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 –…
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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…
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…
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…
I first met Don Aldo Brunacci in 1975 shortly after Pino and I moved into our Assisi countryside farmhouse. At that time, I had started teaching English to children – as a…
When I think about Graziella Viterbi, I always remember that bright twinkle in her eye, that spark. That spark was there when she met Pope Francis in 2016 during his Assisi visit,…
In the 16th -century, Perugia was described not as just one of the loveliest cities not just in Italy but in all of Europe. Perugia was graced with seventy imposing family towers,…
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…
In the showcase of architectural gems that grace the city of Perugia, Palazzo dei Priori (“Palace of the Priors,” i.e, the medieval governing body of the city state) is arguably the crown jewel of…
In 1872, Henry James spent a week in Perugia, Umbria hilltown and one of the region’s two provincial capitals, lauding this medieval gem as “city of the infinite view.” I always wondered when…