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Perugia

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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!

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Cortona

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29 August 2016 

Of all the places we visited in Italy I think Cortona would probably rate as my wife’s favourite place and we have probably, as a result of this, visited it more times than anywhere else.   

There is a beautiful drive up through the hills to get to Cortona from Valliano.  It probably takes about an hour and a quarter to get there.  It is definitely idea to do the drive in good weather, because some of the views are excellent.   

Parking is not great but we found a large car park off the road going around the city walls, which was half empty.  I think the car park is the Parking of the Holy Spirit – I suspect this loses something in translation.  The first time we parked there we then walked back down the road to the main entrance into Cortona which is probably a good 15 minute walk to the heart of the old town and it is pretty steep.  Keep reading below as there is a much easier way of getting from this car park into Cortona. 

The car park is past the Santo Spirito and then up Via Guelfo just off the SP34.  We subsequently found that there is a partial escalator.  Instead of  turning down the hill when you come out of the car park, you walk up about three minutes and on the left-hand side, when you cross over the road,  there is a combination of a staircase and an escalator that brings you out at the top of the hill.   

If you do the walk up from the bottom there is a lovely square in the centre of the town.  Lots of coffee shops and clothes shops/bag shops (apparently).  You walk across the square towards the left-hand side (if you walked up from the bottom of the hill) to get to the Duomo which has some beautiful frescos and is right on the edge of the old town, so some spectacular views looking over the countryside.   

The opposite side of the square with the cathedral in it is the Museo Diocesano which is simply wonderful.  Assorted Fra Angelicoes [Angelici?].  These are laid out really well and there is a stunning red slippered angel telling Mary of her role to come.  We have visited here many times and it is never crowded so I cannot simply recommend it enough.  And the museum is very small so even those with the attention span of a forgetful goldfish can cope with it.  

Downstairs in the Museo there is some relatively nondescript artwork (modern) then there is a lovely little fresco chapel – totally unexpected and very atmospheric – a real find.   

Our first visit we only had little time so we did not get the MAEC museum but we did stop by the 54th Monstra Mercito Nazionale D’Antiquiro which had lots and lots of beautiful antiques to tempt me to do something silly.  We got speaking to one (very bored) woman in a room at the end who was completely excited to have someone to talk to that her Italian was literally coming out at full speed.  I just about held on but it did make realise how slowly most people speak when they are speaking to me.   

25 November 2016 

Well reader, I went back to MAEC. 

We discovered that there are two routes to Cortona.  The sat nav wanted us to head north and then effectively turn west across country to Cortona.  However it brought us back through Corneto which is the next village between Promano and Citta di Castello 

The other  sat nav had taken us effectively towards to Umbertide on the back route (not the E45)  and then over the Tiber and almost into Umbertide before we turned right at a small village (Niccone) where you join the SP146 

It generally either way took about an hour and a bit so I guess it is just down to traffic and your sense of taste.    

We tend to do the Niccone route by default to Cortona.   

When we went back in November to Cortona most of the shops (but not all of them) were open in the morning but there are some differences from the summer season.  Closing at 1pm and opening again at 4pm (and maybe a little fuzzy on the reopening bit) and some closed early and some seemed to open early.  Cash discounts become the norm.  I wanted to know if this is because it is safer to take the risk or is the assumption that most people in Italy in November are not typical tourists.  Maybe it was just difficult times in Italy.  The discount,  for what it is worth,  seems to be worth roughly 13% for cash.   

The MAEC museum is two different collections yoked together – it is quite easy to miss the second collection.  Downstairs is a fairly standard collection of Tuscan materials.  Some copies of stuff which are found elsewhere Some but not all of the exhibits are in English.  

 The amazing thing in this part was the collection of tondos.  These are drum burial sites, large ancient mausoleums which were used over centuries but not constantly.  .  But at least one of the tondos was for a single grave.  

Upstairs there is a wholly different collection of material from Cortona itself.  If you think of the Victoria and Albert museum in London which typical mish-mash of layout and mixed paintings (paintings not great – also just the like V&A) some Egyptian mummies (not great but in Cortona?), and a coin collection with looks as if they were all lined up neatly in rows and then someone lifted the board just enough so that each coin has slipped towards its neighbour.  Some of the museum is good.  Some is more ho hum but I enjoyed and would happily go back again.  It took about an hour wandering around. 

I also visited the church of San Francesco – it is off the main road which goes through the old town of Cortona on the right-hand side.  It is about 7 minutes walk from the central square.  The church itself is quite plain on the  outside  and some fragments of frescos on the walls inside and some ok paintings.  I am fairly sure theer is meant to be a Signorelli is in there somewhere.  I could not spot it – I know he is buried at the church.  

If you walk along the Via Nazionale from the Pizza Della Republica you come to a lovely square which opens out to one of the best views I have ever seen,  over towards Lake Trasimeno but with a full panorama of all the buildings, churches, straight roman roads etc.  In fact,  if you have someone that will not make the walk up any stairs in Cortona I would keep this square in mind.  If instead of going into the car park, you keep going past the car park entrance, ie you follow the road around with the car park on your right the road goes up towards the town and you come out in this square.  You do not need to go into the centre town because there is then a route effectively turning left around the fountain in the centre of the square you end up going straight back down and out almost by the car park again.  We have used that a few times to drop people off if they were not up to walking.  This is also the square which you come up to when using the escalators from the car park 

On this visit I also visited San Dominico which is off the square with amazing views.  The church itself had nothing spectacular.  There is on 14th century fresco which was obviously bricked up and so survived on its own until now.  Lovely very different colouring from the norm.  Did the workmen bricking up the fresco worry about hiding the Virgin from sight or was it just a job?  

15 April 2017  

See I told you we came here a lot.   

Dropped the others in our party at the top of the town in square with the amazing views.  It took two minutes to drive back down the hill to the car park once you have done the drop off.  Turn right at the bottom of the hill to get back towards the car park on your left.  The escalator itself takes about three or four minutes with the stairs if you are reasonably fit and energetic about it.   

Coffee at the square with the view was good.  With a fruit muffin which was met with approval.  

Had lunch on the terrace overlooking the main square.  Restaurante La Loggetta on Via Del Pescheria.  A real find,  although we notice it gets very busy.  The pasta was excellent.  

Had another trip around the cathedral.  It is nothing special.  It looks like it was made out of concrete, very gloomy and the paintings do not really offset the tone and the feel of the grey.  The Signorellis, which I found this time, are excellent.  

By the way, I quite genuinely reckon that there are more defibrillator machines on street corners in Cortona than there are cash points/bancomats.  Presumably says something about the average experience of visitors in Cortona. 

20 August 2017 

This was a bit of an expensive trip to Cortona.  Encountered a wonderful art shop (just off Via Nazionale).  My wife had found it on a previous girls only trip to Italy.  We bought a stunning photograph of Italian countryside and some painted tiles which we are going to have to go back in November to collect.   The shop is down a passageway on the right hand side as you walk away from the centre of the town.  It’s only a couple  of minutes along the road. Well worth a detour but lock up your money before going   The shop is called Pozzo – Galleria Del Arte, Via Nazionale, 10, Cortona And owner/manager is very helpful.

I tried to visit some of the sites that I have not been to before in Cortona.  The Chiesa San Nicollo was allegedly open but the church itself was all locked up.  I also visited the church of San Francesco but realised I had been there previously.  It is ok but nothing special.  Paintings on the wall are a bit too much of a show off.   

Also we walked to the top end of Cortona Old Town which has got excellent views (Ponte Montanina) and then found the church of  San Cristoforo which is a lovely deserted little church.  It has the remnants of a fresco facing you as you go in and galleries at the back end of the church.  Look at the well preserved fresco behind the alter.  Shame it does not get a mention in the main guidebook so it is a pretty good example of the richness of Cortona. 

We had lunch at the restaurant overlooking the square again.  Service was slow but the food was very good.  

10 November 2017 

We got talking to someone on the plane out to Italy on this trip and he recommended the restaurant Croce del Travaglio which is right next to the theatre (and has green shutters).  Walk past the theatre on the left-hand side heading up hill and it is a minute or so walk beyond that.  He said it was the best pizza he had ever eaten and he  was absolutely right.  It is that good.

Summer 2021

We have always found Cortona to be pretty busy and usually hot too, so we were very pleased to find Ristorante Tempero Via Benedetti 10/12 which is just off the main squares, has its own little courtyard area, in the shade. If you want a little more peace and quiet than lunch on the main squares, do check this restaurant out.

If you are interested in picking up some high end Tuscan/Umbrian wine and would like some good advice on what to get, do Margheriti on Via Nazionale 61 Very pleasant, excellent English and yes, you could spend the GNP of a Carribean island in there, if you wanted to – but we got some excellent rose wine there and they were happy to make recommendations. We have been there two or three times, and we have enjoyed all of their choices for us.

How to get to our house from Promano

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We thought it would be helpful to do a detailed description of the journey up to the house from Promano in the valley to our house

Mind you, if you have tried the What3Words App, the words diehard.enjoys.trout will get you there too. https://what3words.com if you are interested in trying the app.

Starting at 0000 and the milometer is saying 0 km.

If you go through Promano with the Co-op café and supermarket shop on your left-hand side then on your left-hand side past the (very useful and friendly petrol station/garage (on your left-hand side) you keep following the main road (which is going towards Citta de Castello although that is not signed).

You will be driving only a three or four minutes before the right hand turn you are looking for will come up

There is the Post Office on the right-hand side and then you keep going on main road until you come to a right-hand turn which is quite narrow. It is about a kilometre beyond where the Promano supermarket is. There is a 50km a hour sign on the right-hand side. The road is going down a slight hill and the easiest way to recognise that you are coming up to the turn off is the Fattoria Bianchini building ahead of you on the left. the Bianchini name is painted on the factory wall facing you as you come down the road. The actual factor is just AFTER the turn you are looking for on the right hand side of the road. There is also a small blue sign to Marchigliano and Felceto on a small blue sign on the right-hand side. This marks the turn you are looking for.

The road itself that you are turning into is quite narrow and is indentified as Tommaso Marinetti.

You then follow the road that you have joined, bend round to the right immediately, do not go straight ahead and the road starts to climb and almost immediately you start to move out of the inhabited area. After about 100 yards the road bends around to the left, past a 50km an hour sign, although there is not much chance of you doing more than that on the state of these roads.

After that you stay on this road all the way up to the turn to our house. It is that simple (and the best advice I can give is that basically if in doubt keep following the road you are on.

The road takes you up between a number of houses interspersed with fields. Arter about 2km there is a green refuse recycling unit on your right.

At the 3km mark also you leave the houses behind and it is fields and then trees on either side of the road. The road will drop down at various points before rising again. So do not worry if the road is going down and you know you are meant to be going up.

At the 4km mark the road bends around to the left. It looks like a fork in the road but the exit to the right is a private drive. There is a farm house on the right and it is extremely easy to follow the road around to the right because it is not immediately apparent which one is the main road. Anyway it is the road on the left that you want and if you go wrong you will pretty quickly realise your mistake. Immediately after the farm, if you take a left-hand turn, the road will drop down quite steeply and bend around to the left.

There is then a small bridge that you go over before the road starts to climb up again. For about 400 yards after the bridge there is a deserted farm house on the right-hand side and then the road bends around to the left which takes you even further uphill.

At the 5km mark there is a sign on the left in brown to Capanneto which you do not take and you keep going straight ahead. You then end up on the ridge of the hill with the land dropping away either side of you.

At the 5 and bit Km mark our house is visible on the hillside opposite you straight ahead.

At the 6km mark there is a track off on the left-hand side of the main tarmac road goes around to the right. This is a sign that you are close to the turn off for Valliano and no more than a minute or two away from turning left, onto our white road.

The road bends around to the left (fragile crash barrier on the right-hand side followed by a warning sign after you have made it round the corner – this is Italy of course).

The road then curves around to the right and rises slightly and there is a line of telegraph poles crossing the road. This is a sign that you are at the turn left for Valliano. The time is now 12 minutes after starting and the milometer says 7 km.

The turn into the road to Valliano you take is left. There are some new vines on the right-hand side and grass field on the left. The road up to Valliano is unpaved and so is stone/earth etc.

If you miss the turn and go on past it, you will see the field of olives immediately after it on your left hand side. The road bends around to the right and at the 8km mark there is a large yellow crane parked in a lay by that starts to drop fairly consistently. At 9km you pass a house on the left-hand side with grey gates and an ivy hedge either side. There is a space for turning the car around on the right-hand side. Use it!

If you spend time driving around you will realise that there are various ways of getting down to the valley. The route we have given you here is the easiest to describe, but if you come out of our white road and turn left, you can find your way down to the valley but taking a right hand turn and following your nose.

The White Road up to Valliano takes 3 minutes to drive and the steepest bit is the bit at the very start of the drive. It takes about 3 minutes driving to get to the gates to our house There is one large unoccupied house on the right-hand side after a minute. The road drops down hill and Valliano is facing your on left-hand side on the small hill opposite. There is a warehouse on the right-hand side just before our gates You go left past the warehouse and then the gates Valliano are about 50 yards down on the left-hand side. You really can’t miss them.

The parking space is round the side of the front house, and Valliano Chiesa is the building behind it

Time for a drink to celebrate your arrival.

Torgiano

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28 August 2017

)The drive probably takes an hour. You are almost back at the airport again. The Lungarotti vineyard shop/site which we visited previously now it seems shut to visitors but if you visit the museum of wine in Torgiano itself, there is a Lungarotti shop next to it. Highly recommended. The last time we visited the shop (sadly I was driving,) an awful lot of wine tasting was done by the party followed by the inevitable purchases of more wine than we had gone in there to buy.

The ticket to the Museum of Wine also covers the Museum of Olive oil which is in the parallel street further on up the road heading into town.

The Museum of Wine was really interesting from all the words associated with cultivation/wine making we have in regular usage now, to examples of all the wine presses etc. From recollection there are about 20 rooms in the museum. It is bigger than you think.

The wine shop next door also sells other bits and pieces, corkscrews, some majolica stuff etc. The woman who was manning the shop on the day we went in spoke limited English so my Italian was given a good workout. She explained she had fractured her wrist and had a titanium plate and screws installed. She was now going to have to have the operation redone because it had not worked. At least she made some money out of our visit.

The Olive oil Museum is a similar size and equally interesting. One of the tiny exhibits was a miniature amphora for olive oil which had been made at the time of the earliest Greek and Persian wars. It certainly made you think when you saw the pristine quality of the amphora.

We had lunch at the restaurant just up the road from the wine museum and will were showered with free crisps to go with the Highlander crisps we had found on sale in a local supermarket. Why the Highlands are associated with crisps?

There is a lovely wine shop/delicatessen on the other side of the road facing the wine museum with a great extensive collection of wines and we visited that as well.

Assisi

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27 August 2016
It takes about 50 minutes to drive to Assisi. You go down the E45 and then past Perugia and turn right off the E45 to Assisi. I have now visited Assisi more than any other tourist site in the area, and still think the Basilica of San Francesco is wonderful
We have never really discovered the best way to get to Assisi old town. There are in fact two towns called Assisi. One is at the bottom of the hill and one is at the top of the hill and the sat nav did not seem able to work out the difference between the two. You want the one at the top of the hill.
I think that it is best to miss the first turn off to Assisi, and you take the second one but I strongly suspect we have not cracked this yet. Frankly, if you end up in Assisi Modern, at the bottom of the hill, you will eventually find your way up the hill because you can at least see where you are heading. You will find a road largely going up on the left-hand side of the hill, as you are looking up at the hill if you are in Assisi Modern. There is a road that takes you right up to the up to the car parks etc in the town at the top of the hill. It starts to zigzag when you get to the main hill.
We were able to park right of front of the Basilica Di San Francesco in an underground car park next to the bus station. There was still spaces when we left at 3pm or so. For earlier visits we would assume that would be all full up and parked at the far side of Assisi then walked across, which had taken about 15 minutes. On this visit and indeed a number of other visits since we have always been able to get into the car park in front of the Basilica so that is what you should aim for.
The walk up to the entrance from the but station car park takes about 10 minutes. The road winds around and gives great views over the plain and a side view of the main church.
I was originally advised to get there very early and certainly if you do get there (I think it opens about 8am or 8.30am) I had the place practically to myself for the first half an hour or 40 minutes. On this occasion we got there about 10am and there was no queue to get in although there were of course a number of people visiting. We went in downstairs first to look at the lower church and worked our way up to the church on top. I definitely recommend doing it that way.
I am sure there is some psychological test that you can do as to whether you prefer downstairs or upstairs. I love the downstairs part of the Basilica.  Upstairs is fine and would be a knock out in any other circumstances. But I think downstairs is fabulous.
When you go in downstairs you turn left and you are looking down the nave of the aisle towards the alter. The most impressive part is the area right next to the alter (the crossing?). There are crowds of people in there, even though there was no queue but the guides now have microphones and earpieces for each tour party which makes life better for everyone including the guard on the door whose job it is to say “silenzio shhhh” every few minutes. On this occasion we had to the leave the lower church to go outside and round on the road up to the main part because they were doing a service for those who had died in the earthquake while we were out there. Usually you can go up through a narrow doorway at the far end of the church from where you entered it, which makes the impact of the differences downstairs and upstairs all the more striking.
I think the upper part is the more famous part but as I say I am less impressed by it. Clearly it is spectacular. Some very famous images e.g Saint Francis supporting the church and another panel showing him preaching to the birds for example. My wife was disappointed that there were not more of him with the animals…My favourite image is on the left hand side of the church as you walk down towards the altar, in the crossing on the left – the colour has almost all disappeared but the remaining image looks a bit like a print but has an energy which the more celebrated pictures do not. IMHO
The cathedral has a lovely mournful knight outside on the hillside, facing it, designed I think by Norbetto. There was a lovely shop with Norbetto things in the window on the left-hand side on the way up to the Piazza Del Commune. From what I can see online, the statue is apparently St Francis returning to Assisi having decided not to fight in the wars but instead serve God. I do not know if it is true or not but whoever was posting online seemed very convinced that it was the right answer.

If you then walk to Santa Chiara, you go via Piazza Del Commune that takes about 20 minutes . It is fairly steadily up hill from the cathedral. The crypt where she is buried is appropriately gloomy (the crypt of Saint Francis has fake flowers in it – Italian penny pinching or respecting his adoration for life – you choose). The chapel itself is pretty bare.
The Temple of Minerva church in the Piazza Del Commune is easily recognisable from the fluted roman columns outside as originally being something other than a church. The clue is in the name – Santa Maria Sopra Minerva which is a pretty good illustration of the composite history of this church which was originally a Roman temple to Minerva and was presumably taken over when the Empire converted. The inside is an unexpected treat, very baroque and completely over the top, totally at odds with the Romanesque exterior.
The Duomo is a short walk from Santa Chiara further away from the Piazza del Commune. It has a lovely façade to it. We stood and watched some street entertainers who persuaded a number of tourists to help out whilst one of the actors intoned the story – but I could not figure out what it was about and I doubt the tourists knew any better than I did.

It is a drive to get Chiesa Santa Maria Degli Angeli.which is a very large church back down the hill in what I think of as Assisi modern. I had read somewhere that it was the sixth largest church worldwide – I do not actually think this is correct – certainly if you worship at the God of Wikipedia there are plenty larger, but it is pretty big however you measure it. You park near some gardens in front of the church then walk up to the very imposing façade.
Inside is very odd. The space impact is lessened by the not very interesting tapestries that are hanging in the nave and which would interfere with the space. Effectively the tapestries screen the nave from the side aisles. The other peculiar thing is the Porziuncola which is the original chapel where Saint Francis used to pray and which is located inside the larger church. The original chapel has a façade facing the congregation in the larger church that makes it look like a child’s tent or a Wendy house.  Seen from the side or behind the little chapel is rather more impressive but in front very not impressive.  It is worth a visit  but there is no doubt that the main attraction is up the hill.
28 June 2017
We visited Assisi again today. We still have not found the best route to it from the E45. On this occasion we took the first sign to Assisi, off the E45 I should say, and we just then followed the road towards the hill on which the cathedral is based and managed to get there. Still don’t think we have it right.
We started at the lower level and found that at 11.30am there was a church service going on in the chapel straight ahead of you as you go into the lower cathedral. There were 100 or so people in attendance. This is more than the chapel could accommodate so people were kneeling in the aisles. Depending on how suspicious you are, singing was either surprisingly good and enthusiastic or there were backing tapes were involved.
The impression downstairs is blue. The ceiling of the downstairs church is divided into four triangles between each arch and is blue with stars in a row or triangles depending on your perspective. The massive mural at the end has a different sky blue colour to it. The circles overhead are each individually patterned (Arabic/geometric patterns prevailing). The arches downstairs have a Romanesque curve whereas those above have a definite point to the arch.

When you enter the church downstairs through the door, the nave runs away to your left with at first little to hint at the splendour and impact awaiting you when you stand close to the alter where the nave reveals the full range of the frescos behind the altar, in the transepts and overhead.
The wooden roof bands (technical term needed?) run from each corner of the arch to the opposite corner to create the four triangles in each space

The cross hanging above he alter is much older in appearance and islit so it really catches your eye from the far end of the church. Perspective is what counts and in the main fresco behind the altar is of the Day of Judgment with three trumpeters waking the saved and the damned alike. Part of the mural incorporates the window in the wall. There is a sloping windowsill below the window, but the cherub on it is painted so to appear to be standing up. Very clever use of perspective. There is also similar trick in one of the side chapels where an arch meets a rounded pillar but the design painted on the arch meshes perfectly into the rounded pillar.
Upstairs is much cooler, less chaos and more cerebral. High ceilings, simple regular panels showing the life of Saint Frances. A fair amount of earthquake damage is still apparent (I had forgotten that Assisi was badly hit and people died in the church). My favourite of the frescos upstairs is straight across past the alter (if you pass the alter to your right) to the far side of the transept. If you turn and face the alter having cross the transept, the picture on your right seems to have lost all of its colour yet there is an energy in the force which I think is lacking in many of the other images in that part of the cathedral. I think it is partly the angle of Christ’s hip on the cross and the dramatic pose of one of the women watching him die and it is the undecipherable contact between a Saint and Jesus on the right-hand side of the picture. It looks Mannerist to me but a way which is wholly out of keeping with the rest of the upstairs.
25 August 2017
Just a few extra thoughts about the Basilica.  Over the altar downstairs facing you as you go in (where they held the service last time I was here) I noticed that there are lovely frescoes of curtains painted over the arch of the chapel as if the curtains have been drawn back to let you see. They are a beautiful red colour too.
The Cappello Di Niccolo is on the right-hand side of the alter (as you are facing it) (think transept if the church had them). I would like to know more about what the shipwreck relates to – one of the panels clearly indicates that he had a problem with the shipwreck.
The bus station car park was full by 11am today.

Gubbio

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26 August 2016
It takes about 45 minutes to drive to Gubbio on the E45 towards Perugia. Do beware however that one of the signs that you pass on the E45 is completely the wrong distance to get to Gubbio and so actually is significantly further away than the sign indicates. I suspect it is a sign for the distance to the Gubbio turn off from the E45 but then the distance given seems too long. Answers on a postcard please.
We set the sat nav for the Piazza Quatri Martiri and found parking nearby for two cars for our party.
The walk up to the Piazza Consoli is quite steep but relatively short. The road winds around the back of the building and the entrance is on the Piazza Grande side, which is opposite the Piazza Pretoriale which looks as if it originally had a different shape, as it extended over into the Piazza itself judging by the protruding brickwork. When you pass in front of the Piazza Grande, if you are on the level below it, walking along the street it is worth looking up and you realise that the whole piazza is built on gigantic arches – really quite impressive.
The Piazza Consoli is a large building with a mix of art/archaeology. It has the Eugubian tablets in one room which is about 10 tablets written in old Umbrian. Some of them are almost comprehensible if you stare at them long enough. You can flip over for a translation if you cannot work it out yourself. There are great views over the square of the neighbouring valley from the museum.
The Via xx Settembre runs alongside the Piazza Grande. Some shops (lots of tat). The route up to the Duomo goes up on the Via xx Settembre and then back on itself the Via xx Monte Feltro. It takes about 10 minutes to walk up to the cathedral. There is a short cut which we only found on the way down. As you are coming back down you can turn right and rather than taking the winding route there is a short cut which takes you straight down to the Via xx Settembre through an archway. I think it would be a fairly steep climb up that route. I would stick with the more gentle route going up!.
At the top of the Duomo (which is fairly nondescript from the my recollection) is the Palazzo Ducale. It is rather more interesting. There is some roman era foundations exposed to view.
If you walk further up beyond the Duomo, about 5 minutes there is some lovely views back over Gubbio.
20 August 2017
We went back to Gubbio today. The normal car parking etc was all blocked off because of the Trofeo Fagioli which is a hill course motor race. Lots of lovely but quite small racing cars were parked up at the side of the road through the normal car park near the Teatro Romano. We parked in Via Russeau and then walked up Via Cavour into the centre.
My first stop was the Cattedrali San Francesco – which is diagonally right across the patch of grass which has the bus station at the far side. It is before you start to climb up into the centre of Gubbio. It is about 10 minutes walk from where I parked the car.
The church is lovely. At the far end there are two chapels which have lots of beautiful frescos, some in pretty good condition. The chapel on the right has a sort of shelf part way up the wall so effectively it becomes too a chapel and a wall panel above it but the style of the frescos above and below matches. I do not know why they felt it was a good idea to divide the chapel in that fashion. The chapel on the left has survived better without the divide and as a result I think it has rather more impact.
I then went looking for Chiesa San Agostino which is a 10 minute walk if you cut across the centre of the old town. It is probably easier to walk around the City walls to the Porto Romano which is the nearest gate.
There was a church service going on there so I sat at the back and practiced my Italian, if not any faith – it was a full crowd but I think the service was the anniversary of the founding of the church (it is possible that I am of course wrong about this). The priest taking the service spoken lovely slow Italian and so I strongly suspect a load of tourist were attending this service. It was all very casual and informal and quite lovely.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that Roman Catholics do not dress up to meet their god on Sunday but protestants do. There were several very cute looking alter boys and girls (who were sent around to take the collection – the Roman Catholic church clearly knows what it is about). I loved the fact that the boy and girl doing the collection nearest to me go to the back of the church having collected money and then had a competition to see who had collected more. I also noticed that confession was going on during the service, which seems to be a bit of double counting if you are attending church.
The hymns were interesting. Very poppy, guitar based, happy clappy songs – not what I was expecting at all.
The frescos over the alter were beautiful. Obviously I could not go up and look at them closely because of the service but it is definitely worth a return trip when there is no service going on.
It was 10 minutes or so to walk back into the centre of the old town, I had a coffee and after the coffee I went back to the Teatro Romano which has the archaeological museum to its left. It cost €8 to get in to the museum and the Teatro with a combined ticket. I am not sure if you can get into the Teatro on its own.
The museum is well worth doing but not fantastic. The young woman who sold me the ticket persuaded me to sit through a film in Italian on the site. She promised English sub-titles but I got English chapter headings instead. There are some interesting looking mosaics in the museum itself which some were slightly psychedelic in places.
The Teatro is in ruins but it is well worth a walk around it. I had not realised the size of the structure that existed behind the stage as a backdrop but you only get a sense of it if you wonder around. It felt like an odd juxtaposition to be standing in the old Teatro looking at the motor racing going up the hill for the Fagioli competition.  There are some Roman mosaics about five minutes walk away in the park area but when we last went to see them they had been put behind wiring and fences so you could only see them at authorised hours.

August 18

Piazza Martiri is a good spot for parking if you can get in. You get a yellow plastic token which you then redeem at the car park machine to get out.

The Palazzo Ducale is now 12 Euros but combined with Duomo and one other building (can’t remember which).  Etruscan tablets are the best thing in here I think.

December 18

Gubbio boasts the tallest Christmas tree in the world.  It is a bit of a cheat really because the “tree” is Christmas tree lights strung up the mountainside above Gubbio.  But since recent people to turn the lights have included the last two popes and the International Space Station, I think we can forgive the hype.   Anyway we went on the first Saturday in December during the day.  Bad mistake.  Christmas market and hordes and hordes of people meant that there was no parking so we gave it up as a bad job.  If you are going  go early I think and be prepared for serious crowds.

Castiglion Fiorentino

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I visited this small town on 1 September 2016 on my way back from Arezzo. It is somewhere between 50 minutes to a one hour drive from Valliano. It was very much a spur of the moment thing. It looked interesting and the Arezzo road takes you right past the main city gate.
I parked at the bottom of the Corso Italia which was very easy but I have no idea whether it would have been too busy to park there during the day because I got there at about 18:00 or so. I followed the Corso Italia up past a mix of lovely shops, some standard looking restaurants and a lovely shop window on the corner advertising which looked like some amazing ceramics. Sadly the advert was for a shop based somewhere else in Castiglion Fiorentino and I have never managed to find the shop.
The walk from the main city gates to the main town gate takes about seven minutes and brings you up onto the top of the town and a piazza with a restaurant. It is the Piazza Municipale which has amazing restaurants/loggia with views down over the plains. One side of the loggia was taken up with a café bar and the other with a restaurant. If the food was as good as the views then I would highly recommended both.
The only other pub sign I saw was for the Velvet Underground pub (genuinely its name) which is past the piazza and down the hill to the other side.
The right hand turn off the Corso Italia takes you up to a green open space, more views and tall tower at the very top of the hill. The green space has walls and used to have an Etruscan temple though there are no remains other than the notice itself to tell you what used to be there. The museum by that space was closed (I think weekend opening times only?).

From the piazza municipale there, there are at least a couple of other good churches and the guidebook mentions a museum/art gallery somewhere in the town.
I had seen an interesting looking piazza on the left on my way up the Corso Italia so on my way back down the hill again I took a right-hand turn to go investigate it. It is fairly modest piazza with a church (San Francesco) off to one side. It seemed quite badly looked after in my impression, from the outside at least. The church itself was shut but from the door on the left there was beautiful classical music playing (Mozart??) and so I asked the man on the door if I could sneak in to listen through the door to have a listen. Heavenly.
The garden was a cloistered garden. Under the roofing on the right-hand side a small German orchestra was rehearsing for a concert that evening. There must have been 40 or so white plastic chairs I assume that was where they were going to be performing in the evening. The female conductor was taking the orchestra through a piece led by two solo flutes. There were only a couple of other watchers and a gaggle of kids – obviously with the orchestra. The two soloists were women (although the orchestra itself was mixed). One of the women was tall and thin which reminded me of that saying about people eventually looking after their pets.  I wonder is true that people start to look like their pets, do musicians start to look like their instruments?
I did a little bit of research when I got back home. I have worked out that the orchestra was a German orchestra doing a show at 9.15pm that evening and apparently had been playing in Castiglion Fiorentino for 40 years now. Be a lovely thing to go and watch if we ever get the chance.

26 November 2016
We went back to Castiglion Fiorentino because I wanted to show Mrs R the town. However this time round it was a bit of a disappointment. Mostly the town was shut up, there was nowhere to eat (apart from an ok-ish looking restaurant). The views were totally lost in the mist.

I think the moral from that is that it is not a place to visit out of season. However if you are passing during the summer it is definitely worth a stop in just to do a bit of exploring and to sample the view.

Summer 2021

We went back for a morning one summer’s day and the place was how I remembered it from our first visit.  Lovely view, very photogenic generally, so it made for a lovely trip.  It is about an hour maximum to get there, and the drive is pretty pleasant too.  Coffee in the Bar Maro on the way up the hill (on your left) once you have gone through the gates in the old town walls.  Good coffee and biscuits!

I have always parked at the bottom of the hill but it seems that there is good parking area higher up, still outside the city walls, which we saw when we were following the Satnave coming out of Castiglione, and which would be worth bearing in mind if the little car park at the bottom of the hill, just outside the City walls is full up.

Arezzo

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Arezzo

27/8/16

It takes about an hour to drive from Valliano to Arezzo. Broadly speaking you go via Citta di Castello and then turn left across country. The journey is fine but nothing particularly noteworthy on route.

I ended up parking near the Archeological museum. To be honest, I think this was probably a mistake. The parking was for a maximum of two hours. My guide book, the Rough Guide to Tuscany and Umbria was worse than useless for finding somewhere to park. Be warned! It shows the ice cream parlours in Arezzo, but not the car parks. When I went online subsequently there does look to be a fair amount of car parks nearby and indeed I think they are €3 for the day. I therefore think if you aim for the bottom of the Corso Italia you will not go wrong when it comes to car park spaces.

Walking up Corso Italia will take you up through the old town. It is a relatively gentle climb up to Casa San Francesco but after that the Duomo itself is a steep climb further on. Be warned the visiting times in the Rough Guide are now incorrect. The cathedral was shut and so was the museum of modern arts. The shops mostly seemed to be shut in Arezzo between 1/1.30pm and 3/3.30pm.

The church of San Francesco is a bit frustrating to be honest. It is half way up the Corso Italia and a bit off to the left. It is a fairly large and quite light building and most of the walls, apart from the choir of the church (which is at the far end of the church) if you coming through the main door. There are remnants of frescos covering the side walls but they are isolated and only small pieces remain. If you think of a jigsaw which no one has completed and with the pieces spread out over a wide area you would have some sort of idea of the effect.

The choir at the end by Piero Della Francesca is fabulous. I also think it is impossible to photograph or certainly it was beyond my capabilities. Send me copies if you manage to do better than I did! It has either suffered less from the damage done to the other frescos or it has been restored. I do not know which. From the noise made by a crying baby in the side chapel while I was visiting I can certainly vouch for the fact that the cathedral has (sadly) excellent acoustics. In front of the choir hangs a crucifixion which looks very old. It does not obscure or detract from the frescos behind it, it rather adds to the overall impression.

I then visited the Casa di Giorgio Vasari (be careful the guidebook map shows the Loggia di Vasari – which is a different building). The Casa di Giorgio Vasari is about two minutes walk from the cathedral which in turn is about 10 minutes from church San Francesco. In reality the Vasari place is ok but nothing special. A series of rooms with pretty mediocre art on the walls including a number by Mr V himself. The English translation on the notices in the museum is properly terrible. It is definitely worth reading to try to work out what the original Italian says. The best exhibit I thought is one of the last you come to, which had a statue (I think a Venus de Milo copy? ) on a raised pedestal against the background of painted figures. Her light marbled stone shone against the darker background and worked really work.

I bought a €12 ticket which also covered the San Francesco church and various galleries and museums etc including the Vasari house and the medieval museum and archaeological museum. If you are planning on doing all of these then that is probably a very cost effective way of doing it.

The walk back to the Casa Italia to the Duomo is pretty steep but short. When I went back along the Casa Italia I found a little bookshop on the right-hand side just off the Casa itself and ended up buying a notebook in which I have jotted down notes etc from our trip.
The Pieve de Santa Maria is a huge Romanesque church with lovely carved figures above the main door on your way into the church. I stopped in here on the way back to the car and t is definitely worth a stop.

The archaeological museum/amphitheatre is lovely. The amphitheatre which forms part of the museum is basically ground level only with entrances/gateways marked out, I assume the old public entrance to the amphitheatre rather than the participants. Not much to see but quite atmospheric nonetheless.

The museum forms part of one side of the amphitheatre, it has been nicely built up from the amphitheatre space. The museum is much bigger than you expect with 2 floors and well labelled and informative exhibits. Equally not too much of anything, so no getting bored!
The Etruscan funerary exhibits were amazing and strange. The pottery too was fascinating (and believe me that is not a sentence I ever expected to put on line – there is another one coming up in a moment so see if you can spot that too) Some of the designs really seem to be capturing movement/emotion.

The pottery is coralene style which I had never heard of. Its distinctive characteristic is raised beads and glass and here the pottery had lovely red clay with reliefs. There is one section of the display cabinet showcasing erotic coralene pottery. But it is placed as low as possible level so although it clearly labelled “erotic designs” you would have to actually get down on your hands and knees to see (apparently). The opposite of the top shelf policy is placing something like that at a level where only the kids can see it easily.

The whole archaeological museum is definitely worth another visit.

If you are thinking of planning a visit one good local website I came across was ArezzoOra.it

Perguia Airport to Valliano/Valliano to Perugia airport

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Perugia Airport to Valliano

The airport in Perugia is very convenient for getting to and from Valliano. The drive takes about 40 minutes, assuming the traffic is clear, and by and large it always has been when we have been visiting.

Getting from Perugia to Valliano is fairly easy.  The airport is relatively small and so, apart from sometimes a queue for the hire cars, it all functions fairly efficiently.

If you have a sat nav in your hire car or you are using iPhones etc then obviously be guided by them. I suggest you set the Sat Nav for Promano, which will take you up the E45 past Perugia itself, and then north, towards Cesena Nord (which is where the E45 heads).  Once you turn off at Promano follow the directions elsewhere in this blog to get to Valliano

If you are free-spirited enough to believe you don’t need sat nav, then good luck.  We tend to take the first right out of the airport as soon as we leave the airport car park and that takes us across country to join the E45.  Join E45 heading for Cesena Nord then stay on that for about 25 minutes or so, and take Promano exit

That then takes you around the side of Perugia on the way to Promano where you leave the E45 and start the drive up to the hills to reach Valliano.

Valliano to Perugia Airport

The journey takes no more than 40 minutes in our experience but there is one bit where it is easy to miss the turn off if you are not using sat nav, so allow sufficient time

Two points to watch out for if you are going to the airport with a hire car and you need to ensure it has a full tank of petrol.

The last petrol station is about 2km after the Ponte Felcetto exit. It is 24 hour opening. Overall we reckon that the petrol station is about 50km after leaving Valliano and probably about 10 minutes before you get to the airport. That probably means you can calculate our average driving speed down the E45….

Secondly, if you are heading to the airport from Valliano the turn off to the airport comes up without warning. The signs to the airport off the E45 are much better than theyu sued to be. Originally they did not actually mention the fact that it is the airport junction, but they have corrected that. You need to be in the right-hand lane to turn effectively right and off the E45.

The sign immediately before the exit to the airport, is signed to Spoletto and Fogliono.  so that is your warning.

Don’t set your sat nav for Sant’ Egidio (the airport name) because that is the village name (we think) for the village near the airport and you end up wandering around backstreets of a small village overlooking the airport.

And in case you are interested, Sant’ Egidio is Saint Giles. And if you check out Sant’ Egidio on line it is best known now as the name of a Catholic lay community which is represented in 73 countries and which, amongst other impressive achievements, brokered an end to the civil war in Mozambique.  Shout out for the Sant’ Egidians….

Citta di Castello

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Citta di Castello

(26/8/16)

It takes about 20 minutes to drive along the back roads from Valliano to Citta di Castello. Assuming you come down the route that leads you to the Bianchini factory (i.e turning right at the end of the white road down from our property), at the point you reach the main road running parallel to the E45 (when you would turn left to go to the Promano  supermarket and the bar), you turn right. You can chose to go on the E45 heading north but the back route is quicker.
We parked in Citta somewhere off Viale Vittori but looking at the guide book there is a pretty good car park near the Duomo. But having parked where we did it took about 10 minutes walk to get towards the main square and it is all completely on the level. So it is a good place to visit if you have anyone with any restricted mobility. And being on the level is pretty much a unique attribute for any town we have visited near here.
The Duomo is, well, it is ok. To my untrained eye it did not look anything particularly special. It is worth a visit.

However next door is the Museo del Duomo which has lots of pictures of Saint Sebastian and in one of the first rooms a map of the Diocesan areas of Umbria in the 13th and 14th centuries. We were delighted to see Valliano is marked in larger letters so clearly Valliano was a reasonably important site then. Surprising to think that there were enough people living locally to support a church where we are.

We acquired a couple of the posters for the Museo because they are actually of that particular bit of the map. I will post a copy of the extract from the map with this blog if I remember to do so.
We then walked back to Pinacotecca Communale which is surprisingly hard to find. If you are going to visit Pinacotecca Communale specifically, there is car parking just outside the city walls so it would be about a three minute walk from there. The exhibition itself is well worth a visit. You start by going out to the formal garden area predominately to admire the façade of the gallery. I will do a post on the contents of the gallery another day.

 

The central square, as you come into Citta, has a not very well signposted pedestrian precinct in effect on the left-hand of the square if you were standing facing the direction which would take you down towards the Duomo. There are lots of surprisingly smart shops down there. The thing about Citta is that it is laid out in a seemingly haphazard fashion. If you do not know the shop is there then you will never find it. So it is definitely worth wandering around,  even through some of the back streets to see what you can find in terms of restaurants, shops etc.
(26/11/2016)
Found our way to the Conad supermarket which had been recommended to us. Mid-size supermarket but fairly well stocked in the Castello Centro Commerciale, which is on the other side of Citta di Castello from Promano. It seems to be open throughout the day and has a mix of other shops. It is located in the Viale Bruno. Don’t forget to take some loose change firstly for the supermarket trolleys and secondly for the nice guys who will offer to push your trolley back to the car, unload it and take your trolley back to the trolley queue (in return of course for keeping your Euro coin in the trolley).
We had a lovely lunch in Citta at L’accademia Hostaria in Via di Modello. Very friendly and good food. It is just past the centre square taking the right-hand fork towards the cathedral square and then it is on the left-hand side just as you enter the area around the cathedral. It is well worth a visit.
(16/04/17)
We visited Citta di Castello on Easter Sunday. Parked at the car park just outside the city walls slightly to the left of the cathedral itself as you look at the Centro Storico but it was only five minutes or so walk to the Duomo Plaza.

The plaza itself was pretty much deserted apart from one restaurant and one coffee shop which was open where we had lunch. There was a service going on at the cathedral so we stood to one side and listened to the service for a few minutes. The church itself was completely full and standing room only (as they say on South West trains) so clearly the church was doing good business today.
We then walked up to the main square where there was the Italian equivalent of a car boot sale, lots of equipment/tools/books/old vinyl and general tat. Great fun to wander around it. I bought a CD and two books (art) so a bit of a hit for me at least.
Then we went back up to the cathedral museum to show those of our party, who had not previously visited it, the map of the Umbrian Dioceses in 13th and 14th century. We found that there is actually a bit more to the museum than we had realised the first time round. In Sala 1 the chest lid (built of Silver) was full of fantastic details and the crook (which is the other main exhibit in the museum) has a beautifully fashioned angel supporting the curve of the crook with hand expression which says he could do support all of this with one finger if he was so minded.

Upstairs last time we had only got to the concert room. It is the best of the paintings in there with a lovely Pinturicchio ( the middle picture on the far wall). No signs there to draw attention to the painting but it is quite beautiful. Beyond that there is a corridor off to the left with a few more paintings and some ecclesiastical robes I think. Not really anything of particular interest and then a lift that does not work if you try to call it so you end up turning around and going back out the way you came in.
We had lunch at the restaurant on the left-hand edge of the square to the left of the cathedral (if you are facing the cathedral’s main entrance). We were admiring the irregular windows in the cathedral wall and noticed how many had been blocked up. Probably contributing to the gloom of the interior of the church to my way of thinking.
I am pleased (in a very nerdy and Scottish sort of way I accept) to discover there is a link between St Columba and the bread they serve here at Easter time and which we ate yesterday (Colomba Pasquale).
I tried to visit Santa Maria Delle Grazie which was shut. It does have a very odd double door for the main entrance for which only one panel seems to open.

I also tried to visit San Michele Angelo but both were shut. I stopped in a tiny cappuccine chapel opposite the main Santa Maria because it was being used for a service so I could not do much other than glance round it.
We then walked down to Sant Francesco which was deserted. Pleasant but has a sort of concrete décor that some churches over here have. There is a lovely Rafael hanging on the left-hand wall but sadly it is a copy of the original which was taken by a Napoleonic General and then sold on.

I made the acquaintance of the Italian word “Giganti grafico” which assume means it has been copied in some way. The Cappella Vitelli in the church was done by Vasari with some lovely wood panels down the sides, the one of them is sufficiently blurred to look like a image out of the Karma Sutra. Maybe it was the oysters for lunch.
In Citta everything is small and individual shops etc so I passed a lovely little Galleria De Lata in the Via Del Albizzin. Worth a detour and then found my way back to the music store that I had located a couple of years ago (which is just off Via Sant Antonio and then down the passageway on the right). Very well stocked for playing music rather than buying CD’s etc.
Something to share with you is that I have learnt that the Italian for guitar pic is “guitar pic”. I went in to the shop with my rudimentary Italian and asked if the owner spoke English. He did not. So we had 10 minutes of trying to find the word for the guitar pic before we got to the right word. I guess I won’t forget it again.
I had a very good coffee at the bar, Gelatera de Corso, which is on the your left as you come from the music shop and reach the main square.

There is also a very good book shop in the main square. I can’t remember the name but think it is Libreria Paci. Has some English books if you want, maps and generally worth a visit.
As you come into the main square, and assuming that straight ahead would take you towards the cathedral, if you turn left instead it is a pedestrian area, Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Lots of little shops along the way. No chain stores anything like that. As I say I suspect you will have to know what is where to know how to enjoy Citta.
Towards the far end of the Corso VE I looked into the Chiesa Santa Maria Maggiore which was empty and pretty schizophrenic as a church. On the left-hand side closest to the main doors there are what looked like chalk drawings in the alcoves. They may have had some rather better drawings on the right-hand side) and then a lovely fresco over the chapel on the left-hand side of the alter. No information of course and the internet just says it is from the 15th century.