30 August 2016I admit it. I like Perugia. Others are not so keen on it. It can take anything from half an hour to one and a half hours to get there from our house, if you get stuck in traffic on the way in. We get stuck in traffic……
The other thing about Perugia that you need to know is that the car park we have found is probably 15 minutes walk away from the centre of Perugia. Once you get into the centre it is all fairly level, but the walk up from the car park (next to the bus station) can be a bit of a hike. We did find a way of driving right the way up to the old town (which is on a level) before driving back down towards the bus stop. A warning, at some point in the trip to Perugia we picked up a parking ticket for entering a zone that we were not authorised to enter. I could not rule out that it was when we were dropping people off in the very centre of Perugia.
Anyway if you park at the car park it takes 10 to 15 minutes to get back up into the old town. It is quite an interesting walk though because you up through the catacombs and effectively through the old city walls and foundations. If you do that walk it brings you up to one end of what is in essence the ridge of a hill which has the main thoroughfare going from the central square at the top where we drop people (called Piazza Italia from recollection). I think the car park is in Piazza Partigiani.
The guide book that we had says that the Durmo Façade is amazing but the cathedral inside is pretty bare. This is nonsense. It is properly decorated and pretty sinfully I expect for one bought up a Presbyterian.Opposite the cathedral is a staircase leading up to the Sala Notario which is very impressive. If you go up the stairs even if you do not go into the Sala Notario you get lovely views back towards the cathedral. Inside is a lovely old room with coats of arms on the walls and unfortunately some rather intrusive black bars which are probably keeping the walls apart. Lovely stone windows in the morning sunlight when we were there. It would have been lovely to have curled up and read a book. Not permitted I suspect. The blue chairs inside that they have in there just about matches the décor. I think that the heraldic coats of arms are both impressive and fake, but might be wrong about that.
If you walk away from the cathedral back down the main thoroughfare with the Sala Notairo on your right, a few doors down you come to the Pinacotecca. I saw this once before (before I started keeping notes of what we did) but it is every bit as good as I remember it. The best paintings are on the top floor I think thus they tend to be the older ones. The floor one down from the top floor goes on and on. I tend to find that I get a bit art-ed out before the end. One day I will come back and start on the middle floor to do it properly. We had lunch in a restaurant on the left-had side as you back down the thoroughfare away from the cathedral. Nothing special. The waiter was a Columbian guy (aged 30) who worked all over Europe, spoke 6 to 7 languages and who was off to Portugal the following week looking for more work. He was more impressive than the food
26 August 2017
We came back to Perugia and visited the Palazzo Baldeschi. We stumbled on it because it is not terribly well advertised and it is on the left-hand side of the thoroughfare about one third of the way along. Has a not very good (i.e. do not bother) permanent art collection (including – and I promise I am not making this up – an exhibition on majolica as used in chemist shops). The temporary exhibition that we saw (From Giotto to Morandi) was well worth seeing. Some lovely early medieval art in the early rooms.
We walked up to the Etruscan well which is was a little space on the right past the Duomo. Go around this cathedral to the right (which incidentally reveals the front door of the church). The museum is a house museum but is well worth a visit.
I also found Musica (a CD shop) which is off Via Gugliemo Oberdan (number 51) basically turn right until you find the road that runs parallel to the central thoroughfare on the right-hand side of it as you are looking up towards the cathedral. This is Via Baglioni. There are quite a lot of little shops in there. The Via Oberdan crosses it Musica has a good vinyl section and quite a wide range of music. They obviously have a problem with theft because the CDs are practically glued into the racks, so you have to get someone to get them out for you if you want to buy anything. Who steals CDs these days? You can get it all for free online. Anyway definitely worth checking out if you want to buy some local music or just fancy a change to whatever you are listening to.
Last thought from today. In the Sala Notario there is a picture of a dog jumping off a castle wall into the sea. I could not find anything out about why they would have that picture there. Answers on a postcard?
The other piece of advice is do not follow your sat nav out of Perugia. It made for some very hairy driving.
We had lunch in one of the side roads off Pietiro Vannucci (I cannot remember whether it was Vie Giuseppe Mazzii (half way down that connecting road leading through to Vie Ballione that I mentioned earlier). You can eat outside. We had lunch next to a family who was explaining to their very young daughter how her best friend has got cancer and was going to lose all of her hair. The daughter they were speaking to must have been all of five years old – some life lesson.
30 August 2017
We visited Perugia this evening with friends for dinner. Lovely atmosphere, very mellow, relaxed and people having a really good time. Very different atmosphere from the atmosphere during the day. We ate at the Osteria Priori which is just off Corsa Vannucci on the left-hand side. Absolutely beautiful food.
We then went to have coffee at a bar on the Corsa Vannuci. I did not get the name for the bar but it has a fresco style ceiling and extremely good coffee. We were assured that it is where the locals come to buy their coffee for after dinner. Cookies and chocolates are also well worth it!August 18We were visiting the Sala dei Notari today and lucked into a rehearsal for a concert taking place that evening (no advertising – see earlier comments on the Trasimeno Music festival) There is a Perugia MusicFest which features young performers alongside older ones. Looks to be very good and they often do concerts in the Sala. Many of them free. Anyway we got to see Marina Lomazov doing Rachmaninov 2 (fabulous) and a young boy, joseph Rackers playing Mozart. Definite feelings of inadequacy watching him playing. Lovely lucky accident.
Summer 2021
Perugia seems to grow on people. Even my wife who was initially a bit unimpressed is more likely to agree to a visit when we are in the area. The big treat this time was visiting the MANU museaum which is the Museo Archeologico Nazionalle di Umbria. Definitely worth a visit in its own right but it turned out they were hosting a student masterclass course in the museum, so I sat in on the lesson, with the various pianists being put through their paces. Really interesting, and in fact I came back for the final concert a few days later, and listened to three different pieces, all played to a high standard. Typical that the concert was free, open to all and advertised nowhere other than the noticeboard inside the museum. That’s Italy!