Italy: Assisi

Friday, April 3, 2009. We are late on the road due to our sleeping in till almost 11 AM. Our tourist office map of the Aburzzo region proves of little help in finding our way out of town and onto autostrada A14 where we want to head north towards Assisi. Our late night dinner at Taverna 58 has made breakfast proper unnecessary, but not so Stone’s need of coffee. Desperate, she pulls us into a McDonlads where her order of “caffé Americano” (“I need a big cup of java if I’m gonna do all this drivin’.”) takes more than several minutes for the staff to prepare, but is worth the wait. Back on the road, our Fiat finally finds an entrance for A14 and we are able to finally zip along, a la the Jersey Turnpike. However, the views are dissimilar. All along this trip northward the blue and then even bluer Adriatic Sea comes in and out of view to our right.

Once on the autostrada the signs to Assisi are easy to follow and things go swimmingly until we get to the hilltop home of Italy’s Patron Saint. By this time Jake is driving and he heads into the ancient town thinking all he needs is his handy printed-at-home Google map of the town which pinpoints where we'll be staying for our two nights in Assisi -- Saint Anthony’s Guesthouse at Via Galeazzo Alessi, 10. Ten minutes later we are hopeless lost in a town that might be historically Catholic but has a “road” system that can only be described as deeply Byzantine. We stop to ask directions and are told to take a left and all will be well. Sure.

A left turn gets us onto a road that is not a road at all. To call it a “lane” would be generous. It is, in truth, a cobble stoned hallway lined with houses. We give ourselves a better chance of not knocking over the flower boxes by folding in the car’s side mirrors, hold our collective breath, and drive. The historic saints of Assisi must look after non-believers as well, for somehow we make it to the end, find another cobble stoned path that is merely cluttered with pedestrians and somehow make it out of Assisi proper and onto a real road. We drive around the perimeter of the town looking for some place to park, finally parking Italian style (the right two wheels up on a sort of sidewalk) in an dirt parking lot. Bags in tow we three walk up steps too numerous to count, find our way into town and finally to the front gate of St. Anthony’s.

St. Anthony’s is a B&B that caters to English speaking visitors and is run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement. We are greeted by Sister Sue, whose English has a strong accent – Canadian that is! (Figlia, who has always been fascinated by accents -- she once watched the movie “Fargo” three times in one day just for the thrill of hearing the characters’ accents – will spend a good portion of the next 48 hours keeping her parents in stitches by “channeling” Sister Sue’s lilt on many an occasion.) Our triple room has a high ceiling and is fittingly simple, with only two chests of drawers, an armoire, and one chair at a small desk. There is a shuttered window that looks out a lovely pastoral scene and St. Clare’s bell tower. The B&B’s common areas include a sitting room and a library, both with commanding views of the rooftops of Assisi and the rolling green that stretches to the horizon, a garden with a statue of St. Francis, and a large breakfast room. For under 90 Euro a night, it turns out to be the best lodging value of our entire trip.

We find the streets of Assisi to be much easier to walk than to drive and soon we are standing in a quiet piazza looking up at the impressive Duomo di San Rufino (named after the third century bishop who was martyred here) and its 11th century bell tower. Flanking the main doorway are two weathered and scarred sculptures that show the rather chilling scene of some sort of lion-like beast devouring a person head first. (Welcome to Mass; better say your prayers.) But it is inside where we get chills of a different sort. In the back of the church, protected by a small bit of ornate gating, stands a brownish marble baptismal font not without several cracks and repair marks. No doubt it was in perfect shape in 1182 when it held the water that was used that day to baptize a certain infant boy, who would become the world’s favorite Catholic saint.

Assisi is a very pretty town. It is tourist driven, certainly, but it is easy to overlook the kitschy stores and the seemingly endless supply of Catholic tchotchkes (an ecumenical phrase!) where nearly every street winds its way among handsome medieval and Renaissance houses, past scores of colorful flower boxes and charming stone stairways, through ancient arches and underneath hanging street lanterns seemingly wrought only a few hundred years ago.

In Assisi’s central piazza sits an interesting church: Santa Maria sopra Minerva. It was built in the first century BC as a temple dedicated to Minerva, but in the 16th century it was converted into a Catholic church, and dedicated to Mary (“sopra” means “over” or “above”), thus preserving the entire Roman façade with its six still fabulous looking Corinthian columns. It is quite interesting to walk up Minerva’s 2,000 year old steps, pass between those simple white columns and then walk into Maria’s highly decorated interior.

Directly across from this hybrid church is a vaulted archway decorated with old and rather strange looking paintings. It is through here that we walked later that night for a wonderful dinner at Trattoria Pallotta, where the scene was warm and local, the food delightful, and the half liter of local Umbrian wine simply superb. Thanks to Figlia's charm we are allowed here, as at Taverna 58 in Pescara, to descend after dinner into the restaurant's wine cellar where we see the hundreds of bottles that lie in waiting to be chosen by true oenophiles more knowledgeable than we.

Having started dinner at 7:30 (which was about as early as we could ever have dinner in a country where people really don’t start to eat until 8 or 9), we found we had time to dash up to visit St. Rufino again, where Sister Sue had told us there was to be a special Friday night service. We arrived in time for the last 15minutes, which was enough to appreciate the choir and the cathedral’s booming musical acoustics. After the service, we joined the local multitude in touching one of the church's icons -- an old and rather crudely carved wooden replica of the Pieta that was on a small pedestal near the alter. Then it was a downhill walk back to our B&B's triple bedroom.