Mi piace...St. Francis

I apologize for the un-timeliness of this blog. I’ve been meaning to write about my trip to Assisi since last weekend but I just haven’t felt like doing it.
We had a three-day weekend last weekend, and since these are rare there is a bit of pressure to take advantage of them. Of course, I want to travel while I’m here and see as much of this country as possible, but because there is so much to see, and everybody has sort of his or her own agenda, the planning part is quite stressful to the extent that I almost dread these weekends a little bit.
But anyways, it ultimately worked out great, and I went to Assisi with three other girls (Rachel, Libby, and Fiona). The professor from Lewis and Clark who is leading the trip wanted to go also, and she happened to have a car that weekend, so we even got a ride down on Friday morning. The car ride was about two hours (as opposed to a 4-5 hour train ride), and we were in Asissi by the early afternoon.
Assisi is known for being the birthplace and home of St. Francis, a famous saint and founder of the Franciscan order of monks. St. Francis is also sometimes acknowledged with being one of the reasons for the birth of the Renaissance, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on. But it might have something to do with the Renaissance focused on the humanity of saints and religious figures, and how St. Francis was alive only a couple of hundred years before artists began depicting his life, so they were able to put him in settings that would be recognizable to a contemporary viewer. This, in turn, made the story of St. Francis more tangible and convincing to those who saw these paintings. I think that makes sense…
I was most excited to visit the Basilica of San Francesco, which is most known for its upper portion, adorned with huge scenes of the life of St. Francis. They are said to be early works of the famous Early Renaissance /Late Byzantine painter, Giotto, though there is some debate about this (I tend to think that, while Giotto may have had a hand in these, they are more likely the works of another master), and I had previously studied them at length in a class at Lewis and Clark. I bought my professor a postcard at the gift shop, because he told me himself that Assisi was the one place I needed to visit while I was in Italy. Speaking of the gift shop, there is a bit of irony in the commercialization of St. Francis in Assisi (which I’ve heard described as a Disneyland for St. Francis), because St. Francis’ whole thing was about becoming closer to God by denouncing his worldly goods and living in poverty his entire life. But the church, though against everything St. Francis stood for, is still beautiful. The interior is literally encrusted with frescoes on every surface, and is unique in that it was all essentially done at once (meaning a generation or two), rather than over hundreds of years.

Next, we went to the Basilica of St. Clare, another famous saint from Assisi. Her basilica is most known for housing the really old Byzantine crucifix that is said to have spoken to St. Francis, inspiring him to begin his life of asceticism. We looked at it, and then went for an (annoyingly overpriced and not very good) coffee. And then, despite the wind, we took a little walk up to the Rocco Maggiore, a fortress providing a beautiful view of the Umbrian countryside surrounding Assisi. I literally almost blew off the hill (thank goodness for the gelato!), but it was worth it because we made it up in time for the sunset. Unfortunately, neither of the pictures of myself from my camera are blog-worthy, but I will include a photo of the view.

The rest of the evening we took it pretty easy, having a siesta in our adorable hotel, run by a old nonna who was beyond excited to see us and promised us the most beautiful room (I’m pretty sure we were the only ones there, but if you’re ever in Assisi I highly recommend the Camere Martini). Then we went to a dinner that was recommended in my guidebook (thanks Jeremy!). It was really good and cheap—we each had an entrée, and split two plates of bruschetta, two bottles of wine and three desserts for only 15 euro each! Apparently Assisi is known for their truffles, so I got a pizza with truffle sauce. Then it was bedtime.
The next day we were hoping to go to Spoletto, because you know I love my small Italian towns, but we were misinformed or something in thinking there was a regular bus there from Assisi, so we ended up just going to Perugia, which wasn’t on the top of any of our lists, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow. At first I was kind of horrified by the city, but then I realized we were in the outskirts (which, in Europe, are almost never nice. Except in Siena, which is perfect in every way). We made our way into the centro, which was actually pretty nice. We poked around in some shops, had another tasty and cheap meal (chickpea soup and insalata misto!) and bought some awesome headscarf things. Overall, not too bad, but not too great either.
The trip to Perugia was redeemed, in my opinion, by a short walk to a fifth-century, circular-planned church built from the stones and wood from even older pagan temples. It had a grassy lawn, something I hadn’t even realized I hadn’t seen since I’d been in Italy. It smelled so good and the whole thing was just so peaceful, I felt instantly relaxed and happy. Unfortunately, we were there too late to go inside.

We went back to Assisi and enjoyed another late, laid-back dinner, and went to bed pretty quickly after that. The next day was spent mostly going back to Siena in what seemed like the most indirect train route possible. Although, I did have the best gelato I’ve yet experienced in a virtually nameless little town that we stopped in for an hour and a half (pine nut and hazelnut flavors—have you noticed that I talk a lot about food?) I returned exhausted to Siena, but had a nice and eventful week to keep me from getting lazy, so another blog post is to come!
Sending my love from the same wine bar in Siena!
Baci,
Megan