Italy: Perugia

Saturday, April 4 , 2009. Breakfast is served at St. Anthony's from 7:30-8:30, and just to insure that everyone makes it, soft, classical music is piped through the building starting at 7:15. The breakfast is refreshingly American continental, with yogurt, cereal, juices, breads and the like. St. Anthony's also provides a gated parking lot (a real plus in Assisi) and it is from here that we get the Fiat back on the road and head today for Perugia.

But first we make a stop at the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which lies but a few kilometers out of Assisi down in a typical Umbrian plain. We are early enough, and lucky enough, to find a parking spot near the church. Several tour buses are unloading near the church’s piazza and we hustle over to beat the forming crowds. St. Mary of the Angels is a big, big church (learned subsequently that it is in the world’s top 10 for Catholic bigness), but it is the little church inside the big church that draws us and the crowds.

Directly under the dome of the giant church sits a church, in miniature, as it were. This chapel size building is the famous Porziuncola, where St. Francis set about his mission, founded the Franciscan Order, and consecrated St. Clare (she of the Poor Clares) as a Bride of Christ. Additionally, in St Mary’s or on its grounds we also get to see the remains of the good saint’s rope belt, a low window that marks the place where he died, and a rose garden that grows thornless roses thanks to St. Francis overcoming a temptation he never named. Still, in the end, it is the juxtaposition of the tiny 13th century chapel inside the giant 18th century basilica that sticks in our minds, a clear metaphor of how the Catholic Industry swallowed up its founding Artisans.

We are all anxious to see Perugia, the capital of Umbria, and a city that several of Figlia’s friends have said is one of the most beautiful in central Italy. From one of Perugia’s many parking lots in the lower town we take an outdoor, covered escalator up to the next level, where we find another escalator, which leads to yet another escalator which finally leads us to a busy street. Asking directions (Figlia’s Italian again being most helpful) to the main piazza we are pointed to a corner where there are yet two more long escalators (think airport “people movers” in length) that finally bring us, after a few dozen more steps up, to the heart of the city, Piazza 4 Novembre. (Jake thinks to himself that Perugia should replace its city symbol of a griffin with an escalator, or better yet, a griffin riding on an escalator.)

Jake has brought along a walking tour narration that we use to walk the city. Perhaps the highlight of our walk is a 5th century circular church, Tempio di San Michele Arcangelo, which has its interior supported by 16 columns that were likely part of a Roman temple (thus Tempio) that was itself likely built on top of an Etruscan place of worship. The dim light coming in from the small, high windows barely illuminates the several faded frescoes. Hard to read plaques (Latin or Italian?) on the marble floor seem to mark several ecclesiastical crypts. Though there are no other tourists in this ancient, atmospheric place we find ourselves whispering to each other.

Our walk also includes a trip on Perugia’s old aqueduct, which long ago provided water that ended up at the famous Fontana Maggiore back in the Piazza 4 Novembre, but currently provides some wonderful views of the town and the surrounding countryside. About the time we found the University for Foreigners but got slightly lost looking for the more famous (and older, being founded in 1308) University of Perugia, we decided to stop for lunch, for soon every eatery will be closed for the afternoon. Figlia spots a place on Via Fabretti. Though it appears to Jake and Stone to be nothing special, maybe just a fast food hole in the wall lunch counter, the waitress at Ristorante Brizi brings us past the lunch counter, then some down steps next to a hot and working open brick oven and into a lovely room where we have a very nice little lunch, complete with a small carafe of the usual good, cheap red wine. It seems it might be nearly impossible to have a bad lunch in these central hills of Italy.

After about another hour of hiking the picturesque ups and downs of Perugia, we end our walk back at Piazza 4 Novembre where Figlia makes Stone practice her Italian by making her order gelato for all 3 of us. It is against international law, not to mention good sense, to go to Perugia and not buy some Perugina chocolate, so we dutifully stock up for family, friends and ourselves at the apparent mothership store just off the piazza at Corso Vannucci 101, then head back to the escalators for our trip down to the parking lot.

On the drive home back to Assisi it starts to rain. It is still raining when we arrive back at St. Anthony’s so we ask the good sisters for a restaurant close enough to quickly walk to. Ristorante Degli Orti turns out to be close indeed, and like most of the restaurants in town, a family run affair. At the end of our dinner our “ricevuta fiscale” shows: 1 pane e coperto, 1 acqua, 3 vino, 1 antipasto, 1 primo piatto, 2 caffe-digestive and 2 pranzo complete and 1 cola cola; total 56 Euros. During our dinner a young Italian couple comes in and their cute bambino (about 2 years old) who runs about the restaurant charming everyone, even when he makes his way over to the restaurant’s fax machine and starts to press some buttons. Kids!

The rain seems less annoying on our walk back to the B&B. The water runs out of downspouts perhaps hundreds of years old, refreshes the hanging flower pots, glistens the dimly lit cobble stones, and then listened to in our beds makes sleep a thing to enjoy. Though Longfellow wrote it, certainly the nature loving St. Francis would agree: “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”