city on a hill, and we were staying towards the bottom. We walked up the narrow, winding cobblestone streets to reach the main square. On one side of the square was a Roman temple that had been repurposed as a church. The outside had four Roman columns, but over the door was a cross, and inside was an impressive baroque church. I continue to be amazed by this layering and repurposing of space, while leaving the old intact. Possibly my favorite thing in all of Assisi was on the other side of the square. There was an archway and room leading which led to a back street. It was completely unmarked; basically just an old alcove off to the side of the street. But if you walked inside and looked up, you would find a gorgeous painted ceiling. The ceiling depicted scenes of music, animals, and revelry. The coolest part, in my opinion, was that there was a painting of the Roman temple on the ceiling, which you could see from inside the alcove. It was history depicting history. My professor thought the space was probably some sort of the tavern, and the paintings likely dated back to the 16th century or so. You could see multiple arches that were once doors, but had now been filled in. They were cut off by the modern-day street, which showed that the street level (or at least the floor level of this particular building) was once significantly lower. We went up even farther into the city, and stopped in another square. In this square, there was a church with beautiful geometric windows. The church had just closed for the evening, but I went in anyway. I was the only one in there, and the space was cool and quiet. This is just how I like to be able to explore a space--it allows you to move at your own pace and hear your thoughts without the voices of others interrupting. From a smaller chapel off to the side there was singing. Maybe a choir practicing? Parts of the floor of this church were covered in plexiglass, and when you stood over these spots and looked down, you could see the ancient ruins over which the church had been built. Again, the layers were everywhere! As we headed home, we stopped to watch a beautiful sunset. The thing about being in a city on a hill is that the views are amazingly spectacular. The photos you will see below capture snippets and snapshots of the landscape, but what they can't capture is the full panorama of what we were seeing. You could turn 360 degrees and see beauty in all directions for miles.
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| A gate into the city |
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| Getting a drink |
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| A street scene |
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| The Roman building--you can barely see the cross that is now over the door |
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| Pretty discrete from the outside...little do you know that the inside looks like this: |
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| The ceiling |
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| The ceiling |
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| Music scene |
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| The view of the Roman temple from inside the tavern |
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| The depiction of the temple in the tavern--it shows what used to be written across the top |
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| The beautiful window of the church |
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| A priest leaves his church for the evening |
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| Dusk in Assisi |
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| Sunset was spectacular |
The next morning I got up bright and early (5:30am) to be at the lower basilica of St. Francis in time for morning prayer with a couple of friends. Getting up this early is a major challenge for me, so I hope you are impressed! I am not Catholic, but I was very curious to see a prayer service, and I enjoy seeing spaces being used for their original purpose. When we arrived, two of the monks welcomed us and let us head into the basilica for prayer. We in the front row of the back section of the basilica. The front section was blocked off by a grate, and only the monks were sitting up there. The prayer service was quite beautiful, with organ music and a lot of singing. The coolest part was that I understood most of the Italian because the singing and praying didn't move that quickly, and I had a general sense of what they would be saying. We then headed out into the crisp early morning and were greeted by another gorgeous view. After breakfast, we headed back to the St. Francis basilicas (upper and lower) to explore and admire the gorgeous painted walls and ceilings. Many of the ceilings in the lower basilica were done by the artist, Giotto, who has work in the Scrovegni chapel in Padua and in Florence. During our lunchtime, I headed all the way up the hill to the Rocca Maggiore, a fortress that looks out over Assisi and the surrounding land. From this rocca, you can also see the Rocca Minore (see pictures below). I then headed off by myself to find the Roman theater which was marked on the map. I ended up in a quaint neighborhood, and thought that I was right where the ruins should be, but they were nowhere to be found. It turns out that I was in the right place, but the ancient theater had been turned into a hotel (called something like "The Roman Theater Hotel") and apartment buildings. Go figure...Anyway, that was interesting in its own right, and I got a nice sense of a neighborhood in Assisi. Finally, I headed way down the hill to find San Damiano, which is the first monastery of the Order of Saint Clare, and the place where St. Clare built her community. I took a roundabout way to the monastery which took me through true farmland. It was beautiful, and wonderful to see that I was out of the city after just a ten-minute walk. The monastery felt much smaller and more contained after looking at such a grand church complex earlier in the day, but it felt very real too. The cloister at the center of the monastery was beautiful, and you got a sense that this was really a place for reflection, not show. Finally, we hopped on the bus and headed to our last stop of the day. Our final stop was a huge modern church just outside of Assisi, but inside this giant church was the tiny chapel which St. Francis loved, and at which he prayed. The little chapel was tiny with about enough room for fifteen or so people to pray at once. There were some paintings on the inside, but it was really quite simple. On the outside of the chapel were slightly newer paintings. Our professor asked us to consider what this chapel must have felt like when it stood alone in the countryside, not surrounded by a larger church or by a bustling city. When I sat down and closed my eyes, it wasn't hard to do. In part, as we were walking back up the hill from St. Damiano, we saw a tiny roadside chapel. It was locked up, no longer open to the public, possibly privately owned, but we snuck a peak through the barred windows to catch a glimpse of the tiny chapel inside. I imagined that St. Francis' little church must have looked and felt like this when it's location was still rural.
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| Looking out over the city in the early morning |
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| The early morning from the basilica San Francesco |
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| The courtyard outside basilica San Francesco |
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| The Carabinieri |
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| The scenery was both wild and lush |
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| Looking out over part of the rocca |
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| Period dress in the rocca |
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| Part of the rocca |
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| Looking at the rocca minore from the rocca maggiore |
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| Assisi has a public fountain too! |
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| The geometry of the city |
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| I enjoyed the beautiful archways and the way that they framed the city |
Thoughts on space:
One thing that our professors had us thinking a lot about on this trip was space, and the use of space. When we were in Perugia visiting the different centers of civic government, my professor commented that you could tell a lot about the status of a branch of government based on its space. For example, the office of the notaries was a huge grand hall with painted walls and ceilings. It was high up in the town near the central plaza. The offices of the money-changers and the merchants were also beautiful, with intricate art lining the walls, but the spaces were significantly smaller. Yet, the fact that all of these branches of civic government had gorgeously adorned offices said something about the value of that government within the town. Similarly, we talked about why a town might build a fountain in its central piazza, and why it would provide water for that fountain using an aqueduct, a Roman technique. Why did they feel it was so important to them to reach back to their Roman roots? On our visit to Assisi, we made similar observations about religious spaces as well. The basilica of San Francesco had a large plaza, and was basically a large church complex that extended out beyond the church itself. We were asked to think about how that space might have looked filled with people on pilgrimages, and what it might have provided for them. Similarly, as I mentioned above, we were asked to imagine how St. Francis' chapel would have looked and felt when it was still out in the countryside. In addition, both Perugia and Assisi had beautiful public spaces (something I've noticed in Rome as well--the number of public parks in Rome is very high!), which suggests that Italians value public space. And they really do seem to use it. In both the morning, afternoon and evening, we have seen people enjoying the piazzas and parks. I really appreciate this part of the culture here, as I love to sit and people-watch or read while enjoying a coffee outside. Even in our own Piazza Bologna you can get a sense of this. When we came home on Saturday night around midnight, there were hundreds of young people just hanging out in the piazza. In addition, I have been going to the coffee shop in the middle of the piazza to study which gives me a sense of this local hangout culture. I wish this were something we had more of in U.S. cities (although Bride Square in Northfield is pretty great). In class the other day, we talked about the way in which you can guess which is the main square in a town based on the space. How are the buildings oriented? Which buildings surround the piazza? How many roads lead into that piazza? By examining the spaces around us, we are learning to read more about the place we are in and what those spaces mean about the people who have inhabited them.
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| The hall of the notaries |
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| A painting in the hall of the notaries |
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| Another painting in the hall of the notaries |
Overall, the trip to Perugia and Assisi was fantastic, and it felt like a breath of fresh air after the hustle and bustle of the big city. I really felt like I got a sense of small-town life in Italy, and I began to get a sense for how different each region of Italy is; how much each seems to have its own flavor. I am getting geared up to head north starting on Friday, and I look forward to continuing to understand Italian life, and how my Roman life fits into the bigger picture. Arrivederci!
