Assisi and its roundabouts: a trip in the green heart of Italy

Spiritual itinerary in the Umbrian valley, the green heart of Italy, from the "mystic" Assisi, the city of S. Francesco, to villages full of ancient flavors: Spello, Foligno and Bevagna.

A spiritual itinerary but also a route through amazing historical and artistical monuments. And further, a visit to villages almost out of the time where you can still breath a Medieval atmosphere. All this in the Umbrian Valley: from Assisi, evocative and full of memories, through Spello and Foligno, to the Roman city hall of Bevagna.

Umbria, green heart of Italy and backbone of the region, has been in the centuries a "door" between North and South. Already inhabited in the preistorical times, of which we keep many evidences, it was homeland of the Umbrians and then potentied by the Romans who built the first installations in the III century B.C. During Middle Age on the hills grew small centres and villages to escape both invasions from the North and malaria, which disappeared only after the complete reclamation of the land initiated by the State of the Church at the end of the XV century.

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Centre and actual religious lynch-pin of this landscape is Assisi, where San Francesco was born and acted until he died in its roundabouts. The village lays on a rocky buttress 424 meters high and dominates a large part of the Umbrian Valley. Its origins are not certain: it was inhabited by Umbrians and shows traces of the Etruscan and Roman influence, as it is proved by the many traces of the Roman "municipium" called Asisium, such as the well preserved front of Minerva Temple, the rests of the Forum, the amphitheatre, the Roman walls.

Kernel of the most mystical Assisi is the basilica of San Francesco, one of the biggest christian sanctuaries. It has an unusual structure made of two superposed churches in different styles. The first stone of the lower church was placed by Pope Gregorio IX the day after the canonisation of the Saint in 1228. Two years later the corpse of the Saint was secretly (for fear of relic chasers) taken to the unended church and buried there. A very evocative area is the one under the cathedral, where you may admire the crypt of a previous building, the sarcophagus containing S. Rufino's remains and the rests of a Carolingian cloister.

The gentle reliefs around Assisi take us to the silent medieval centres of the Umbrian Valley. Spello is one of the more known villages in the Spoleto Valley and the one gathering more Roman memories: the ring of walls, the gates, the rests of the amphitheatre and the theatre. But Spello is well known above all for the cycle of frescos by Pinturicchio, painted about 1500 and kept in the Baglioni Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is also worth visiting the gothic church of Sant'Andrea ('200 origins) and the baroque church of San Lorenzo.

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From Spello we move South to Foligno, founded in remote times on the sides of Topino. The present historical centre keeps traces of the Roman structure and mantains a part of the thirteenth-century walls. Among the main monuments are: the Cathedral and the Trinci Palace, seat of the Town Picture Gallery gathering works of the pictorial school operating in these places in the XV and XVI centuries. On the second Sunday of September in Foligno takes place the "Giostra della Quintana", a show of ability on horses followed by a beautiful historical procession with about 600 people dressed in costumes.

Vacanze in Umbria ad Assisi

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