Monastero di San Quirico in Assisi, a World War II Refuge

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,…

Perugia’s Collegio della Mercanzia: Medieval Guildhall Elegance

Perugia’s most prestigious medieval guildhall? Certainly that of the Nobile Collegio della Mercanzia (the Noble Merchants Guild),  already active  in the early 13th-century at the peak of the independence of Perugia’s comuni (city-states).  Il Nobile Collegio della Mercanzia quickly became one of the most esteemed and renowned of Perugia’s guilds and in the most solemn religious processions of Perugia,…