March 27, 2018 - Assisi

Today we caught an early morning train, bound for Assisi.  It is a little over two hours north of Rome, just perfect for a great day trip.  Assisi is the famed birthplace of St. Francis, who founded the Franciscan order there in 1208, and St. Clare, who founded the Poor Sisters order or Order of Poor Clares.  It is a beautifully quaint, medieval town that is full of religious history and spectacular scenery.

The train ride to Assisi passes several beautiful, medieval hill towns.

The town is made up of seemingly endless stone buildings, roads, and walkways that are entrancing to explore and almost too picturesque. We again used Rick Steves' audio tour of the town of Assisi and St. Francis' Cathedral, and he again did a great job of helping the things we saw come to life without bogging us down with too much detail.  Thanks Rick!

There are two fortresses above the town.  This one is Rocca Maggiore and originally dates back to the 12th century.

Soon, the vines behind us will be covered in wisteria flowers, then lots of beautiful greenery a few weeks after that.

The gate to the city (at least the old part). It has a large door that closes.

This is St. Ruffino's Cathedral.  Surprisingly, St. Ruffino is the patron saint of Assisi, not St. Francis.  The cathedral was build in the 11th century on top of a church that was built in the 9th century (the foundation of which you can see through glass panels in the floor of the present church.

In front of St. Ruffino's are statues of lions eating Christians to remind church-goers of the sacrifices made by early martyrs.

St. Ruffino's also has a statue of St. Clare on one side and St. Francis on the other.

Though we can't account for Hannah's facial expressions, the view down over the valley was truly stunning!  The view up towards the fortress wasn't too bad either.

We realize that we must be reaching our saturation point on Catholic churches because the picture above is the only picture we took of the outside of St. Clare's Cathedral.  Inside, however, were several pieces of clothing and other belongings of St. Clare and St. Francis (again, dating back to the 1100s).  St. Francis was said to have been the first follower of Christ to receive the stigmata, or the wounds of the passion of Christ, symbolizing his empathy and devotion.  The red spots on his sock pictured below are said to be the blood from the stigmata.

We could not get enough of the beautiful little stone streets, and we couldn't stop taking pictures of them (apparently we couldn't stop posting pictures of them either)!

 

This church/Temple of Minerva dates back to the first century B.C.

This was once a covered market.  Rick Steves noted that the frescoes on the ceiling most certainly are not older than 1492 because there are turkeys (which were not known in Europe until Columbus went to America) painted on them.

Though Assisi is certainly touristy, it has many unique and beautiful shops!  We enjoyed exploring many of them (Even Mark liked some of them! ...well, at least the ones with gelato and pastries.).

Heather was initially waiting for people to get out of her picture, but then realized that this particular "people" was adorable in her picture.

The green, Umbrian valley below was gorgeous!

Cool ironwork, niches, and other details everywhere you look!

One of the most famous legends about St. Francis was that he tamed a wolf that was terrorizing a village, by making a deal between the wolf and the people. If they fed the wolf, he would leave the sheep alone. It worked for everyone, including all of the wolves in the area.

The Cathedral of St. Francis was quite impressive, though it did seem a little counter to the simple life of poverty he vowed to take.

This is the courtyard and cloister of St. Francis'.  They said that in its heyday, it housed about 100 monks.  Today it houses about 40. The courtyard is cleverly designed to be a rain catchment basin to build up water stores.

We couldn't help taking just a couple of pictures (you're not supposed to) inside the cathedral.  The walls of the upper basilica are covered in frescoes by Giotto that detail St. Francis' life.  We liked the one of his sermon to the birds. This cathedral was built after Assisi's death. It did seem like the interior was more dedicated to telling the stories of the scriptures, than making a big statement with gold and sculptures  (like most that we have seen). It was just all done with paint.

The views from the fortress were amazing!

We're not sure why, but a fence up by the fortress was covered in thousands of pieces of gum.  Nasty!

What better way to cap off an amazing day than with a delicious pasta meal and a yummy desert!

The view up to St. Francis' Cathedral and the cloister is rather impressive.

I guess you could say it was a full day.