14Oct12 Perugia
We snuck a quick look at a hall (sala dei notari) with fresco cover of Aesop's fables before being evicted by a team setting up for a tourism conference. Odd place for a conference considering the venue is normally free for public viewing.
Vanessa and I purchased the Perugia card with the intent of seeing as many museums and sights as we would over the next two days. We had the additional bonus of being given an audio guide each for the day which covered the major sites.
1) nobile collegio del cambio. It was small but has stunning frescos that were world class. Quite unexpected. Wow.
http://www.perugiacittamuseo.it/en/nobile-collegio-del-cambio-exchange-guild.html
2) galleria nazionale dell umbria
We saw religious paintings and thought that this could be quite tedious but it turned out to be a very impressive gallery with some world class paintings and frescos (it was a palace in a previous life). Wow.
3) nobile collegio della mercanzia
This was a room of wood panels. Impressive woodwork but hardly a museum.
4) Capella di san severo
This was a room with apparently the first fresco painted by Raphael. Hardly a museum but we did meet a British couple who had been living in Israel for the past 13 years and chatted with them about our respective travels around the world .We chatted for a while about the middle east before parting. They insisted that Israel was safe but unfortunately we do not have time to make it there this holiday.
5) Museo Capitolare
An archeological museum located under the Duomo. It was interesting to see the layers of history under the cathedral.
We have barely looked around the old city at this point. It looks very interesting.
We found a basic pizza restaurant (Mediterranean pizza) near the duomo with a wood fired oven far enough to be out of the tourist zone. We have been told take away pizza is "porta via" which is basically is out to the street so waited for 730pm opening and ordered a couple of pizzas. The waitress spoke english which made it easy. The pizza was quite nice and when we looked at online reviews it was claimed to be the best pizza in italy! We did not agree as the pizza at la spezia was better but it was still nice and we would go back again.
15Oct12 Perugia
Day trip to Assisi
Followed a sign to the train station. Lots of escalators later arrived at a private train station so ended up wandering down to the main station. walking is an experience as the drivers tend to treat pedestrians with contempt which was a problem when the footpaths kept ending along the way.
Short train ride to Assisi. It is on the next major hill from Perugia and is visible from the lookout points in that direction.
Assisi is a lovely hill town that essentially is a monastic settlement dedicated to St Francis (Francesco Bernardone). Think Franciscan monks. He died at Assisi and the basilica of St Francis was erected over his burial location. He probably would not have been impressed at the idea of the grandeur considering his rejection of worldly goods.
The monastery and basilica are imposing from a distance. Assisi is a walled town with a crumbling fortress on the top of the hill. Vanessa and I caught the bus to the top of the town and then walked our way down visiting churches, admiring the stone houses, dodging cars and other tourists. I regretted not taking a waterproof jacket at the wind was blowing and the weather was threatening. Vanessa was smug in her decision to wear one.
We arrived at the basilica at the bottom of town. It was an impressive church with an upper and lower section. It is considered one of the religious and artistic highlights in Europe. The upper section was alright and I really liked the lower section artwork.
We read the guide book and found that we had already seen the highlights so headed back to Perugia. The bus was packed with school kids and we could not get on but the driver yelled at them to pack in better and made just enough room for us and an Italian mum organised for our tickets to get time stamped. We hung on for the ride to the train station and a short wait later were onto the train back to Perugia.
Vanessa had noticed some silver space ships zipping past at the end of the train station so we decided to investigate and found that it was a cable driven mini metro up to Perugia old town. The bullet capsules turn up every couple of minutes and only take about 5 minutes to get up to the old city and cost 1.50 euro each. Very effective.
We decided to go to the archeological museum and headed off for some more exploring. We walked down from the upper old city to the lower old city section and came across a beautiful old portal in the fortress wall and then a massive old church with a real well in front of it. The 12th century church of Saint Domenico was very imposing and seemingly plain but it was clear from the small sections of fresco inside that it was once very grand. I found myself wandering around inside just visualizing how it might have looked.
The museum of archeology was open but we found that we had used our 5 museum passes already. A bit cheeky to call some of the sites that we had visited museums. We declined to pay to 4euro each and headed further down the road only to find a church in an old monastery ground which is now used as a university campus. It was a gem of a find as it was beautiful and the artwork was world class.
The church of monastery of saint peter.
http://www.aboutromania.com/perugia23.html
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_di_San_Pietro_%28Perugia%29
We read later that the woodwork in the choir area was considered the best in Italy. Unfortunately it was keep quite dark so it was hard to observe the details of the art. I was really impressed. Perugia has so many hidden surprises. Following along we came across a nice park area but it started raining so we didn't stay long and headed back to our hotel.
Perugia is a glorious town for walking and clearly it needs exploring to discover it's secrets.
16Oct12
A good looking day and have decided to explore the old town of perugia. We have a walking guide but it is too hard to follow so have just walked around. We found the main gate with inscriptions from the time of Octavius which was built on an ancient eutruscian base. Layers of history again. Perugia was the last city in Italy to fall to the romans. We found an aquaduct that I had read about in documents and wandered well out of the upper town and found a delightful romanic round temple on the outer defensive wall of perugia. Quite unexpected. I wanted to see a roman mosaic but was defeated by the Italian map again but later found it online so was not too disappointed as have seen better in other parts of Italy. We headed back to the church in the monastery for a better look but found the light was no better then onto the park for a salad lunch. It was cool with the sun behind the clouds.
We continued exploring while continuing to be chased by Italians in small cars driving impossible streets and ridiculous speeds. It clearly is difficult to smoke a cigarette while talking on a mobile phone, trying to steer and change gears on a bend on an uphill stretch at walking pace but we saw an Italian man attempting to do it. My belief is that Italians should never be allowed to drive as they cannot even manage to walk in crowds without difficulty so how can they possibly take on a more complex task before mastering the simpler. We have read that Italian drivers hit 10 pedestrians or cars in 1000 as compared to the french or British who were 0.7 in 1000. A driver even hit the Italian prime minister's wife whilst she was crossing on a pedestrian in front of the palace.Another lady reported having been told to be more careful next time after she was hit by a car whilst crossing on a pedestrian crossing! pedestrian crossing are obviously just a means for lining up their next victims.
Perugia is a delight to walk around and discover and we found our last point of interest which was a column of stairs on the back of an old palace by mid afternoon. It is a beautiful city but we have been finding it hard to photograph with the difficult light found in a lot of sections.
We dropped into one of the chocolate shops near the main museum and picked a selection of different chocolates at 6euro/100g not thinking of the cost at the time. We are slowly savouring the taste of our indulgence which is probably a good idea anyway. The entire town is about to become a mecca for chocolate lovers for the next 9 days so maybe you chocolate lovers out there should put it in your calender for next year .http://www.eurochocolate.com/perugia2012/ .It also just happens to be home of the baci chocolates
This has been our favourite city in Italy this trip.
Tomorrow we head for Rome...
