Trip to Assisi

On Friday, we took the bus to Assisi which is only about 15 miles away.  The day started in thick fog which obscured the views on arriving, but cleared to give some spectacular sights later.

For some reason we've all heard of St Francis of Assisi - is it because of the talking to the birds thing maybe?  It's a beautiful small town of only 3000 people but gets over four million visitors a year.  Most come to see the huge Basilica built to celebrate St Francis in the 13th century.  Only the best artists were hired to decorate it - Giotto, Cimabue, Simone Martini - the whole interior is a riot (wrong word?) of wonderful frescoes.  We were glad to be there in the off season - no queues, and no noisy guided tours.  The colours of many of the frescoes are very bright, prompting in my mind certainly, the suspicion that when these works are "restored" - they may be be getting a bit of extra help ...

The basilica is pretty overwhelming (it is a two-storey church), and we soon set off to explore the town and its environs a bit,  The town is not too different from the many we visit in the Barga area, but it has a well-heeled look, with stonework in excellent repair, gardens well-tended and streets full of pots of geraniums. There is a lot of income to be made from four million visitors ...

We climbed up to the medieval fortress of Rocca Maggiore above the town where we had good views of the town and the valley of the Tiber snaking off to Rome.

The Basilica of St Francis (in evening light, just before we left)

Fresco by Simone Martini in the basilica

A square in the town, with Charlemagne's castle appearing through the mist above

Standard measures for bricks and roof tiles dating from the 1350s

The church masons must have had some fun doing the fiddly bits ...

View from higher up the town ...

... and the Basilica of St Francis  also appears through the mist