15 Aprile- A Day in Assisi

Last Friday, the 15th, was my first day off from the farm. Molly, another WWOOFer here on the farm with me, and I decided that we would head to Assisi for the day; we had heard that it was beautiful and was a major attraction for tourists (kinda like Italian Disneyland, I suppose). Aside from my time in Spoleto with the Haerrs, I had done very little no sight seeing in the traditional sense. Sure, I had walked around the towns near the farm, but Paterno has a population of 10, Montefiorello of 20 and Piedipaterno not many more than that; hardly the definition of tourist destinations. Besides, I bought one of those Italian tourist guides before leaving the states and it seemed like I should use it at least once to make it worth buying. So, Assisi it was....

Getting there sounded simple enough: catch the 7:50 bus to Spoleto, find a train headed for Assisi, get off at the appropriate station, catch the bus from the train station to central Assisi. In practice, things (once again) turned out to be slightly more difficult. Catching the bus... no problem. Getting a ticket for the train.... slight problem, nothing unmanageable just an unfamiliar automated ticket machine. Getting off at the right station.... harder than I thought. The tickets we were issued had the words "via Foligno" printed quite prominently upon them. It seemed to me that the only way of getting from Spoleto to Assisi was "via Foligno", I also seemed to remember that the tracks leading away from Foligno could take two different routes (whether this is actually true, I still cannot say). Surely, they wouldn't arbitrarily put "via Foligno" on our tickets for no reason at all. I therefore reasoned that we were supposed to change trains in Foligno to avoid being taken to God-knows-where. As it turns out, Italians do include arbitrary information on their train tickets, probably just to confuse idiotic foreigners like me. After "appropriately" exiting the train in Foligno, watching it depart, and examining the Departures board it became apparent that our original train was bound for Assisi after all. Son of a ...... Fortunately, another train was headed for Assisi in only a half hour. After killing time at the station cafe, we managed to board our second train of the morning and arrive at Assisi without further complications. The bus from the station to Assisi was also easy.... maybe I should just stick to buses and avoid trains all together.

For those of you who aren't up to date on the hometowns of all of the Catholic saints, Assisi is the home of Saint Francis of (you guessed it) Assisi, patron saint of Italy, founder of the Franciscan order and lover of nature. One of the primary attractions in Assisi is the Basilica named in his honor, and we headed there first.

The Basilica di San Francesco

While others were paying 2 euro  for a "guided" tour of the Basilica via a recording played through a headset, we stopped into the information center to inquire about the "free" tours with a real live human being (I say "free" because I donated a couple of euro at the end of the tour, it really was free...). Our tour guide's name was Michael, he was from Philidelphia, he was a 3rd order Franciscan, meaning that he was a layman follower of Saint Francis as opposed to being a monk (1st order) or nun (2nd order). (I realize that all the ordered Franciscans probably sound confusing, I'm somewhat confused myself and I was there when he explained it. Just go google it if you want to learn more.... I'm sure they have a wiki page.) At any rate, the tour was wonderful; Michael was very knowledgable and gave us a lot of interesting information about the life of St. Francis and the art and architecture of the Basilica. I would highly recommend that you take the tour if you ever find yourself in Assisi.

The Basilica di San Francesco consists of the upper church (constructed between 1230-1253) and the lower church (1228-1230). Both of which are filled with spectacular artwork, including some very famous frescoes (in the upper church is The Life of St. Francis by Giotto, and in the lower church Vingin and Child by Cimabue. Both are very interesting architecturally as well. Also at the Basilica are St. Francis (below the lower church) and a museum filled with medeival and renaissance artwork. To make everything more impressive, large portions of the church collapsed back in the earthquake of 1997... but there was very little visible evidence of it. (Check out the video)

Photography was prohibitted inside the basilica, but I took a few photos from the outside.

The upper and bell tower 

The grounds in front of the upper church

A statue of St. Francis

After our tour of the Basilica, we set off on the hike to the top of the hill to see the Rocca Maggione, taking in the sights on the way.

Me checking out the view

Molly on the streets of Assisi

This guy was half right... We did not feel like walking up again later.

Alas, upon reaching the Rocca, we discovered that it cost something like 10 euro just to get inside, so we opted to check out the free courtyard and the view instead. (Go ahead...call me a cheap ass).

La Rocca Maggione

The Courtyard

The view through a hole in the castle wall

After, we headed to check out a few more (free) sights, including the Basilica of St. Claire and a few more churches, before stopping for wine and sandwiches.

After exhausting our sight seeing capabilities, and noticing that the weather was beginning to turn, we headed back to the train station to catch a ride back to Spoleto. This leg of the trip went much better. The departures board said we would have to waait a little over an hour to catch a train heading to Spoleto, but there was a train that listed Foligno (yes, Foligno again) as the end of its line. My reasoning: we can catch the train to Foligno and see if there is an earlier train back to Spoleto leaving from there.... worst case scenario, we just wait for the same train that we were going to have to wait for in Assisi there. We snagged the earlier train ending in Foligno, checked the departures board (again) and saw that the train that we had just arrived on was heading to Spoleto after waiting at the station for 10 minutes. As such, we arrived back in Spoleto almost a full hour before the train we were "supposed" to take. Score. Maybe its safe for me to take trains after all.

Back in Spoleto, we headed over to the Haerr's "internet cafe" for some coffee and conversation (thanks again Haerrs) before catching the 8 o'clock bus back to Piedipaterno and the walk back up the hill to the farm by the light of headlamps.