Assisi

From Orvieto we went to Assisi, another beautiful small city, home to Saint Francis and so a pilgrimage place. The city is stunningly beautiful, we stayed in another nice hotel, Quo Vadis, close to the centre. We started by walking through its many narrow streets, winding stairways and lovely piazzas. After a great dinner at Trattoria da Erminio, we enjoyed the sight of the Piazza del Comune by night, with its fountain, the tower and the Minerva temple, now a church.

The next day, we started by visiting the cathedral of San Ruffino, that has one the most impressive Romanesque façades I ever saw – big, elegant and austere, with some beautiful sculptures. The interior is spacious and luminous, so different from our small Romanesque churches in Portugal.
Walking around the city, we visited several churches – Santa Chiara Basilica, the church where Saint Francis was supposed to live, the small but enchanting church of Santo Stefano, hidden in the middle of a maze of stairways and small gardens with olive trees.

Then there is the Saint Francis Basilica; even if I had heard so much about it, I wasn’t really ready for such wonder. It’s absolutely incredible, one feels like entering a supernatural world of colour, the frescoes are stunningly magnificent, both in the Upper and the Lower churches. I felt like Lucy Honeychurch in Santa Croce without a Baedecker, not knowing which were the frescoes by Giotto or Cimabue, but it didn’t matter, because it was the whole space and atmosphere that mattered. And the crypt is also impressive, even for a staunch non-believer as myself.

Then it’s funny and kind of sad how all such beauty finds its counterpart in the many tourist shops with thousands of tacky Saint Francis and Saint Claires. But that’s the effect of mass tourism and mass pilgrimages.

We ended the stay in Assisi with a climb to the Rocca Maggiore, a castle from where the views over the city and the plain are really magnificent.