Another big day trip today, to Spoleto…. and Assisi, land of the famed Saint Francis. Spoleto was founded by the Umbrians and the Lombards made it the capital of one of their three Italian dukedoms in the 7th century. The main attractions though, are a 1st century AD Roman arch and the 14th century Ponte delle Torre. The Ponte delle Torre is an acqueduct which stands 80m (262ft) high – its easily spotted on the main road into town. We found a very convenient park, and wandered out to it, and then across it. The views of the surrounding woodlands were just lovely, and halfway across was an arch, so you could see back over the town itself. Bloody impressive things these acqueducts, and they make for nice landscapes as well.
It was our intent to visit the Duomo – built in 1198 with a tower constructed from Roman remains. We wandered down a lovely wide plaza and it was incredibly quiet. We wondered where all the tours were, but saw no people walking before the herds with umbrellas and water bottles held high. In fact, there were probably only six people all up in the piazza. The facade of the Duomo was impressive with a lovely early 13th century mosaic and ornate round windows. All around the piazza were buildings that had the remnants of frescoes, and the houses around had the now familiar window boxes with brightly coloured flowers. We checked everything out and wandered closer to the church, only to find a sign on the door saying it had closed for a three hour lunch, not fifteen minutes earlier!
Well, what can you do hey? So we went and had lunch instead! Spoleto is known for its abundant use of truffles in cooking, so we found a nice little restaurant which had a special ‘truffle’ menu and we tucked into that. Mark mentioned before that he can’t get enough of truffles – well, I am right there with him. I wonder if we can grow them in Brisbane and train Zander (our cat) to be a truffle pig? Anyway, we had truffle bread for starters, truffle pasta for mains, and there was no truffle dessert, but that was ok as we were pretty truffled out by then. It was truly delicious though, and the truffles have such a unique and earthy flavour.
We made our way back to the car, with totally full bellies and me a little giggly after two glasses of wine. The hill up to the car quickly stopped my giggles though! We found our way out of the narrow streets and back onto the highway, headed for Assisi. We had been told that Assisi was pretty, and I would have to agree that it is one of the prettiest towns we have seen so far. It is well set up to handle the amazingly large amount of tourists it gets every year and we found a very modern, and very large, car park station not far from the Basilica. We were quite some way from home, and so we decided to have a quick look at the streets on the way to the Basilica rather than wander the whole town. If we could do it again though, we would spend a night in Assisi as it really was lovely and quite quaint.
There were monks everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Assisi is one of the leading sites for Christian pilgrimage in Italy, and it shows. The Basilica is the burial place of Saint Francis, and his crypt is beneath the altar. The Basilica itself was lovely, full of gorgeous frescoes that were very colourful. Building began in 1228 just after St Francis’ death and over the next century, both upper and lower churches were decorated by the foremost artists of the day, including Cimabue, Pietro Lorenzetti and Giotti. This was another of the ‘no photos’ Duomo, and so you’ll just have to take my word about how fabulous it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment