Assisi’s Piazza Matteotti is not just an accessible parking lot on the east end of town….. …but also site of vestiges of Roman Asisium: the parking area was built on the site of Roman structures, probably the circo (circus, site of chariot races), visible in the upper righthand corner of this map of Assisi romana.…
Covid has deprived the asssisani of their beloved May medieval festival, Calendimaggio, for two years now….….but on a mid-June evening, the superb Assisi choir, i Cantori di Assisi, filled the vaulted 11th-century Romanesque Church of San Pietro, with the Calendimaggio May songs… …and to the ebullient joy of the locals, although masked (the choir, too) and distanced. The…
Two atti prodigiosi – “prodigious acts” – are inextricably linked to Bolsena’s Basilica di Santa Cristina, named in of honor one of the town’s patron saints, Cristina. According to local legend, young Cristina was finally martyred after numerous grisly futile attempts, those scenes acted out throughout the town in tableaux annually by appassioned bolsenesi on the vigil and day…
The imposing medieval castle of Bolsena overlooks Lake Bolsena, the largest volcanic lake in Europe. The lake was a volcano about 300,000 years ago, its shores were settled probably in the Neolithic period and as of the Bronze Age (3300 BC to 1200 BC), settlements grew and prospered. The evidence? Don’t miss a visit to…
Bolsena celebrates in floral splendor the Feast of Corpus Domini, for after all, this feast promulgated in the 13th-century – and also known as “Corpus Christi” – originates with a miracle here in this lakeside gem. The Festa di Corpo Domini also unites the town to the nearby Umbrian hill town of Orvieto as you…
As I recently entered the gate leading into the cloister of the 11th-century Church of San Giacomo de Muro Rupto (St. James in the Broken Wall), I noted the sign indicating the Laboratorio di San Francesco. I thought about those summer days decades ago when I brought our Giulia to that laboratorio (w0rkshop) here for the programs…
Due to cataracts, Signor Vittorio – age eighty-two – doesn’t have a needle in his hands to embroider these days. When I met him recently near the Assisi souvenir kiosk of his daughter, Maria Cristiana, he proudly showed me some of his treasured linen textiles decorated with the punto Assisi (the Assisi stitch) which he learned…
“There isn’t a day that I don’t have a needle in my hand,” Antonietta told me as we talked about her passione for the embroidery of the punto Assisi (the Assisi stitch). She grew up with a passion for the punto Assisi for her mother created textile masterpieces in this stitch. As a child, Antonietta watched her work and at…
As a child growing up in Assisi, craftsman of medieval stringed instruments, Luca Piccioni, would have been familiar with such instruments from an early age. School trips in elementary school would have included guided visits of the medieval fresco wonders in the 13th-century Basilica di San Francesco. Gazing at the 14th-century Simone Martini frescoes in…
The creative output of many Assisi artisans is owed to the inspiration of family members of past generations. And so it is for the assisano wood-carver, Rossano Rondoni, great-grandson of Domenico, art restorer, painter and photographer whose photograph reigns in Rossano’s bottega (workshop). Rossano’s grandfather, too, was a man of many talents and interests, including wood-working.…