Just a couple parking lots are outside of Bevagna’s medieval walls. They’re free and just a few cars are parked in them – and they’ll probably be of local bevanati. Already a sign that you’ve arrived in one of Umbria’s less known and less visited Umbrian medieval towns. Best place to park is on the southwest…
Of black and white tesserae, a delicate mosaic lobster with claws outstretched and tail swerving is one of the most intact and refined vestiges of the Roman Mevania (today, Bevagna). To the Romans stepping into the waters of Mevania’s 2nd-c. A.D. frigidarium (c0ld water baths), the lobster would have seemed to move as the waters swirled…
You probably already knew that in Italy, accents can vary town-to-town, even at a ten-kilometer distance – or less. Did you know that types of pasta vary as well…even town-to-town? Many people I know in Assisi have never even heard of picchierilli, a pasta dish of Bevagna (about 30 km distant). I hadn’t either, until I…
When you wander the backstreets of Bevagna and pass this delightful small courtyard… …look out for this sign – and do head to the Roman theater and medieval house: A few years ago, a group of six bevanati decided to plunge into the town’s medieval history, creating an association, Compagnia delle Arti.…
It all started with a celebration of roast suckling pig, la porchetta. As of the 1970’s, the Sagra della Porchetta had gathered the local bevignati in a convivial sharing of an Umbrian culinary specialty. In 1983, this celebration of food goodness ripened into an exuberant celebration of Bevagna’s medieval life, il Mercato delle Gaite, with the representation of medieval markets: The…
The 13th-century civic building Palazzo dei Consoli, dominating Bevagna’s main square, Piazza Filippo Silvestri……. ….hides a treasure just inside that door under the pointed Gothic arch at the top of the stairs – which you can see also in this decades-past postcard of Bevagna: When you’re next in Bevagna, head to the door beneath the stairway…
In 1943- 1944 when 300 Jewish refugees were hidden in German-occupied Assisi, many a convent became a place of safe haven. One was the Monastero di San Quirico. Traveling all the way to Umbria from the northern Italy town of Fiume (part of Croatia as of 1947), Lea Baruch and her sisters Mira and Hella…
During World War II, which Italian town was saved from devastation by a German commander? Assisi. The German occupying forces in Italy, had placed Werhmacht commander, Colonel Valentin Müller, a devout Catholic and trained medical doctor, in charge of the town of St. Francis as of 1944. The offices of the German military were in…
During World War II in Assisi, the Bishop of Assisi sometimes had to double as a stonemason; that is, when it was time to hide the valuables, torahs, and documents of the Jewish refugees. Declared “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in Israel in 1977, Monsignore Placido Nicolini was one of the seven “Righteous” of…
Ironically, just steps away from Assisi’s Museo della Memoria, 1943-1944 recounting the story of the salvation of Jewish refugees in Assisi in World War II – you’ll pass the entrance to one of the convents where many of the Holocaust survivors were hidden. And whenever I walk past the entrance to the Monastero di San Quirico,…