Umbria Archives - The Patroclus

February 24, 2024April 28, 2024

The End of the World – The Duomo and Signorelli Frescoes in Orvieto

In a pretty location in Umbria you may visit an artistic masterpiece of the Renaissance: Signorelli’s frescoes in the cathedral of Orvieto.

Orvieto is a town in western Umbria with a spectacular situation – the area abounds in outcrops of “tufa” – rock formed from volcanic ash, around which the softer rock has eroded away. This makes such sites good choices for defensibility, and it seems that there has been a settlement here from before Etruscan times. The name itself is said to derive from the Latin Urbs Vetus, meaning “the old city”.

Although in the region of Umbria now, Orvieto is located west of the Tiber River and so it would not have been part of the ancient territory of the Umbri, nor, for the same reason, would it have been part of the ancient Roman province of Umbria. The modern region of Umbria, with several other regions, was created when the Papal territories were annexed by the Kingdom of Piedmont during the unification of Italy, and its modern area only approximates that of its ancient one. So Orvieto doesn’t feel particularly Umbrian – the landscape and architecture have more in common with northern Lazio towns like Montefiascone and Caprarola.

Map showing the location of Orvieto, between Rome and Florence (click to open in Google Maps).

As the map shows, Orvieto is approximately halfway between Rome and Florence, and on both the main north-south motorway and the high-speed railway line. This means it is well-placed to receive a lot of tourists, which it does – but there has to be a reason for them to want to come. That reason is an artistic and architectural heritage that seems out of proportion to a place of such modest size. But some important things have happened here. Thomas Aquinas lectured at the university, and from the mid-1200s Orvieto was one of the cities to which Popes removed themselves when conflicts in Rome became too dangerous.

These days the attraction of Orvieto is largely based on the extraordinary duomo, or cathedral. While the duomo dominates the town when seen from a distance, you don’t actually see it as you walk along the narrow streets from the funicular which brings visitors up from the station and the car park. Then you suddenly turn a corner and there it is – and it is breathtaking.

Next to the duomo is an impressive medieval building – the Papal Palace, used as a residence when the Pope was in town. These days it houses the tourist office where you buy your ticket to visit the duomo.

The Duomo

Towards the end of the 13th Century, the town authorities decided to build themselves a magnificent church, to be dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, and built of alternating layers of white and black stone, like a giant liquorice allsort – a style common in Tuscan cities like Siena and Pistoia. Progress was a bit slow; the town kept running short of money, and every now and then plague and war interrupted things. In fact it took about three hundred years, so it started in the Romanesque style, most of it was Gothic, and there were some Renaissance bits towards the end.

Orvieto Duomo showing the gothic façade and the black and white stripes. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fujinon-W 125mm lens, 4×5-inch sheet film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, rising front to correct perspective (click to enlarge).

Apparently one of the more serious problems first encountered was that the structure didn’t appear to be strong enough to carry its own weight – a Sienese architect was brought in who added buttresses and other features based on the duomo at Siena.

And it was that Sienese architect – a chap called Maitani – who designed the first of the cathedral’s masterpieces – the magnificent Gothic façade.

The façade is the most prominent architectural feature in Orvieto and it can be seen clearly in the distant view of the town in the first photograph above. Sometimes, when the setting sun hits its golden mosaics, it shines like a beacon far into the distance. The mosaics date from the late 14th Century, but most were replaced and redesigned in the 15th, 18th and 19th Centuries.

At the base of the four piers of the façade are a series of bas-reliefs depicting stories from the old testament, and a Last Judgement with gruesome-looking devils carrying away the souls of the damned. It is thought that some of the work was by Maitani himself, but that three or four other master sculptors must have worked on it. My favourite part of it is a “Jesse Tree” which was a favourite motif in Christian iconography, showing various ancestors of Christ, starting with Jesse, the father of King David, in the branches of a tree. This has been compared to a medieval manuscript illumination, but carved in marble – I would certainly agree with that description.

Around the door you will see some of the most extraordinarily delicate carving, of marble inlaid with beautiful mosaics. This sort of portal carving is very common in Gothic cathedrals, but seldom is it as elegant as this.

The Interior and the Cappella Nuova

Once inside the “liquorice allsort” one tends to be struck by the comparative simplicity. I like this, as it is probably close to the original impression one would have had in the Middle Ages. Some writers seem to find it too stark a contrast to the glories of the façade, and if you agree with them, then be patient, because the best is yet to come.

And the best – which is what you have come to see – is one of the most memorable works of the 15th-16th Centuries, which is saying something. On one side of the nave is a chapel referred to variously as the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio or simply the Cappella Nuova, or “New Chapel”. “New”, in this case means that it was commissioned in 1408, a bit over a hundred years after work on the cathedral commenced, but consideration about how to decorate it did not begin until the mid-1400s. Perhaps it was a question of money, because that certainly turned out to be a constraint in the decades to come.

In 1446 negotiations were started to secure the services of one of the most famous artists of the day, the Dominican monk born Guido di Pietro, later called Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, but known to anglophone art history as Fra Angelico (NB: not Frangelico – that is a hazelnut-flavoured liqueur). In Italy he is usually called Il Beato Angelico, the blessed Angelico. The title eventually became official in 1982 when Pope John Paul II formally beatified him. I have some photographs of his frescoes from the monastery of San Marco in Florence, which I will make the subject of another post one day.

In 1447 the cathedral authorities signed a contract with Fra Angelico, and he did spend one summer in Orvieto, preparing designs and executing a couple of ceiling panels – in which he was assisted by the young Benozzo Gozzoli. A combination of papal demands on Fra Angelico’s time and possibly the difficulty of finding the money to pay him meant that he did not return, although apparently Gozzoli stayed on and continued the work for a while.

Fra Angelico died in 1455, and for the rest of the 15th Century no real work was done on the chapel, although the scaffolding remained in place. Orvieto itself went through some hard times with a period of civil disorder caused by the usual conflicts between rival wealthy families, which cannot have helped with the civic revenues.

Every now and then as finances permitted, attempts were made to find a painter to carry on the work, including the great Perugino, who characteristically kept the Orvietans hanging for a decade or so before finally turning them down. At that point, the choice fell on Luca Signorelli.

Signorelli came from the town of Cortona on the border of Tuscany and Umbria. In 1499 he was around 50 years old and presumably at the height of his powers. He had contributed to the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and also to the famous paintings in the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore near Siena, but it was this work in Orvieto that established his reputation in art history. As part of the contract he undertook to complete those parts of the chapel for which Fra Angelico had left drawings, but these were only for the rest of the ceiling panels. Since Fra Angelico’s work featured a Christ in Judgement, Signorelli proposed to continue the theme of the Apocalypse and Last Judgement, in keeping with Fra Angelico’s intent, but also picking up the eschatological tone of the carvings on the cathedral façade.

I have seen a tourist website which states that the Orvieto Last Judgement is based on that of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. This is completely the wrong way round! Signorelli was first, and Michelangelo came after. Any similarities – which there are – are the result of Michelangelo drawing inspiration from Signorelli, and not vice versa.

The Frescoes

Let’s start with the ceiling, which is the only place you can see any work by Fra Angelico. These are the two panels featuring Christ in Judgement and The Prophets.

Orvieto Cappella Nuova — The Cappella Nuova, ceiling panels by Fra Angelico – *The Prophets* (centre) and *Christ in Judgement* (left) Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

The rest is all by Signorelli. The upper walls contain several scenes, drawn from the biblical account of the apocalypse and medieval works. In (I think) chronological order, they are The Rule of the Antichrist, The Apocalypse, The Resurrection of the Flesh, The Damned in Hell and The Elect in Paradise. You may find them given slightly different names in different sources.

The Rule of the Antichrist

The central figure in this panel is the false Christ preaching. He is rather shockingly depicted as similar to the real one, but with the devil whispering in his ear. Our old friend the art historian Vasari claimed to have identified real people in the crowd around him, including the young Raphael as the well-dressed long-haired chap in red tights with his hands on his hips. However some modern sources cast doubt on this.

It had not occurred to me until I started writing this article, but this fresco was painted very shortly after the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was convicted of heresy and executed in Florence. Savonarola preached a Taliban-like message of radical asceticism, and for a while was the effective ruler of Florence, declaring it to be the new Jerusalem and the world centre of Christianity. Savonarola was famous for his “bonfires of the vanities”, in which rich Florentines offered their treasures for destruction, and sure enough, on the ground in front of the Antichrist is a pile of such offerings. It seems very probable that people would have made the connection, and moreover that the church authorities would have wanted them to. Then I noticed that behind the Antichrist Signorelli has depicted a group of disputing clerics, prominent among whom are several in the black and white Dominican habit that Savonarola would have worn. I wonder if that was part of the message as well? Not that Savonarola had been the actual Antichrist, but that this sort of puritanism was dangerous heresy.

Elsewhere in the scene, bad stuff is happening all over the place. People are being persecuted and executed for not following the Antichrist. and in the central background the Antichrist is performing bogus miracles. At the top left is the end of this particular part of the story, where the Antichrist has dared to attempt to ascend into heaven, but is quickly dispatched by the Archangel Michael. A group of people below, presumably the Antichrist’s followers, are killed in the collateral damage.

At the lower left stand two men dressed in black, solemnly observing the scene. These are Signorelli himself and Fra Angelico. Signorelli cannot have met his predecessor, and I do not know on what the likeness was based, but it was a generous gesture on Signorelli’s part to include him.

In this as in the other main scenes, you will notice a clever artistic trick by Signorelli – at the bottom of each scene some of the characters look as if they are actually standing on ledges that are part of the structure of the cathedral. It is quite a skilful bit of false perspective, given that you are looking at it all from below. It is not the only part of the chapel where he plays these sorts of games.

The Apocalypse

This scene is painted over the archway that divides the chapel from the nave of the duomo. On the right, in the foreground the Old Testament King David and a Sibyl are predicting the end of the world. Behind them, someone is escaping from a collapsing building, and people are being led to execution. In the distance, a city is in ruins and ships are borne high on huge waves.

On the left, flying devils are laying waste to the earth with fiery breath, while people below flee in panic.

As elsewhere, the foremost figures – David and the Sybil on the right, the terrified refugees on the left, have been painted as if they have come out of the paintings and are standing on the actual architecture of the cathedral.

The Resurrection of the Flesh

In this scene the Last Trumpet is sounded, and the dead emerge from the earth – some already restored to flesh, others still as skeletons. I’m not sure why they did not all come back in complete form straight away.

Signorelli specialised in nude figures, in particular powerfully-muscled males, at a time when this was still a fairly novel thing in a sacred setting (as we have seen, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes came later). I’m not aware of whether the cathedral authorities thought he was being too daring.

The Damned in Hell

Signorelli definitely went to town on this scene. At the top right three armed archangels prevent any escape, while devils seize the damned souls and bear them into the fiery gate of hell at the lower left. There is a heaving mass of bodies below, but it is easy to distinguish the figures from each other – assisted, as one source points out, by the fact that Signorelli gives the devils grotesquely-coloured skin.

There is apparently a tradition that the naked woman being carried off on the back of a flying devil is a depiction of a former girlfriend of Signorelli’s who had jilted him. This would make it an early example of revenge porn, but I have not seen this in any serious discussion of the frescoes so it can probably be discounted.

The Elect in Paradise

The final large scene is a complete contrast to The Damned in Hell – obviously, because it is The Elect in Paradise. The raised dead stand around – most now decorously draped – while angels welcome them with crowns. More angels provide entertainment in the form of a chamber orchestra.

The Zoccoli

All of the main pictures start about two and a half metres above floor level. The walls below that are painted to look like pedestals (Zoccoli in Italian), which gave Signorelli the opportunity for some more trompe l’oeil showing off. As we have already seen, he painted an apparent flat surface on top of the Zoccoli, which allowed some of the action to appear to spill forward out of the pictures. The Zoccoli are ornately decorated in the “grotesque” style, which in this context does not mean ugly but rather in a style based on the art seen in the ancient Roman ruins that were starting to be excavated. The classical theme is continued by the fact that in the centre of each Zoccolo there is a portrait, not of some saint or elder of the Church, but a poet.

By tradition these poets are Homer, Empedocles, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Virgil and Dante, although some of these are now disputed. Dante is obvious, so no argument there. Ovid is surrounded by illustrations from his Metamorphoses, and Virgil with illustrations from his Georgics and Aeneid.

In medieval legend, the ancient poet Virgil acquired a second career as a magician and prophet. He therefore appears twice here, once in each persona – at least the wild-haired fellow below is thought to be him.

What they all have in common is that they wrote about visits to the underworld. Another feature that they share is that apart from Dante they are reacting to the apocalyptic events happening above them. They look at each other in alarm, or peer out of their little windows at the scenes above. It brings the biblical prophecies and classical literature together in a very Renaissance-humanist way, but it is also a little joke on Signorelli’s part.

Signorelli worked in Rome and elsewhere in central Italy, but I think this is his unquestioned masterpiece. It’s all quite an extraordinary experience, and one that we have yet to tire of repeating. When we first visited I was just impressed by the scale of it all. It was only later that I realised firstly how revolutionary it was in artistic terms, but also how elements of it would have resonated with recent history. We’ve been there a few times over the years, and Orvieto is one of our favourite places to take visitors. It helps that there is an excellent restaurant (Trattoria Vinosus) in the piazza next to the duomo.

A note on sources

These frescoes are an important landmark in Renaissance art, and the Duomo a major example of Gothic architecture, and as such you will find many references to them in art histories and online articles. There are references in Philip’s Travel Guides: Umbria by Jonathan Keats, which was particularly helpful in identifying which of the façade mosaics are later restorations. Much of what I have found on the frescoes comes from Signorelli’s Orvieto Frescoes, A Guide to the Cappella Nuova of Orvieto Cathedral, by Dugald McLellan, 1998. We bought our copy in Orvieto in 1999.

A note on the Photography

In some of the pictures of the Signorelli frescoes, I used a wide-angle lens from below, which introduced some distortion. I have attempted to correct the perspective in software, but only up to a point because of course some of the foreshortening was put there on purpose by Signorelli. If you want to get the full effect of his false-perspective tricks, you will just have to go there yourselves!

August 29, 2023April 26, 2024

The Temple on the Mountain

In Umbria, at the very top of Monte Torre Maggiore, is a site that was sacred for thousands of years. In June 2023 I resolved to make a trip there, as it was something I had had in mind for a while. Monte Torre Maggiore is the southernmost and highest peak in the chain called the Monti Martani which divides the Middle Tiber Valley from the Valle Umbra. Roughly speaking, the Middle Tiber Valley runs from Perugia in the north to Todi in the south, while the Valle Umbra runs from Assisi in the north to Spoleto in the south.

Central Umbria, with the Monti Martani inexpertly indicated. The green area around Bastardo is the Martani Hills, an olive and wine growing area. Source: Google (click to open in Google Maps).

My desire to see the place came from reading a book titled simply Umbria by an English journalist called Patricia Clough, in which she describes heading up the mountain to the very summit, where she found the remains of a temple that dates from pre-Roman times. She makes much of how hard it was to find, and the difficulty of distinguishing it from some medieval remains a bit further down the mountain, but these days it is on Google Maps which solves both problems. “Pagan Sanctuary”, says Google – adding, a bit superfluously, “(ruin)”.

To get there one heads for a town called Cesi which is spectacularly located on a steep mountainside. It is however difficult to find a good spot from which to photograph Cesi, but if I ever get one I will update this post. Once in Cesi I turned off the car’s satnav and relied on Google Maps to find the road – which turned out to be steep, narrow, and in appalling condition even by the standards of Umbrian rural roads. Uncomfortably aware that my leased Peugeot didn’t have a spare tyre, just one of those silly repair kits, I crawled up the mountain in first gear, easing the car into and out of potholes when I couldn’t go round them. It took half an hour or so, and I only passed two cars. One, stationary in a clearing, had a couple of shifty-looking fellows in it who looked at me with suspicion. I decided they must be drug dealers. A bit later I passed a couple of lady carabiniere in one of their little green forestry patrol 4WD Fiat Pandas. The driver mouthed a friendly “buongiorno” to me as we passed, which I took to mean that what I was doing was neither illegal nor extremely foolish. Carabinieri carry military-grade weapons (they are in fact part of the military) so I assumed they would be a match for the drug dealers. In the event I saw nothing in the local online newspaper about a shootout on a lonely mountain road, so maybe I was wrong about them being drug dealers.

Sant’Erasmo

After having passed an astronomical observatory which appeared to be mothballed, about a third of the way up I reached a flat spot with somewhere to park, and got out. The scent of the wildflowers – of which there were many – was very strong. Big black shiny bumblebees, and little black insects with bright red wings, were feeding from them.

From the car park a ridge went out to a flat-topped outcrop, falling almost perpendicularly on three sides to the Terni valley a bit over two thousand feet below. On the flat top of the outcrop there is a church called Sant’Erasmo that dates from the 12th Century. It seemed unused but not abandoned, as there was a large padlock on the door.

Around Sant’Erasmo I saw various large stone blocks which looked ancient – from what I have been able to find out there was a settlement here called Clusiolum in Roman times, and in the early Middle Ages a Benedictine monastery for which Sant’Erasmo was presumably the church. Little remains of the Roman town, and nothing of the monastery as far as I could see, although doubtless much is hidden under the grass. In some places Sant’Erasmo is referred to not as a chiesa (church) but as an eremo (hermitage). There is a rather roughly-built stone extension out of the side of the church which doesn’t really fit any of the conventions of ecclesiastical architecture, so I speculate that might have been the hermit’s cell.

The view was tremendous, with a near-vertical slope down to the industrial outskirts of Terni on the left, and away to the right the town of Narni, sitting beside the gorge where the ancient military road (still called the Via Flaminia) heads down to Rome.

At the end of the ridge there are the remains of a medieval tower which would also have had a tremendous view. Presumably if the garrison saw an invading army they would have lit a fire or something. I didn’t go out to the tower, partly because it looked like a bit of a scramble, and partly because there were signs saying that it was both very dangerous and very illegal to approach within 15 metres.

Sant'Erasmo Watchtower — The medieval watchtower from Sant’Erasmo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Monte Torre Maggiore

Sant’Erasmo was very interesting, but not the object of the trip, so I climbed back in the car and kept going uphill. Shortly beyond Sant’Erasmo the road became unmetalled, and actually a lot smoother, so I made better progress. Eventually I got to where Google thought it would be a good idea to get out and continue on foot, so I found a place in which to park the car out of the hot sun, and did so. It was very steep. At first it was through woodland, then it came out onto a bare hillside with lots of white stones. It was hard going; the sun was quite fierce and the hillside continued to be steep. I was going very slowly and stopping frequently, and my smart watch kept asking if I had finished my workout. Given how hard I was gasping for air I found this rather insulting.

On another hill a couple of kilometres away members of a mountain rescue team were practising being winched up and down from a helicopter, so it wasn’t hugely peaceful. A large raptor circled overhead for a while then, presumably deciding that I wasn’t about to expire, headed away. After a while the helicopter left too, presumably deciding I didn’t need rescuing.

Eventually I got to the summit. The site is surrounded by a metal fence but there was no lock on the gate so I assumed it is just there to keep cattle out, and let myself in. It is on the highest point of the mountain so the view is indeed spectacular – almost 360 degrees from Assisi in the northeast to Todi in the northwest. To the southeast are the high Apennines of Abruzzo, range after range fading into the distance.

To the south, beyond a range of hills, are the plains of northern Lazio that lead down to Rome. Clough’s book says that locals claim that from here one could see the dome of St Peter’s in Rome on a clear day, and nowadays the tower blocks on the outskirts of Rome. That seems a bit plausible, but not in a summer heat haze.

As for the ruins themselves, they are the remains of two rectangular buildings. One has been dated to the 3^rd Century BC, and a larger one from the 3^rd or 4^th Century AD, both erected over buried remains of a much earlier structure. There is also a smaller structure made of more haphazardly-arranged stones. I have no idea if that was part of the original or dates from some later period.

Being a good journalist rather than a cavalier blogger like me, Clough chased down the archaeologist who led the excavation of the site and who explained its pre-Roman origins. The excavations apparently revealed Bronze and Iron Age traces including ritual items in a grotto nearby, but to my untutored eye what remains above ground looks all Roman – large evenly-dressed stone blocks without mortar, fragments of fluted columns and the like.

It seems that as Rome’s dominions expanded to take in Umbria the site was redeveloped in Roman style. It is well-known that the Romans would co-opt local deities into their pantheon, so a shrine on some foggy British riverside or one on a baking Syrian hilltop would be rededicated to , for example, Jupiter plus the British name or Minerva plus the Syrian name. It could be that something similar happened here, or perhaps the original deity was just extinguished. Either way, the name of that original deity is lost now.

Given what we know, assimilation seems more characteristic of Roman practice and therefore more likely. It is seen as a strength of Roman imperialism – helping to encourage the locals into the new dominant culture, and presumably preventing local sacred sites from becoming centres of resistance.

In due course, something analogous happened with Christianity. It was not as explicit as pagan Roman syncretism, because the whole point of the Judeo-Christian god was that you were not allowed any other ones (although with the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, apostles, martyrs and other saints, in practice there was no shortage of additional subjects for veneration). What happened instead was that sacred sites continued to be co-opted, but the object was replacement rather than assimilation. Pagan temples were replaced by Christian churches on the same sites. Temples to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, were frequently (or always? I don’t know) replaced by churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Detail of the façade of the medieval church of Santa Maria in Cammuccia in Todi, Umbria, built on the site of a Roman temple of Minerva, and re-using material from that temple. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

That did not seem to have happened in the case of the temple on Monte Torre Maggiore. I haven’t seen any references to a Christian church on the site, and Clough’s archaeologist source suggests that the temples may have been violently destroyed. Whether that was part of the suppression of paganism, or was the result of war or earthquake, I do not know.

Sources

As I said, the inspiration for my visit to Monte Torre Maggiore, and the source for most of the information on the temple is Umbria by Patricia Clough, Haus Publishing, London, 2009. Although not a long book, it ranges across several aspects of living in Umbria, from history and culture to food and home renovation. I recommend it to anyone interested in the area.

I have found very little else – there is a brief mention of Sant’Erasmo in Cadogan Guides: Umbria (2009 edition), and nothing at all in the usually comprehensive Umbria, a Cultural Guide by Ian Campbell Ross. Online there are cursory mentions on a few tourism and outdoor walking sites, and only the stub of a Wikipedia page. It is an unusual experience for me to think that I might be making a substantial addition to the amount of online material on a subject.

August 5, 2023April 7, 2024

Cospaia – the Accidental Republic

Not long ago I went for a drive up to the northern tip of Umbria, in the Upper Tiber Valley near the town of Sansepolcro, not far from where Umbria, Tuscany and Marche all meet. Why? Well firstly because it was quite hot, so the prospect of spending much of the day in an air-conditioned car had its attractions. But the main purpose was to visit a place called Cospaia, whose history sounds like something out of a Peter Sellers film.

Pliny the Younger

But before I got to Cospaia I set the GPS for a town called San Giustino, where there is an archaeological site I wanted to see – the villa of Pliny the Younger. The nephew and adopted son of – you guessed it – Pliny the Elder, this Roman historian did the right thing by history. Possibly knowing that attribution of ownership to a building was going to be difficult two thousand years later, Pliny the Younger took the precaution of having his initials moulded into the bricks of which his villa was to be made (not “PTY” but “CPCS”: Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus).

PTY’s main contribution to history is the large number of his letters which survive, in some of which he describes the death of his uncle (PTE) who was killed while trying to organise the rescue of people from Pompei. PTY’s detailed descriptions of the eruption of Vesuvius, which he witnessed from across the bay, are the main source of contemporary information about what happened, and as a result that type of volcanic eruption is still technically known as “Plinian”.

It’s mildly embarrassing to acknowledge that I first encountered PTE not at school or even in a book but in an episode of the classic BBC radio program, The Goon Show. It was called “The Histories of Pliny The Elder”, featuring Caractacus Seagoon, Brutus Moriatus et al. Spike Milligan obviously paid attention in history lessons.

I wasn’t expecting much of the villa, having looked at online descriptions, and indeed this is a site that was excavated several years ago, and has been fenced off and locked ever since.

Colle Plinio — What remains of Pliny the Younger’s Villa. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Supposedly many of the finds from the excavation are now on display in a museum in a nearby town, but I couldn’t find it. Still, it was nice to look around at the countryside, and imagine PTY sitting there looking at something like the same view after a hard day’s letter-writing. Actually, he was also a lawyer and a magistrate in Rome, so he only spent his holidays here.

Pliny the Elder, on the other hand, was a polymath who, in addition to several military histories that have not survived, wrote an enormous work of natural history, really the first of its kind. Last year I was overjoyed to find that in his Naturalis Historia he mentioned the grape variety known as “Grechetto”, and described it as “peculiaris est tudernis”, or “typical of Todi”. You can still buy a bottle of Grechetto in the supermarkets of Todi.

Cospaia

Checking out PTY’s villa didn’t take long, so from there I headed off to Cospaia, a small village which had about 250 inhabitants in the 15th Century, and I’d guess a bit fewer now. And Cospaia, despite its modesty, became an independent republic. By mistake. And stayed that way for almost four hundred years because no-one could be bothered fixing it.

Back in the 1400s the Pope of the day (Eugenius IV) was running short of cash. The neighbouring Republic of Florence (later Grand Duchy of Tuscany), run for all practical purposes by the very wealthy Cosimo de’ Medici, had cash to spare. So in 1440 an agreement was reached whereby the town of Sansepolcro and its territory would be sold to Tuscany, and officials on both sides were set to work to establish where the new border should run, and draw up the treaty which would formalise it.

Rivers make obvious and unambiguous boundaries, provided there is no confusion about which river is intended. But in central Italy, any little dry creek bed tends to be called Rio. And in Cospaia there are two, about 500 metres apart, either side of the village. You can see where this is going, can’t you? The Papal cartographers selected the one nearest to them, and the Florentine cartographers assumed their instructions referred to the one nearest to them. The result was that Cospaia ended up neither in the Papal States, nor in Tuscany.

It is at this point that one thinks of the 1959 Peter Sellers film The Mouse That Roared, about the fictional independent duchy of Grand Fenwick that declares war on the United States. In the film about Cospaia I can see Alistair Sim as Eugenius IV, and maybe Alec Guinness as Cosimo de’ Medici. And of course Peter Sellers as the Mayor of Cospaia. Or maybe Peter Sellers could have played several of the main parts, as he did in The Mouse that Roared, and Dr Strangelove.

One can see him wandering over to the newly-built Papal border post. “Are we in your territory?” “No”. Then over the hill to the Tuscan border post. “Are we in your territory?” “No”. So like Asterix and his indomitable Gauls they declared the independent Republic of Cospaia.

Cospaia from below, with a perfectly legal field of barley. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Anyway, the mistake was soon noticed, but the negotiations had been difficult and no-one felt like re-opening them just yet, for the sake of possession of a little place that no-one much cared about.

But less than a hundred years later, along with syphilis and a lot of silver and gold, the Spanish started importing tobacco from the New World. The Pope, finding scriptural reasons, banned tobacco altogether in his territories and made its import a crime punishable by excommunication. The Tuscans, like most other European jurisdictions, simply levied a massive excise on it. Cospaia, faced with neither eternal damnation nor a large tax, saw its opportunity, and the few acres between its ambiguously-named streams became a lucrative tobacco monoculture, with the crop smuggled into both its neighbours through the fields and woodlands.

People say that Italian bureaucracy is slow to act, but eventually all the smuggling became too irritating, and act it did. After a mere 386 years it swung into action and renegotiated the treaty, placing Cospaia in the Papal States for another forty years or so, until Italian unification divested the Vatican of its secular dominions. But the Papal Government had by then decided that smoking was not a grave sin after all, and allowed Cospaia to continue cultivating tobacco in return for a cut of the proceeds.

These days Cospaia is a pretty, sleepy little place, dreaming of past glories. But reminders of those past glories are everywhere. The main street is the Via Della Repubblica, there is a Tobacco Road, and signs to a “smugglers’ trail”. Above the door of the village church there is a dedication not to some patron saint, but to “perpetual and established liberty”.

I wandered through Cospaia and took a few photos. After that I drove up the Apennine slopes and through the pass of Bocca Trabaria into Marche. As I ascended via many a hairpin bend, passing panting cyclists and daredevil motorcyclists on the wrong side of the road, the temperature dropped about five degrees which was most welcome. The views were not great – after a couple of still days the central Italian valleys quickly fill with heat haze.

But it was quite heavily wooded – these bits of the Apennines are not high enough to be above the treeline as they are in Abruzzo. Apparently in ancient times the forests were a source of timber for Roman shipbuilding, with the logs floated down the infant Tiber towards Rome. It seems this would have been a major source of income for Pliny the Younger’s villa, down in the valley below.

Note: this post is intended to make a pair with another about the border area, describing when the Florentines and Perugians built a pair of border forts, and gave them rude names.

Sources

A good recent book about the two Plinys is In the Shadow of Vesuvius, A Life of Pliny by Daisy Dunn. The title is doubly misleading, as it is only partly about the eruption, and it is in fact a biography of both Plinys, PTE and PTY. I can only assume that it was the publisher’s marketing department that made the decisions, but I can recommend it anyway.

References to Cospaia and its accidental independence can be found in Umbria, A Cultural Guide, by Ian Campbell Ross, in Umbria by Patricia Clough, and most entertainingly in Philip’s Travel Guides – Umbria by Jonathan Keates, with photographs by Joe Cornish.

July 21, 2023April 1, 2024

Paleochristian Churches III – Three Umbrian Gems

Welcome to the third episode in my series on paleochristian churches (from, as always, a purely secular perspective). The preceding two are about Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese in Rome and Ravenna. This time I propose to show you three paleochristian churches in Umbria, two of which, despite not being in Rome, have been described as among the oldest examples to survive in Italy.

Sant’Angelo, Perugia

This church (also referred to, more correctly, as San Michele Arcangelo) lies a few hundred metres northwest of the Etruscan/Roman walls of Perugia. It sits just inside the medieval walls, but since the church dates from the fifth or sixth century, it predates those walls and would originally have been outside the town.

It is an easy walk up a gentle slope from the Porta Etrusca to the church, past the Università per Stranieri (university for foreigners) and passing a few Chinese restaurants on the way.

The church sits in a little park, the main users of which, the last time I was there, were sunbathing locals and their dogs. The only other visitors to the actual church were a young tourist couple, who obviously had similarly nerdy interests to mine, as we later encountered each other in the otherwise deserted archaeological museum, and exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

Depending on when in the fifth or sixth centuries it was built, the church would have seen its first use before the fall of the empire, or later during the period of Ostrogothic rule, or later still during the ruinous Gothic Wars in which the Eastern Empire sought to re-establish its rule over Italy but ended up fatally weakening that rule. Or it possibly even dates from the period of the Lombard conquest of Italy. Yes, it was a pretty busy time. If you want to read more about this tumultuous period, I recommend my posts on Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire, A Return to Ravenna, and The Lombard Invasion and the Byzantine Corridor.

The church itself, being circular, is more typical of the late Roman period than of medieval times when the cross-shaped plan became ubiquitous. In fact, with its ambulatory vault it is reminiscent of the 4^th-Century Basilica of Santa Costanza in Rome, of which I wrote in the first post of this series.

The central dome is supported on a ring of sixteen columns – one source I have says that these were scavenged from multiple Roman sites, another says they were all from the same pagan temple, possibly on the same site. While I am not an expert, it seems to me that there are too many differences in style and execution for them to have come from the same original building. But whatever their provenance they are clearly of higher-quality craftsmanship than the rest of the church.

Sante'Angelo, Perugia — Sant’Angelo, Perugia. Interior showing column capitals. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

There are traces of 14^th-Century frescoes on the walls – 700 years ago may seem pretty old to you and me, but when they were put there the church was already eight or nine hundred years old.

Apparently in the 15^th Century, the church was converted into a small fort. I don’t know whether that would have required deconsecration, but it is certainly back in use as a church today. This may date from a restoration that occurred in the late 1940s.

San Salvatore, Spoleto

If you have read some of the related posts on this site you will know that after the Gothic Wars, the Langobards (Lombards), a displaced Germanic people, entered a weakened Italy from the north-east and quickly overran the peninsula, with the exception of Rome, Ravenna and the “Byzantine Corridor” which linked them. One of the main centres of Lombard power was the Duchy of Spoleto.

Just outside the old town of Spoleto, you will find the church of San Salvatore. At the time of writing (2023) it is unfortunately closed to allow the building to be strengthened against earthquakes. The authorities have however placed a sheet of toughened glass in the main doorway so you can peer into the interior. We previously visited there in 2015 and I took some pictures on my phone – some of those are reproduced here, and in due course I will return and take some better ones.

San Salvatore, Spoleto. Nexus 6P phone camera (click to enlarge).

According to Professor Ian Campbell Ross in his Umbria: A Cultural Guide (Oxford, 2013), the Lombards built little in stone themselves, having only a few years before been footloose wanderers through Europe with their cattle and wagons. This makes any survivals from their period all the more precious. Also according to Ross, the date of the original church on this site (and how much of that original remains) is the subject of scholarly dispute, but it may have been as early as the 4^th Century, well before the fall of the Empire and the arrival of the Lombards.

What is not disputed is that the Lombards rebuilt or renovated the church in the 8^th Century, and also that the internal structure makes use of columns and architraves that were originally part of Roman temples. Whether these were incorporated in the original building, or during the renovations, is I believe unknown. My dilettante observation is that the pillars appear to be load-bearing, in which case they are integral to the building’s structure. So if they were incorporated in the 8^th Century, then it must have been a complete rebuild. If it was only a renovation, then they may date from earlier and have been part of the original building.

Roman remnants are also incorporated in the façade – since this is not integral to the main structure they could definitely have been added at the time of the Lombard renovation in the 700s.

These days San Salvatore is the chapel of the municipal cemetery; by definition a quiet and reflective place. It seems that over the course of the 20th Century a series of restorations removed various internal baroque accretions and restored the dignity and austerity of the original, for which we must be grateful.

The Little Temple of Clitumnus

Let us finish with what is probably the oldest of these three examples. The Tempietto sul Clitunno is truly a remarkable survival, located near the Springs of Clitumnus (Fonti di Clitunno). That name would ring a bell to classically-minded readers, and also to others perhaps, as it crops up in later literature.

These days Clitunno is the name given to a little river that runs south through the Valle Umbra, one of several which, since the medieval draining of the valley, run in largely artificial channels. In ancient times though, Clitumnus was a river god whose shrine was located where a series of springs burst forth from the base of the hills. It was apparently a very sacred and beautiful place, where the cold, clear and pure waters were used to purify the white oxen being prepared for sacrifice. The poets Propertius and Virgil celebrated it in verse, and Pliny the Younger wrote an extensive description in one of his many letters. Later, Byron devoted several lines of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to it, in which – not untypically – he manages to work in a reference to a naked nymph.

The Fonti del Clitunno. The springs issue from the rocks in the centre of the photograph. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Nowadays the fame of the springs, at least among Italians, is due to their having been the subject of a 19^th-Century poem by the nationalist poet Giosuè Carducci in which he hails “green Umbria”, (although he never called it the “green heart of Italy”, as the poem is universally misquoted in tourism material).

Carducci memorial — Fonti del Clitunno, early 20th-Century memorial to Giosuè Carducci. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

And it must be said that it is hard to feel any echoes of ancient sanctity as the place now has the feel of a pleasant urban park, accentuated by the main road running past and the mothers with young children who know that the cold spring waters cool the air and make it an excellent place to come and stroll on a hot day. The poplar trees described by Pliny have been replaced by willows. Perhaps early on a misty autumn morning the atmosphere might be more evocative.

A few hundred metres up the road is a small building built on classical lines, the tempietto or little temple. For a long time it was misidentified as one of the ancient temples and shrines mentioned by Pliny, but it is quite far away from the springs, and in any case even a superficial examination reveals it to be a coarsely-built late Roman structure incorporating parts scavenged from earlier Roman temples. I have seen suggestions that those parts came from the original precinct of Clitumnus, and it seems plausible – why carry such things any further than you need to?

Tempietto sul Clitunno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In fact, to me this pretty little building is almost as interesting as an actual pagan temple, not least because it is not really all that much newer than a pagan temple would be. The central part, a barrel-vaulted chapel, dates from the late 4^th Century, which makes it seriously old, a hundred years or so before the traditional date of the fall of the western Empire.

A couple of hundred years later, a façade assembled from the scavenged Roman material was added, giving it the appearance it retains today. This was during the period of Lombard rule, leading to the tempietto having been declared part of a series of UNESCO sites in Italy associated with the Lombards (San Salvatore in Spoleto, above, is another).

According to the information displayed at the site, the outer pairs of columns are from the Imperial era (2^nd Century AD) while the inner pair and the tympanum – the triangular bit – are from the Augustan era (1^st Century AD).

In the picture below you can see how the finer work of the re-used earlier Roman elements contrasts with the rougher work of the late-imperial building, particularly where the decoration under the eaves continues around from the front to the side.

Inside, in the apse behind the altar, there are frescoes of Christ and Saints Peter and Paul that have been dated to the 8^th Century, so they are pretty damn old really, despite being four hundred years later than the building itself.

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As I said in the first in this series of articles, one of the attractions of these buildings is the sheer implausibility of their survival – from wars, earthquakes, misguided redecorations or simply falling apart through old age. All three of these Umbrian churches are miraculous in that way; and all three snooze away in their respective settings – Sant’Angelo on the edge of Perugia, in its park with the sunbathers and dog walkers, San Salvatore in Spoleto’s municipal cemetery, and the tempietto nestled inconspicuously beside the main road from Spoleto to Trevi. Go there and lay your hands on the stones – and touch history.

July 16, 2023January 27, 2024

Renaissance Exuberance in Perugia

A visit to two different, but memorably-decorated churches in Perugia – the Oratory of St Bernardino, and the Basilica of San Pietro.

There are many excellent things to see in Perugia, and other reasons to visit too: good restaurants, not too crowded, parking fees that are not extortionate by Italian standards, and free escalators and lifts from car parks up to the historic centre. The Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria has fine examples of Umbrian Art, and the Museum of Archaeology (to be the subject of a future post) has fascinating Etruscan artefacts.

But for most historically-minded visitors to Perugia, one of the main impressions they take away with them is of the group of magnificent gothic public buildings[1] which together form the Palazzo dei Priori, at the end of the Corso Vannucci, near the duomo (cathedral) and the Fontana Maggiore. As I discussed in my post on The Buried Streets of Perugia, one reason this part of town is so well-preserved is because of the Papal conquest in the early 16^th Century, and the subsequent expropriation of most revenue to Rome. The architecture stayed as it was because there was no money to change it – the money went to Rome where many fine old buildings were “modernised” in the baroque style. In architectural history, the hard times of earlier ages can sometimes be posterity’s gain.

All that being so, today I would like to talk about a couple of – in my view under-appreciated – buildings which are covered in exuberant Renaissance decoration, one on the outside, and one all over the inside. Both are in easy walking distance from the historic centre, but because the centre has so much to offer, many visitors never get to them and you can admire them in peace.

The Oratory of St Bernardino of Siena

Let us start with the one that is decorated on the outside. It is the Oratorio di San Bernardino, part of a complex which includes the larger church of San Francesco al Prato, nowadays associated with Perugia University.

Although he came from Siena, Bernardino preached all over central Italy, and was particularly active in Perugia, where you can see a special pulpit they built for him on the side of the duomo. I don’t know if non-Catholics are supposed to have favourite Catholic saints, but if I were allowed to, Bernardino would definitely not be one of mine. He preached fiery sermons against Jews, homosexuals and gypsies, sometimes leading to violence against them, and his views on women seem to have been regressive even by the standards of the early 15^th Century. He is associated with the start of a period of witch-burnings that was a stain on European history for over two hundred years.

In iconography, he is always rather appropriately represented as having a pinched, disapproving face, and since this seems to be based on contemporary portraits, that must indeed be what he looked like. Anyway, I don’t want to give offence, so let us move on to the charming little oratory that the Perugians started building in his honour in 1452, only eight years after his death and two years after his canonisation.

It seems that Bernardino is credited with having pacified the warring factions in Perugia (see my post on Tough Guys in Art – the Baglioni of Perugia) and it is for this reason that he was popular there.

To complete the building, the Perugians commissioned a Florentine sculptor called Agostino di Duccio to create a façade in polychrome, showing The Glory of St Bernardino.

Oratorio di San Bernardino, Perugia — The Oratory of St Bernardino, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

And glorious it is, with cream and pink marble, and blue lapis lazuli creating a most agreeable pastel effect. Apparently there was gold there too once, but whether this was deliberately removed or just flaked off I don’t know. It must have been magnificent when new.

At the top there is a Virgin and Child, below which you can see the words AUGUSTA PERUSIA, the title given to the city in antiquity by the Emperor Augustus (see my post on The Ancient Gates of Perugia) and the date 1461, when the façade was completed.

In the centre, we see the saint surrounded by angels, below which is a frieze commemorating the attested miracles that would have been needed for his canonisation. That is also where the sculptor signed his name – OPUS AUGUSTINI FLORENTINI LAPICIDAE.

My favourite parts are the panels either side of the two doors, where there are several angel musicians. Most of the musicians are showing the expected decorum, but one seems to be auditioning for the role of lead guitarist in a thrash metal rock band.

Inside the church is a complete contrast; very simple and austere. I don’t know if it has always been thus, or whether, as in so many cases, a modern restoration has removed baroque accretions to bring back the dignity of the original. But if baroque excess is your thing, there is a chapel behind the altar you should visit.

The altar itself is a Christian sarcophagus of the late Roman period. It was re-used to house the remains of Giles of Assisi, one of the companions of St Francis.

On the wall you can see hanging a gonfalone or banner, commemorating the deliverance of Perugia from an outbreak of plague in 1464. The Madonna is shown protecting the city from divine wrath in the form of two armed angels and a particularly angry-looking Christ. At the bottom, another armed angel (I think it is the Archangel Michael) is driving away the figure of death with a spear. The interceding saints are on either side of the Madonna, with St Bernardino at the lower left. You can see what I mean about his pinched face.

Gonfalone, Oratorio di San Bernardino, Perugia — *Gonfalone* (banner) of St Francis, Oratory of St Bernardino, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

The Abbey Church of San Pietro

This basilica, to the south-east of the historic centre of Perugia, is most definitely not a Renaissance building. Parts of it date from the 10^th Century, replacing a 4^th-Century church which was in turn erected on an Etrusco-Roman religious site. It was the church of a wealthy and powerful monastery (now the department of agriculture and environmental science at the university).

Monastery cloister, San Pietro, Perugia, now part of the university. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

It has a distinctive tower on a 12-sided base, dating from the 13^th Century, long a Perugian landmark. In fact in the National Gallery of Umbria there is a series of 15^th-Century paintings by Benedetto Bonfigli showing incidents in the life of the Patron Saint of Perugia, St Herculanus, ending with the transfer of his remains to San Pietro. Despite Herculanus having been an historical figure from the 6^th Century, Bonfigli charmingly paints it all as having occurred in the Perugia of his own day, in which the tower of San Pietro is easily identified.

Bonfigli Sant'Ercolano — Transfer of the body of St Herculanus, by Benedetto Bonfigli (ca 1420-1496) showing the tower of San Pietro. Galleria Nazionale Dell’Umbria, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

It seems that like many powerful monastic establishments, the Abbey took sides in secular conflicts, which sometimes saw it being attacked, damaged and restored. In the 16^th Century a period of reconstruction and decoration of the basilica began which continued into the 18^th, and in the course of this every single available surface was covered in frescoes, oil paintings and wood carvings. Although the quality of the art is variable, the overall effect is overwhelming.

Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Behind the altar, the choir stalls are of intricately carved and inlaid wood, with many grotesque – and distinctly non-religious – subjects.

Choir stalls, Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

The church also holds a collection of manuscript volumes of Gregorian Chant, some beautifully illuminated.

Music book, Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia — Music book, showing the *Agnus Dei* from the end of one mass, and the *Kyrie eleison* from the start of another. The reason they were so big is that the singers didn’t have their own copies, so had to be able to read them from a distance. Basilica di San Pietro, Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

In 2022 we attended a performance here of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 by a group from Monteverdi’s home town of Cremona. It was beautifully performed, and in a most evocative setting.

[1] Note: in architectural terms, “gothic” refers to the style of the late Middle Ages, characterised by pointy window arches and other decorative features. It has nothing to do with the Goths, confusingly.

January 10, 2023November 19, 2023

The Ancient Gates of Perugia

Perugia is a very ancient town. One very effective way to appreciate just how old is to look at a couple of remarkably-preserved town gates. This post adds a little more to the stories I have already told about Perugia.

Like many similar Central Italian towns, Perugia acquired more than one set of walls over the centuries. The original – inner – Etruscan walls had eight gates. Most of the surviving gates in the inner wall show their ancient origins in the form of Etrusco-Roman travertine blocks of the earlier structures at the base of later medieval gates.

However two gates have survived from antiquity in something like their original condition, and each tells quite an important story from Perugia’s past.

The Porta Marzia

In my post on The Buried Streets of Perugia I told the story of how Pope Paul III Farnese subdued the independently-minded Perugini, how he commissioned the architect Antonio Sangallo to build a huge fortress to dominate the town, and how Sangallo, in his haste to meet the papal deadlines, simply roofed over part of the old town to make a foundation for the fortress.

Had Sangallo carried out his task to the letter, one of the casualties – in addition to the Baglioni quarter of town – would have been a surviving Roman gate, the Porta Marzia (the gate of Mars) dating from the 3^rd Century BC. Why it is called that is not known – plausible hypotheses include that there was a temple of Mars nearby, or that it was named after someone called Vibio Marso who paid for its construction.

It is certainly an elegant structure, as the photograph shows. Above the arch, and below the line of columns, you can see the inscription Augusta Perugia (explained below) and along the top you can see the inscription Colonia Vibia. This latter is a reference to Perugia having been granted the status of Ius Coloniae by the emperor Vibius Trebonianus Gallus who was a local boy, but whose reign only lasted from AD 251 to 253.

Perugia, Porta Marzia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Whatever its origins, it remained in pretty good condition in the 16^th Century. Unfortunately it stood in a place destined to be destroyed to make way for the foundations of Paul III’s fortress.

Paul is unlikely to have been too concerned about its loss – too many Medieval and Renaissance popes, looking at a well-preserved ancient building, would simply have ordered that any bronze be stripped and recast as cannon, and any marble be burned to make lime for cement. And if the loss of the Porta Marzia caused pain to the Perugians, then so much the better – as I discussed in the earlier article, Paul seems to have been the type to hold a grudge.

Fortunately Sangallo, like many architects of the era, had been taught to revere the architecture of antiquity and could not bring himself to destroy this particularly fine example. So he had it disassembled, moved and reassembled as a sort of façade on the outside of a bastion beneath the fortress. The distance moved was only about four metres, but it would still have been quite a lot of work. Posterity thanks you, Messer Antonio.

For the first few hundred years after the construction of the fortress, it seems that the Porta Marzia would not have been much more than a bit of decorative masonry. However now you can walk through it, into the old streets of the Baglioni quarter, then up an escalator into the centre of town.

The Porta Etrusca

Once you have come up the escalator into the centre, you need to walk the length of the old town from south to north, along the Corso Pietro Vannucci (the real name of the painter now known as Perugino).

Perugia, Corso Vannucci. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

You will pass a good many cafes, restaurants and chocolate shops, including the outlet for the “Perugina” chocolate company. You will also pass the complex of magnificent Gothic buildings that houses, among other things, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, until you reach the duomo (cathedral).

Perugia Duomo — Perugia, the Duomo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once past the duomo, you can take the road to the left that heads downhill to the Porta Etrusca, but we would recommend taking the road uphill to the right that takes you there via the top of the walls, with an impressive view over hills to the north, beyond which is the Upper Tiber Valley. The photograph below shows that view shortly before a late summer thunderstorm broke.

Perugia stormy weather — Stormy weather in Perugia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Whichever way you go, you will eventually make your way down to the level of the road that runs around the outside of the inner set of walls. There, looking out over Perugia’s Università per Stranieri (University for Foreigners), you will find the Porta Etrusca.

Perugia Porta Etrusca — Perugia. Porta Etrusca and the Università per Stranieri. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge).

This is a remarkable piece of architecture by any standard, not least for the various eras and events of Perugian history manifest in its stones.

Perugia (ancient Perusia) is first recorded as one of the 12 confederated Etruscan cities, at the north-eastern limit of the original Etruscan heartland on the border with the Umbri, a Latin people. Over time, as in other such centres, the Perugian Etruscan civilisation did not fall to Rome as such but became gradually Romanised to the point where it faded away. The local Etruscan noble families Latinised their names and became Roman aristocrats – the Emperor Vibius Trebonianus Gallus mentioned earlier came from such a family.

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Perugia made the mistake of backing Mark Antony against Octavian, which saw the city captured and sacked in 40 BC. Octavian, as the Emperor Augustus, rebuilt the city and named it Perusia Augusta after himself.

The next time the Perugians really needed their city walls was during the Gothic Wars in the 6^th Century AD, when the Ostrogoths under Totila eventually captured the city, killing Bishop Herculanus who had led the defence and negotiated the surrender. Now as San Ercolano and the city’s patron saint, he is presumably still keeping an eye on the place. Interestingly, the patron saint of Todi, a bit further south, was also that town’s bishop during the Gothic Wars.

During the Guelph-Ghibelline wars of the Middle Ages, and right up until the final defeat of Perugia by Paul III in the 16^th Century, solid defences would presumably have been a high priority for the town’s governing council.

With all that in mind, let’s have a close-up look at the Porta Etrusca.

The massive unmortared travertine blocks that make up the lower part are Etruscan, around 2,300 years old, but looking fairly decent for their age. Then, just where the arch begins, the Etruscan blocks are replaced by more evenly-cut Roman masonry. And on the arch are carved the words Augusta Perusia, dating it to after the reconstruction of 40 BC.

Continuing upward, there is an ornamental frieze on which, if you look carefully, you will see the words Colonia Vibia, dating from after the granting of that title by Emperor Gallus in the 3^rd Century.

Now let us move a bit further away to a spot from which we can appreciate the whole structure. The contrast between the rougher Etruscan stone and the more even Roman work is easier to see in this picture.

Look at the top right, where there is a section of quite poor-quality medieval stonework, looking as if it might have been done in a hurry. Was that a hasty repair as the Gothic army approached? No doubt there is an archaeologist somewhere who knows, but I have been unable to find a reference. If I ever do I will update this post.

And then finally at the top there is an elegant 16^th-Century loggia. I find it remarkable that from here you can take in, at a single glance, a couple of thousand years of history (a bit more, if you include the electronic bus sign). I really enjoy bringing visitors here. Another attraction, a few metres up the street, is a shop called Augusta Perusia which sells excellent handmade chocolates. We approve of the name, and indeed the product.

August 5, 2022November 19, 2023

The Palazzo Trinci in Foligno II – More Jewels of the High Middle Ages

In addition to its secular artistic gems, the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno contains some wonderful religious art and a “Gothic Staircase”.

In my first post on the Palazzo Trinci I gave some of the history of this remarkable building and its contents, particularly the allegorical frescoes in what is known as the “Hall of the Liberal Arts”.

When contemplating works like these, dating from the late 1300s and early 1400s it is obvious that, whatever the simple stories they once taught schoolchildren, Lorenzo de’ Medici didn’t wake up one day in Florence in the 1470s and decide to start the Renaissance. That intellectual awakening had been under way for at least a century, and it wasn’t just in Florence, or even in Italy. As with most things in history it was a gradual process, and the glories of Leonardo and Erasmus didn’t appear out of the blue. Real historians have always known that, but things tend to get simplified for the rest of us.

For now, let us just admire the art. And if the Hall of the Liberal Arts were the only thing to see in the Palazzo Trinci it would be well worth the visit. But it isn’t the only thing to see.

The “Gothic Staircase”

Let us start with the extraordinary internal gothic staircase. I’m not sure if the famous 20th Century Dutch artist M.C. Escher ever visited Foligno, but I’m sure that we are not the only visitors who thought that this looked like something in one of his prints.

Palazzo Trinci Gothic Staircase — The “Gothic Staircase” in the Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Palazzo Trinco "Gothic Staircase" — The “Gothic Staircase” in the Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

As I said in the earlier article, the Palazzo was not designed as a single building, but had its origins as a number of smaller separate dwellings that were consolidated into a greater one. One effect of this was to leave a large internal space that would once have been an external courtyard. Ugolini III Trinci decided to fill the space with the staircase. The decorations – under the Gothic arches and the trompe l’oeil decorations on the walls – make it clear that this is not merely a prosaic means to access the higher floors, but the focal point of the Palazzo.

The Private Corridor

Like many important families in Italy, the Trinci arranged private access to the duomo (Cathedral) – in their case in the form of an elevated corridor. You can see it in the photograph below.

Trinci Private Corridor — External view of the private corridor linking the Palazzo Trinci with the Duomo, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Inside, the decorations are a little confusing. This is because there was originally a fresco depicting The Ages of Man – a common theme. This was later covered by a new fresco depicting The Nine Heroes (or The Nine Worthies) – another common 14th Century theme, but the former Ages of Man fresco was recreated on the opposite wall. Then at some point part of the Nine Heroes fresco has fallen away, exposing part of the original Ages of Man.

The Nine Heroes theme comes from a French text from 1312 – the first three are from the Bible, being Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus. The next three are from the Greek and Roman world – Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. The final three are called the “Heroes of Christendom” and are King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey de Bouillon.

I must admit that I had to look up who Godfrey was, but he was one of the leading knights in the First Crusade, who became King of Jerusalem at the conclusion of the crusade. I can’t show you a photograph of his likeness in the Palazzo Trinci because it has been completely destroyed. Instead here is one in which I think the first is Caesar, the second may be Hector, and the third is definitely King Arthur. Identification is hindered by the fact that they were all portrayed in contemporary 14th Century armour, and one is expected to recognise them from the heraldic devices on their shields.

The Chapel

I’ll finish with the best bit; the chapel in the Palazzo Trinci is a little jewel box. It has been fortunate to avoid as much earthquake damage as was suffered elsewhere in the building, and being a consecrated place probably helped it avoid some of the vandalism perpetrated by papal authorities on some of the secular decorations.

Palazzo Trinci Chapel — The chapel, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

The chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and every inch of walls and vaulted gothic ceiling is covered with frescoed scenes from the Virgin’s life (with Saint Francis getting a brief appearance as well).

As with much art of this period, a constant pleasure is the way everyone is in wildly anachronistic but gorgeous contemporary costume.

July 26, 2022November 19, 2023

The Ponte Fonnaia on the Via Flaminia

Tucked away in an Umbrian wood is a two thousand year old bridge – the Ponte Fonnaia – that bore the legions northwards from Rome on the Via Flaminia.

This is intended as a brief postscript to Carsulae – On the Legions’ Road to Rimini. In that original post we visited the ruins of the Roman town of Carsulae, and I indulged in some flights of fancy inspired by Rudyard Kipling. We ended the post with an imagined legion marching away through the north gate of the town, and disappearing into the woods along the Via Flaminia, the great military road that linked Rome with north-east Italy.

Then more recently a friend told me about an intact Roman bridge a few miles north of Carsulae, so I decided to go and find it.

Finding it turned out to be very easy – it is close to an exit from the E45 motorway near the town of Massa Martana. Although at first when I got to the spot I couldn’t see any bridge. It turned out that the area in which you park your car is almost on top of it.

Unlike the Roman Bridge at Pesciano, which is showing the effect of recent restoration, the Ponte Fonnaia looks agreeably old and atmospheric.

The bridge takes the road across a small river – a torrente – called the Naja. It is dry in summer, so you can actually walk under the bridge.

According to the signage at the site, and a web page published by the local municipality, the original bridge was built at the same time as the Via Flaminia, that is around 220 BC. However the structure that is there now dates from a campaign of repairs and upgrades to the road that occurred in 27 AD in the reign of Augustus.

If you do walk under the bridge and look carefully you will see that the stones are inscribed with letters, some of which are Roman numerals (in many cases they are hard to make out due to age).

I have read that this is because Roman military engineers took a very organised and standardised approach. When the stones were quarried, they were cut to size at the quarry, and inscribed to show their intended location in the finished bridge.

The stones were then shipped to the building site where they could be quickly assembled like an IKEA bookcase, and the construction team could move on to the next job. I do not know whether this is a hypothesis or historically attested fact, but it seems very plausible – we know that Roman military engineers were strong on standardisation.

To the north of here, the Via Flaminia is mostly hidden under modern roads. But to the south, in the direction of Carsulae, it remains a quiet unmade country road, as in the photographs below. It isn’t hard to imagine our imagined Roman legion appearing around the bend, swinging along on the march.

July 1, 2022February 15, 2024

Foligno: The Palazzo Trinci and the Hall of the Liberal Arts

The Palazzo Trinci in Foligno has a chequered history but preserves some of the greatest examples of late Medieval humanist art.

If you are in Umbria visiting towns like Perugia, Assisi or Spoleto, you might not consider adding Foligno to your itinerary. It doesn’t sit prettily on top of a hill, to start with, and with its valley-floor location it is surrounded by industrial areas. So for us at first Foligno was somewhere we went when we needed shops. This turned out to be a mistake – the historic centre has some wonderful medieval buildings, and as I posted here it hosts one of the more impressive historical re-enactment festivals. It also features a remarkable building and museum in the Palazzo Trinci, of which more later.

Being flat gives Foligno a different character to that of its Umbrian neighbours. The locals get around the historic centre on bicycles, and this makes it feel a bit like a northern Italian town – say Cremona or Treviso. Its being flat might also give your calf muscles some relief after a series of visits to Umbrian hill towns.

Foligno duomo — Foligno Duomo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

A brief History of Foligno

Like many other towns in Umbria, Foligno – ancient Fulginium, or Fulginiae – was founded by the Umbri in prehistory and absorbed into the Roman state in the Third Century BC. It was the point where the eastern and western branches of the Via Flamina reunited after passing either side of the Martani hills, and would also have been where the road from Perugia joined the Flaminia, so it would have been at an important crossroads.

Foligno Palazzo Trinci — Part of a mosaic floor from the Roman town of *Forum Flaminiae*, on display in the Palazzo Trinci museum, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

After suffering the usual despoliation at the hands of invaders in the Dark Ages, Foligno recovered and for a while became an independent player in the Guelph vs. Ghibelline power politics of Central Italy. In due course it was absorbed into the Papal States like every other town in the region.

The Trinci Family

From the 12^th to the 15^th Centuries, political evolution in central and northern Italy often took the same sort of path. Towns and cities developed the institutions of self-government – administration, courts, a militia or army. In many places one or more families would become wealthy and powerful, but would exercise that power through domination of those institutions and patronage rather than assuming power formally.

Families would seek advantage over rival families, and cities over rival cities, by allying themselves with one of the two “superpower” factions – the Papacy (the Guelphs) or the Holy Roman Empire (the Ghibellines).

Events in Foligno followed that conventional course. In the early 1300s the Trinci family were rivals with the Anastasi family for control of Foligno. Originally Ghibellines, the Trinci switched sides to the Guelphs in order to gain the assistance of Perugia and Spoleto to run the Anastasi out of town. For the next century and a half the Trinci ran Foligno until they fell out with the Papacy, at which point a papal army took the town, the last of the Trinci line was imprisoned and murdered, and a papal governor took over.

The Palazzo Trinci

Like other de facto Italian rulers at the time such as the Medici, the Trinci built an imposing palace in town, right next to the “official” city government buildings.

Or rather they didn’t exactly build it. They acquired an existing palace which had been created by merging several existing residential buildings, and then they renovated it. And what renovations they were. A grand gothic façade (unfortunately replaced by a neoclassical façade after earthquake damage in 1832), an absolute jewel box of a chapel, a private covered passage linking the palace to the Duomo (cathedral) next door, and a magnificent Gothic style internal staircase linking three floors of the building. All of those I will deal with in another post, because today I propose to talk about the so-called “Hall of the Liberal Arts”.

A Miraculous Survival

But first I should observe how miraculous it is that the Palazzo Trinci and its artworks should have survived at all, after the damage it received from war, the violence of nature and the malice and ignorance of humanity.

Major earthquakes damaged the building in 1477, 1703 and 1832. The roof fell in during a storm in 1899. And in 1944 bombs fell on the buildings at the rear of the complex, and on the town hall just in front.

More damage came through deliberate actions. After Foligno was brought under direct papal rule the Palazzo Trinci became the seat of the papal governors, and many of the frescoes associated with the Trinci were defaced. In the 1470s Pope Sixtus IV moved his residence to the palace during an outbreak of plague in Rome – and ordered that all surviving references to the Trinci be removed and replaced with references to him. Not only that but in one inscription he even claimed that the splendour of the palace was his own doing!

Worse was to come. In the late 18^th Century the papal governor – a man of obvious taste and discrimination – decided that the place was looking a bit old-fashioned and had all the frescoes whitewashed over. Part of the building was converted to a jail, with inadequate sewage. Items from the archaeological collection were sold to wealthy foreigners. Even after Italian reunification and the end of Papal rule the building was to suffer further insult, being allowed to deteriorate further while housing shops, a theatre, the police headquarters and the Guardia di Finanza.

Rehabilitation of the building started towards the end of the 19^th Century and the frescoes were uncovered and partly restored in the 1930s and 1950s. However in the 1980s the roof fell in again and it was only after the 1990s that a decade-long restoration brought the building to its current state in which it became the municipal museum.

The Hall of the Liberal Arts

The high point of the Trinci fortunes came at the end of the 1300s and the beginning of the 1400s when the head of the family was Ugolini III Trinci. After conducting successful campaigns in central Umbria on behalf of the Papacy he received many honours and rewards, and life in the Palazzo Trinci started to look a bit more like that of a court.

Men of letters and artists were attracted there – people who think the Renaissance started later and in Florence might say it was a bit early to call them “humanists”, but the whole thing has a Renaissance feel to it. Two particularly noteworthy associates were the poet Federico Frezzi and the artist Gentile da Fabriano.

Frezzi wrote a laudatory poem called Quadriregio which praised Ugolino and made references to the Trinci’s claims, made by all great families at the time, to origins in mythological antiquity. In particular the Trinci traced their line back to Romulus, and the story of Romulus was illustrated by Gentile da Fabriano in one of the halls, including the story of the Trojan woman and Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia who was made pregnant by the god Mars and bore the twins Romulus and Remus (and was then executed for betraying her Vestal vow of chastity).

Execution of Rhea Silvia — The execution of Rhea Silvia, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In the photograph above, the ochre drawings visible where the plaster has fallen away (known as “sinopia”) have not been added by modern restorers. They are the drawings by the original artist before the wet plaster was applied, over which they would then quickly paint. They only become visible if the plaster is damaged and falls away.

The traditional execution method for an unchaste vestal was suffocation by being buried alive, hence the pit to which she is being dragged. It seems an odd way to celebrate a woman one is claiming as one’s ancestress, by having a large picture of her execution in the house, but tastes change. In any case the artist’s depiction of everyone in contemporary late 14th-Century dress makes it very interesting.

Gentile da Fabriano was a leading exponent of the late-Medieval style known as “International Gothic”. He was employed to decorate a large hall in the Palazzo – then the library, it is now known as the “Hall of the Liberal Arts” after his frescoes. Although Frezzi’s Quadriregio is lost, it is thought that much of Gentile’s work is derived from the poem.

The main feature of the hall is seven portraits – personifications of the seven liberal arts. These were divided into two groups. The early arts (known as the Trivium, or three paths) were Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. The later arts (the Quadrivium, or four paths) were Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy.

Palazzo Trinci Rhetoric and Mathematics — Palazzo Trinci, Rhetoric (L) and Arithmetic (R). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

By the way, when the Quadrivium was introduced, there was some resistance from older scholars. Younger scholars responded by suggesting that the Trivium was superficial and lightweight in comparison. “Trivial“ therefore became a term of intellectual abuse. The Palazzo Trinci frescoes do not weigh in to the debate other than to put the Quadrivium closer to the centre of the composition, implying that they are further up in the hierarchy.

But in the centre of the composition, and therefore queen of all the disciplines, was Philosophy. This, alas, was damaged beyond repair at some point. We are fortunate that in the 1770s a scholar called Ludovico Coltellini sketched various parts of the frescoes, including the head of Philosophy – a beautiful crowned woman – and his notebook survived.

Palazzo Trinci Filosofia — Sketch of Philosophy by Ludovico Coltellini, 1770s. Phone camera (click to enlarge)

The fact that Philosophy was still intact in the 1770s suggests that the damage probably occurred in the earthquake of 1832.

Palazzo Trinci Astronomy — Palazzo Trinci, Astronomy (detail). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Each liberal art is represented by a female figure, sometimes attended by another figure, either a student or practitioner.

Palazzo Trinci Geometry — Palazzo Trinci, Geometry (detail). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Below are Music and Logic. Music is playing a portative organ and a chime of bells, and she is clearly getting into it, or as a former conductor of ours used to say, “giving it some welly”. Logic is an older woman holding snakes. Not sure why, although Cristina Galassi (see “further reading”, below) suggests that this suggests the sophisticated deception of words. Maybe using logic to defeat deception is like wrestling with snakes.

Palazzo Trinci Music — Palazzo Trinci, Music. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Palazzo Trinci Logic — Palazzo Trinci, Logic. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Grammar is a teacher instructing a child, holding the book for him as he traces the words on the page.

Palazzo Trinci Grammar — Palazzo Trinci, Grammar. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Lombard Invasion and the Byzantine Corridor

The late Sixth Century saw some extraordinary developments in Italy. Almost the entire country was overrun by the Lombards, except for a narrow strip of territory – the “Byzantine Corridor” between Rome and Ravenna. You can still see where, in the modern landscape, the “Corridor” ran.

In my post about Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire I wrote of the invasion of Italy by the Goths, the partial reconquest by Byzantine forces, and briefly mentioned the subsequent invasion by the Lombards. This post picks up the story, and looks at how it played out in central Italy.

The Byzantine forces under Belisarius and Narses had successfully regained much of Italy from the Goths for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Obviously the conflict is not entirely forgotten in Umbria, going by this wine label I found:

Belisarius Grechetto — A bottle of Grechetto wine named after the Byzantine General Belisarius. The wine was very nice. Nokia 6.1 phone camera (click to enlarge).

But the period of the Gothic War of 535-554 was absolutely ruinous for Italy – not just due to military action. In 536 the Earth suffered the worst climate event in recorded history when a volcanic eruption (the location is uncertain) caused two years of severe global cooling followed by drought. Crops failed and famine was widespread. Then came the so-called “Justinian Plague” in 540-541 (probably bubonic plague). All that was on top of the spread of malaria from the south. Deliberate debasement of the currency (these days they call it “quantitative easing”) which had been going on for many years, reduced people’s purchasing power. Depopulation, impoverishment and a general breakdown in administration were inevitable. The population shrank, education almost ceased, technologies were forgotten, the great cities emptied, productive agricultural land reverted to swamp or woodland, health and life expectancy declined, and things were generally horrible. Revisionist modern historians avoid using the term “Dark Ages” to refer to the centuries after the fall of the empire (presumably to avoid offending people who identify as Visigoths and Vandals) but the Dark Ages sound pretty dark to me.

And while the war left the “Roman” Byzantines nominally in charge, it was a pyrrhic victory. The attenuated power of the local representatives of distant Byzantium – the Exarchs of Ravenna – was not up to the task of resisting the next threat.

The Lombards

And the next threat was the Lombards, or in their own language, Langobards or Longobards. If you agree with me that it sounds a little bit like the English words “long beards”, you are absolutely right. The Langobards came to the notice of history in what is now southern Sweden, Denmark and northern Germany, where they were speaking a language closely related to Anglo-Saxon. And it seems that they did indeed have long beards, or at least the men did, so that is what they called themselves.

After a few hundred years of drifting southwards, and under pressure from other aggressive populations to the east, the Lombards (as I will now refer to them with their Italianised name), found themselves in what is now Austria and Slovakia around 568 AD. They entered devastated and depopulated Italy across the Julian Alps (in modern Slovenia) and were virtually unopposed. A modern town close to where they entered Italy is Cividale del Friuli in the far northeast, which has some Lombard archaeological remains and an excellent museum of Lombard culture which I highly recommend.

The “Ponte del Diavolo” in Cividale del Friuli, with the Julian Alps (in Slovenia) visible in the distance. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50c digital back, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens (click to enlarge).

Lombard Jewellery in the National Archaeological Museum, Cividale del Friuli. Nexus 6P phone camera (click to enlarge).

As we saw earlier, thanks to the devastation caused by the Gothic Wars, the Lombards were pretty much pushing at an open door. But nevertheless the speed of their expansion through Italy was extraordinary. Only two or three years later almost all of northern Italy was under their control (a much larger region than the modern “Lombardy”) and Lombard duchies had been established further south in Tuscany, Spoleto and Benevento.

Here is a map of Italy after these duchies were established.

Byzantine and Lombard Italy (Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge).

You will see that the nominally Byzantine control of Rome continued, that the Exarchate of Ravenna was threatened, and that they were connected by a narrow strip of territory. Italian historians call this the Corridoio Bizantino or “Byzantine Corridor”.

Conflict and Truce

In Umbria, as the Lombards extended their territory westwards from Spoleto, they captured the Via Flaminia, cutting the Byzantines off from the historic military route between Ravenna and Rome. But somewhere in the Martani Hills the Lombards stopped, and the Via Amerina, not far to the west in the Tiber Valley, remained under Byzantine control. It was this road, originally a series of pre-Roman provincial roads between towns, that became the narrow thread linking Ravenna and Rome through hostile country: the Byzantine Corridor.

At first the corridor was created and defended by force of arms. Later, a truce between Lombard and Byzantine/Papal authorities regularised the borders, but there were probably a few skirmishes from time to time.

So how narrow was the corridor? In places very narrow indeed, it would seem.

Linguistic Evidence

Working out where the edges of the Byzantine Corridor lay is difficult; they didn’t put up signs beside the roads. But as with Anglo-Saxon and Celtic place-names in Britain, one form of evidence for boundaries, and hence the extent of Lombard dominion in Italy, is linguistic.

A few years ago it occurred to me to wonder about the origin of the word borgo, common in Italy and meaning a small town, or an area on the edge of a larger town. This is clearly not of Latin origin, but the same Germanic word that you find in Hamburg, Gothenburg, Peterborough, Canterbury and Edinburgh. And lots of other burgs, borgs, boroughs and burys. What was such an obviously Germanic word doing in Italian?

It turns out that borgo and several other Italian words associated with locations are indeed Germanic. Some might have been derived from Gothic or Frankish, but most are probably Lombard.

Another such word is gualdo. The letters “gu” in Italian were used in Italian to render the initial “w” sound in Germanic languages, such as “Gualtiero” for “Walter”. So if you see an Italian word beginning in “gu”, it probably has a Germanic origin. Gualdo comes from the same origin as the German wald meaning wood or forest, as in Schwartzwald for “Black Forest”.

There are a number of places in Italy either called Gualdo, or with names containing that word. They all seem to be in areas that were once part of Lombard dominions. While such places were presumably named for being in or near woodland, the term is also associated with military outposts, suggesting that they would have been on the borders of Lombard territory.

In the Martani Hills in Umbria is a pretty little town called Gualdo Cattaneo. From the linguistic evidence just discussed, this may well have been an outpost in wooded country on the edge of Lombard territory, in this case the Duchy of Spoleto. I understand that the earliest surviving records are from after the period of the Byzantine Corridor, but the name tells you that the area was certainly Lombard, so the idea that this was originally a border outpost is appealing. The photograph below, taken from the south, shows that it was on elevated ground facing west into Byzantine territory – exactly what you would expect of such an outpost.

Distant view of Gualdo Cattaneo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

The picture below, taken from a bit closer, shows the defensive situation of the town, even if the current fortifications are clearly from the 14th Century or later (rounded fortifications generally post-date the introduction of cannon to warfare; cannon balls are more likely to bounce off them).

Gualdo Cattaneo from closer up. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6×6 cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The Byzantine Corridor Today

The photograph below shows the Middle Tiber Valley, looking north from Todi towards Perugia (I recommend you click on it to open a larger version in a new window). It is up this valley that the Via Amerina ran, and so you are looking at the actual Byzantine Corridor. Today’s pretty agricultural landscape must look very different from the semi-wilderness of the 6th Century though. The Via Amerina more or less followed the route now taken by the E45 motorway, clearly visible on the eastern side of the river, but back then it would have threaded between swamps and woodland, and passed through the ruins of Roman-era towns by then abandoned.

This photograph really helps one envisage just how narrow the “Byzantine Corridor” was, here in central Umbria. Gualdo Cattaneo, on the edge of the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto, is in the hills at the right of the photograph, about 12 kilometres from the motorway. To the left of the Via Amerina is the Tiber (marked by a double line of trees), and beyond it steep hilly country. Further west still was the Lombard Duchy of Tuscia, or Tuscany.

Here is the same area on a map. The E45 motorway runs down the middle, following approximately the same route as the ancient Via Amerina. Gualdo Cattaneo is on the right. The town of Deruta through which the road passed had been completely destroyed in the Gothic Wars and Lombard invasion – indeed its very name derives from Latin words implying ruin.

That puts it all in perspective. Up and down this valley would have come Byzantine troops, and Imperial and church officials, trying to maintain contact between Ravenna and Rome. They would have hurried from the protection of one fortified town to the next, keeping an eye on the nearby woodlands for signs of an ambush by Lombard troops, or maybe a party of leftover Goths.

South of Todi there seems to be some uncertainty over exactly where the Corridor ran. I’ve done a bit of poking about in the hills there, and I’ll make that the subject of a separate post in due course.

June 7, 2022November 19, 2023

The Buried Streets of Perugia

The Rocca Paolina, or “Fortress of (Pope) Paul” was a symbol of oppression in Perugia for centuries. But its builder inadvertently saved a medieval streetscape for future generations.

One of the articles on this site that gets the highest number of views is Tough Guys in Art – the Baglioni of Perugia. Google moves in mysterious ways so I can’t really explain its popularity, but where I ended that article is where I propose to start this one.

To recap briefly, in the 15^th and early 16^th centuries the famously bellicose Perugians were ruled by a famously violent family, the Baglioni. When they were not slaughtering each other they managed to commission some fine works of art by artists like Perugino and Pinturicchio.

As I said at the end of that article, eventually the Baglioni fought each other to exhaustion. The Pope of the day (Paul III, formerly Cardinal Alessandro Farnese) saw his opportunity and took the town by force, beginning three hundred years of direct papal rule marked by economic, intellectual and artistic impoverishment.

Steep economic decline isn’t much fun for those experiencing it. But it does have the perverse benefit for more fortunate later generations of freezing a town or a landscape at the moment anyone stopped spending money on it. One reason the Cotswolds region in England is such a perfect jewel today is because the decline of the wool trade preserved it as it was. And so it was with Perugia, Todi, Spoleto and other scenic towns in Umbria – once all the revenues of the area were expropriated by Rome, things mostly just stopped.

Rubbing Salt into the Wound

Even a Pope like Paul III needed to manufacture some sort of excuse to attack a city, and the casus belli he used was Perugia’s refusal to pay an extortionate salt tax. These days we think of salt as a seasoning that is bad for our blood pressure, but for most of European history access to salt was the difference between survival and starvation. It was what you used to preserve the remaining food (often a slaughtered pig) in winter to give yourself a meagre source of protein through the hungry months until spring. You also need it to make cheese, and to preserve vegetables in brine. Salt was one of the first goods to be traded in prehistory, and control of salt production brought power. In the Papal States the production of salt was a government monopoly, so when Paul III banned the importation of competing cheap good-quality salt from Tuscany, then jacked up the tax, and jacked it up again, he knew exactly what he was doing, and the effect it would have. These days we would call it economic warfare.

Arezzo Pieve di Santa Maria — Killing the pig in December, Pieve di Santa Maria, Arezzo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

A brief aside on unsalted bread

By the way, it is very common to read that the reason modern Umbrians make such insipid-tasting unsalted bread is because it started as a protest against the tax. Umbrians are taught this in school and will repeat it to you earnestly. With all respect to my Umbrian friends, I find this implausible. Firstly because the amount of salt necessary to season a loaf of bread is considerably less than that needed to turn a pig into salami and ham or to preserve things in brine, so it would not have added all that much to the cost of the loaf, and would not have saved them much money. Secondly, they make equally horrible unsalted bread next door in Tuscany, which was not part of the Papal domains. Thirdly, there is some evidence that unsalted bread was a feature of the region long before Paul III came along – in a 12th-Century poem, the exiled Florentine Dante complains “how salty is another man’s bread”.

Another argument, that salted bread isn’t needed because Umbrian food is already salty enough, doesn’t stand up to analysis either. Food is salty everywhere in Italy. I think it is just that they make lousy bread in these parts, and being parochial Italians, have convinced themselves that their way of doing it is the right way. I live part of the time among the Umbrians and love them, but in this they are wrong. You can find an article by someone who is similarly sceptical here. (NB: In a tacit admission, most Umbrian bakers now sell salted bread. Just be sure to ask for “pane salato“. I may be imagining the slightly reproachful air with which they hand it over.)

The Conquest of Perugia

Anyway, the commander Paul III chose to subdue Perugia was Pierluigi Farnese, who just happened to be Paul’s illegitimate son (plenty of cardinals had mistresses in those days). Paul legitimised Pierluigi to allow him to become the head of the Farnese family, but apparently Pierluigi still had a chip on his shoulder from being mocked about his origins, creating an attitude problem which he tended to take out on defeated populations.

Once Perugia had submitted in 1540, Paul ordered the architect Antonio Sangallo to build a huge fortress at the southern end of the town. There were various factors at work here, both symbolic and practical. Firstly, the new Rocca would dominate the approaches to the town and the road from Rome. Secondly, it decisively moved the centre of power away from the northern end of town, where the lovely Gothic buildings that symbolised the city’s historic independence may still be seen. Illustrations show that the Rocca was huge, and did indeed make everything else in Perugia look insignificant.

The *Rocca Paolina* in the 19th Century by Giuseppe Rossi (public domain)

Thirdly and probably most important to Paul (who seems to have been the sort to hold a grudge), building it there required the destruction of the quarter of the city where the Baglioni lived, and which had been their power base. It seems that Paul took a personal interest in the construction of the fortress, visiting Perugia several times during its construction to check on progress.

Sangallo was under pressure to proceed quickly, and fortunately for us he took an inspired short cut. Instead of demolishing the Baglioni quarter, and using the rubble and other landfill to create the foundations for the Rocca, he decided to use the intact stone buildings themselves as the foundations – using brick vaulting to fill in all the spaces between them. And so it was that streets, buildings and towers were preserved but hidden, the open sky was replaced by echoing brick vaults, and everything disappeared into darkness and silence for three hundred years.

Later Years

The Perugini were not particularly fond of their Rocca, not least since Paul placed an inscription on it explaining that the Rocca was put there to chastise them for their insubordination. Over time the government of the Papal States became more and more oppressive, and the Rocca was used as a political prison. It is therefore not surprising that it was partially destroyed by the Perugians during the Europe-wide uprisings of 1848, nor that it was subsequently rebuilt on the orders of Pope Pius IX as he swung from his initial reformist inclinations into the most obdurate reactionism.

Eventually in 1860 the Papal troops were expelled and Perugia became part of united Italy. I have read a story that afterwards the Perugians turned out with their hammers and chisels and demolished the Rocca Paolina by hand, stone by stone. I also read that as they did so, an old man would come along every day, and sit in silence watching them. When someone approached him and asked why, he said that he had spent much of his life in there as a political prisoner.

When the citizens had finished the demolition job, the reverse symbolism was completed when some fine Baroque-style palazzi were erected on the site, to house the city, provincial and regional governments (Perugia became the capital of the newly-created region of Umbria). So the locals had in a sense taken back control. They rubbed it in further by erecting an equestrian statue of King Victor Emmanuel II. The statue is as bombastic and overstated as its equivalents everywhere else in Italy, but in in this case the inscription “King Liberator” might have been genuinely felt.

Statue of King Victor Emmanuel II, on the site of the Rocca Paolina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Surrounding the seats of local government there are now some pleasant gardens, a statue of the artist Perugino, and a few bars, hotels and gelaterie. Just up the road is the outlet shop for the Perugina chocolate manufacturer. The casual visitor might be forgiven for missing the darker side of the site’s history altogether.

Prefettura di Perugia, on the site of the Rocca Paolina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Meanwhile, beneath the ground, the old Baglioni quarter slept on, until excavations started in the 1930s which were completed in the 1960s. Thousands of people a day pass along those medieval streets, entering them from the escalators that take people up from the public car park in Piazza Partigiani. It is a very satisfying way to enter Perugia.

Under the Rocca Paolina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

May 27, 2022November 19, 2023

The Via Amerina in Umbria

The Via Amerina was originally formed out of pre-Roman provincial roads, then it became an important local artery. For years it lay forgotten in the central Italian countryside, before being reinvented as a route for modern “pilgrims”.

This is the first of two or three articles I have in mind about the Via Amerina, a road which in antiquity led north from Rome to the town of Amelia in Umbria (ancient Ameria, from which the road took its name). From there it continued northward to Todi and Perugia, then ran westward to Chiusi.

What was the Via Amerina?

I’ve written a few times about the mighty military road called the Via Flaminia where it passes through Umbria. The Via Amerina is of a lesser order, and I ought to explain the difference.

The great consular roads like the Via Flaminia, the Via Appia, the Via Cassia and the Via Emilia were a means to deliver military force anywhere in the empire or on its boundaries. A capability a bit like – sort of – a modern aircraft carrier task group. They were planned, built and maintained with power projection in mind, and they famously ran as straight as topography would allow. They are called “consular” roads because they were named after the consul in whose administration each was started. The consuls were the chairmen of the Senate and also army commanders, so they could be expected to think and plan strategically.

A road like the Via Amerina, by contrast, would not have been centrally planned. Instead it grew out of existing roads between towns, which would already have been old when Rome rose to power. Since it served the needs of commerce and administration its importance was recognised by its being given an official name, and being maintained and upgraded at public expense.

When complete, each consular road had a separate public office solely responsible for its maintenance, while lesser roads like the Via Amerina were grouped together with other roads for maintenance purposes under different officials. And they were not straight; they meandered from town to town just like the ancient trackways on which they were based.

Despite its originally non-military status, after the end of the Roman Empire the Via Amerina had a period of great strategic importance as part of the so-called “Byzantine Corridor”; that is a subject for a later post. Update: here is that later post.

The Via Amerina in Central Umbria

Here in central Umbria, the Via Amerina ran north from Todi, along the eastern bank of the Tiber to Perugia. These days that part of the route seems to be mostly covered by modern roads and I have not found many references to its northern remnants. But to the south, between Todi and Amelia and beyond into Lazio it wanders through places that later main roads did not follow, so traces of it remain – in some cases even the original basalt flagstones.

A scholarly type has gone to the effort of creating an Umbrian Via Amerina route for the ArcGIS geographical information system – you can find it here.

In the photograph below, taken towards the south from Todi, the wide road that runs up the hill is not the Via Amerina. In post-imperial times towns and villages migrated to the high ground for defensive purposes and to reduce the threat from malaria, and so new roads followed them, but in Roman times settlements were more likely to be in the valleys. The Via Amerina followed the wooded valley of the little river Arnata, to the right.

Looking south from Todi to the route of the *Via Amerina*, which followed the wooded valley to the right. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

These days identifiable sections of the Via Amerina form part of a “pilgrim” walking trail between Assisi and Rome. I’m not sure why St Francis or any of his followers would have needed to come this way, and wonder whether it has been chosen because of its beauty, and because following a more strictly historically accurate route that is now shared by a motorway would be less enjoyable. In any case, a tourist industry has grown up to cater for people who want to feel that they are retracing the steps of medieval pilgrims, and that is a very good thing. An example of a travel blog written by someone who did one of these excursions (with some nice photos) can be found here.

If you decide to head south from Todi, along the route that a Roman traveller would have taken, one of the first things you encounter (with a bit of searching), is a fontana or spring that would always have been here, but in its current form dates from 1201 AD. Todi sits on a plug of permeable rock up through which water that originally falls on the Monti Martani is forced, creating multiple freshwater springs that emerge high above the level of the valley. I’m sure that much of the traditionally healthy properties of such springs are due to the fact that coming up from far below the ground and being filtered through the rocks meant that the water was less likely to give you a fatal dose of dysentery. On the way up through the limestone the water picks up quite a lot of calcium, and a rather pronounced taste.

The Fontana di Sant’Arcangelo is very pretty, despite being hidden away in a suburban area full of 1970s apartment blocks. Of course, if it were still in its original surroundings in farmland it would be even more attractive, but the fact that you have to hunt for it (and in my case, ask directions from a lady going for a walk with her daughter) adds a certain attraction.

Down in the valley the route of the Via Amerina is quite clearly marked, and we followed smaller and smaller roads until we were driving along the valley floor on a pleasant unmade road through oak woods and with wildflowers along the edges.

There are a few chapels and other buildings from the early Middle Ages along the route, but they are either ruined or have been heavily renovated. There are also castles on many high points around, showing that the road continued to see enough use to make it worth defending. Many of them look habitable – I read that some of these castles were bought and renovated in the 19th Century by wealthy local families, and some of them are clearly undergoing a new series of renovations, presumably with the intent of using them as hotels, convention centres or spas. Some of the smaller castles round here have been bought and renovated by wealthy foreigners either as private dwellings or as AirBNBs.

Castello di Fiore and Castello di Belfiore — Castello di Fiore (right) and Castello di Belfiore (left), above the route of the Via Amerina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Torre Olivola on the skyline above the route of the Via Amerina. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Roman Bridge at Pesciano

I was hoping to find a bridge dating from the late Roman period, where the Via Amerina crosses over the River Arnata near the village of Pesciano. I had made a couple of attempts to get to it since I first read about it in 2018, but had been defeated by atrocious roads and ambiguous maps. This time I approached from the Pesciano Road, drove as far as I dared, then parked the car in a clearing and continued on foot for a couple of kilometres.

The road descended through oak woods and between newly-mown fields to the river, where I came to a junction with the Via Amerina.

Road to the bridge at Pesciano. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Antica Via Amerina signposts. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Turning left I continued for a few hundred metres to where there was a ford across the river, obviously used by farm vehicles, then a bit further on I found the bridge.

Roman bridge at Pesciano. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Between 2007 and 2013 the local authorities repaired the bridge, and it must be said that it still looks rather starkly new, especially from downstream. I managed to find a photograph of the bridge before renovation on this website and I have to confess mixed feelings. The romantic in me warms to the old ivy-covered partial ruin, like something out of an 18th-century veduta painting.

On the other hand, this is surely not the first time since antiquity that the local authorities have repaired the bridge, so there would have been nothing particularly “authentic” about the bridge in its pre-2007 state. And in due course it is certain that the ivy, the weather and the occasional earthquake would have converted the partial ruin into a complete ruin. In another ten or twenty years no doubt the elements will have weathered the new stonework, and the bridge will continue to carry modern-day pilgrims over the waters of the Arnata for a few hundred years before the next repairs are due.

April 29, 2022November 19, 2023

A Town Called Bastard

In central Italy, nestled in the green rolling hills of Umbria, is a town called Bastardo – “Bastard”. Yes, really.

If you were in Umbria at any time in the last two millennia, travelling north on the original route of the Via Flaminia, the old military road from Rome to Ravenna, at some point you would have to cross from west to east from the Middle Tiber Valley to the Valle Umbra.

The two valleys run north-south, and are separated by a range of hills called the Colli Martani. In the south, near Terni, the hills are high and steep and appropriately enough known as the Monti Martani. Only about halfway up, a bit north of Carsulae, do the mountains descend into hills and form a saddle which wheeled traffic and marching legions might have crossed without major delays.

Near Bastardo — In the Martani Hills near Bastardo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

So that’s where the Roman military engineers put the road, and where generations of travellers followed. And while today the heavy traffic thunders along either the E45 or SS3 motorways, around here the route of the old Roman road is mostly followed by the modest (and badly pot-holed) Strada Regionale 316.

The empire fell, the legions demobilised for ever, and for hundreds of years the only marching feet on the road were those of invaders – Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Byzantines, Germans, French and Austrians. And French and Germans again.

But there were still the tramping feet of pilgrims, and the plodding hooves and rumbling cart wheels of trade. And so it was that three or four hundred years ago an entrepreneurial person of uncertain parentage decided to open a coaching inn and stables at a crossroads. If that innkeeper’s name and the name of his inn are known then I have been unable to find them. But in any case it seems that everyone just called it Osteria del Bastardo, or “Inn of the Bastard”.

In time, other businesses and dwellings sprang up around the inn. These days it is a town which clearly makes a decent living from servicing the agricultural area round about.

Around the outskirts are businesses which look as if they would be able to sell you a piece of farm machinery, or repair it, and as you approach the town you are likely to get stuck behind a huge tractor towing a complicated-looking piece of farm equipment. In line with its comparatively recent origins, there do not seem to be any particularly old buildings in town. There is a baroque-style church at the eastern end of the town, but it is built of rather modern-looking bricks (by “modern”, I mean some time in the last three hundred years).

In the 1920s, somehow the Osteria bit was dropped, and the officially-gazetted name of the town is now simply “Bastardo”.

Approaching it from the south the SR 316 does a bit of a dog-leg, but there is a narrow, perfectly straight lane that cuts the corner, and which I was delighted to see is called Via Flaminia Vecchia (the Old Via Flaminia).

Bastardo Via Flaminia Vecchia — Bastardo, Via Flaminia Vecchia. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

I have not been able to identify the site of the original inn, but it was presumably near the main crossroads, and there is a “Hotel Bar Dany” there which, although occupying a building from the 1960s or 70s, is at the very least a spiritual successor to the Osteria del Bastardo. I suppose I could have gone in and asked if Dany was descended from the original bastard, but there would have been too much potential for misunderstanding.

Bastardo, Hotel Bar Dany. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Colli Martani around here are attractive and gently rolling, mostly covered in grapevines and olive trees. The wines are pleasant enough and good value, and DOC status has been granted to wines made from locally-grown Sangiovese, Grechetto, Trebbiano and Vernaccia grapes. One enterprising winemaker has called his wine Rosso Bastardo, and while its claims to worldwide fame are probably a bit overstated, I’m sure something called “Bastard Red” would sell all right in Australia.

Rosso Bastardo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Apparently every now and then some high-minded citizens try to build support for renaming the town to something a bit more dignified, but these efforts have never quite succeeded, and so it remains a town called “Bastard”.

April 27, 2022November 19, 2023

Et In Arcadia Ego

Finally, after two and a half years of COVID exile, we are back in Umbria.

This is not meant to be a travel blog, or a current affairs blog, but sometimes the present does rather impose itself. I read and write about history partly because I like the sense of perspective one gets from looking at distant events like pestilence and war, but those things have crept rather closer recently.

It is a strange feeling being back. On the one hand, things are familiar – like the Saturday morning porchetta van in the piazza. Yet on the other hand, things are subtly different. Instead of the former devil-take-the-hindmost scrum at the porchetta van, there was the sight of a group of Italians voluntarily forming a queue.

One reads that Italy and the Italians have been changed in other ways by COVID. Government services have supposedly been simplified and made available online. This may be true for the central government, and for regional and local governments in Rome and Milan, but not here in Umbria. Going by the experience of trying to renew my parking permit for the centro storico, the processes are as old-fashioned and unnecessarily complicated as ever.

Old friends no longer greet one with a kiss on both cheeks, this is true, but instead of a distant Anglo-Saxon nod, we get big hugs.

There are sad undertones too. Where are the charming old couple who lived up the street? We haven’t seen them. Did they survive? We note that a familiar shop is closed, and friends tell us that the proprietress committed suicide.

But the sun is shining gloriously down on the Tiber Valley, people are smiling and turning out to community events like the Bersaglieri band concert on Liberation Day, and the swallows have returned, swooping and darting all day as they feed up after the long flight from Africa.

During the long gloomy Melbourne winter lockdowns I produced fewer posts, but longer and somewhat more didactic ones. My plan now is to write more briefly, and more often. I have a project in mind to explore parts of one of the local Roman roads – not the Via Flaminia, but the Via Amerina, which in one of its urban manifestations is the road we take to the supermarket.

It is wonderful to be back.

December 4, 2021November 19, 2023

Take this! Oh yeah? Take that!

In the sleepy countryside on the border between Tuscany and Umbria, the towers of Beccati Questo and Beccati Quello testify to past conflicts. And quite possibly the locals’ sense of humour as well.

This is a continuation of my previous post on Lars Porsena of Clusium, but I decided to make it separate so as not to complicate a post about the ancient Etruscans with something about medieval and Renaissance water politics. It will however be quite short.

Edit, August 2023: this post now has a companion piece – Cospaia, the Accidental Republic.

Before unification in 1861, the various Italian states were separate countries with their own rulers, laws and, to varying degrees, languages. It is hard for modern visitors to register this as they flash past a sign saying TOSCANA beside the autostrada, but 18th-Century grand tourists were well aware of it. South of Siena, travellers from Florence to Rome, on leaving the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and entering the Papal States, would have to unload all their luggage for customs inspections, show passports, pay duty on goods, and possibly have books confiscated if the border guards suspected they might be heretical Protestant tracts.

Earlier on in the Middle Ages, territories might be associated with city-states and could be much smaller than they became later. In central Italy, Siena, Florence, Perugia, Assisi and similarly-sized towns were all independent and frequently at war. What would have been just a customs post in the 18th Century might have been a border fort in the 12th.

Sitting on such a border, between the territories of Siena and Perugia (in modern terms, the regions of Tuscany and Umbria) and just near the town of Chiusi, is a lake of the same name. Today Lago di Chiusi is fairly small and rather attractive, surrounded as it is by the rolling country of the Valdichiana. In prehistoric times the lake was huge and covered all the low-lying area, while in antiquity as now the waters of the area were carefully managed to drain them away from agricultural land.

Lago di Chiusi, seen from the campanile of the Chiusi Duomo. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

By the early Middle Ages however, the water management system had gradually broken down until the area flooded again, converting a large area of productive farmland into malarial swamps and closing some important overland routes. The latter was one reason for the rise of the more westerly road that became the Via Francigena. Water drained out of the swamps in two directions, northwards into the Arno or southwards into the Tiber. This dual drainage meant that the area was strategically important to both Florence and Rome.

Water Politics

In the 14th Century, starting near the town of Arezzo, people – often monastic communities – began to build dykes and canals again to try and harness the waters, mainly for power for mills. Such efforts were piecemeal and done without much understanding of the overall hydrology of the area, and they usually made the situation worse in other parts of the valley.

Unfortunately, as people’s understanding of the science and engineering improved, this knowledge was often used for military purposes. During a war between Florence and Pisa, Leonardo da Vinci came up with a plan to divert the course of the Arno away from Pisa and thus destroy its commerce (it didn’t work).

In the Valdichiana, Papal and Florentine forces created or destroyed earthworks and canals in order to cause flooding in each other’s territory, or deny water to agriculture. As late as 1598, a major flood in Rome was blamed – probably unfairly – on works in the Valdichiana undertaken by the Medici.

So it will come as no surprise that, as dry ground emerged from the receding swamp, fortified towers started to appear at various points. The first we know of was built by Siena in the 13th Century, and its belligerent purpose was made clear by the name it acquired: Beccati Questo!, or “take this!”.

Not surprising either that when the Perugians erected their own tower a short distance away, it was known as Beccati Quello!, or “take that!”.

The original Sienese tower had to be rebuilt a couple of hundred years later, and the new Renaissance one is much smaller and daintier than the medieval Perugian tower which still stands – albeit not entirely vertical. Perhaps the soil beneath was not yet dry enough to make a stable base to build on.

Beccati Questo, with Chiusi behind. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

Beccati Quello. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

I have not been able to find reports of the towers featuring in any military actions. It would seem that the main use of the towers over the centuries until Italian unification was to collect tolls and customs duties.

Beccati Questo and Beccati Quello — Beccati Quello (L) and Beccati Questo (much smaller, R) with Chiusi behind. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50C digital back (click to enlarge)

Now they sleep in the Valdichiana, surrounded by canals, dykes and, in summer, fields of sunflowers. The road which they once guarded is now a quiet back road . The tolls have not gone away though – they are now collected as you exit the motorway.

August 22, 2020November 19, 2023

Reasons to be Thankful

On a hillside in Umbria, a quiet chapel contains countless tiny memorials to deliverance from peril – the ex-votos of the Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni.

An ex-voto is a votive offering in thanks for divine intervention. It might take the form of a small model of a body part that was afflicted by disease or injury, or a picture of an incident in which someone was was healed, or injury or death was averted. It might even take the form of a motorcycle helmet that had protected the wearer in an accident. These tend to be found in chapels, churches and cathedrals in Italy. In the case of pictures, the interceding saint is usually shown as well. Frequently the letters P.G.R. appear, short for per grazia ricevuta – “by grace received”, or “for favours received”.

That this is deep-rooted in our culture is shown by the large number of votive objects that have been recovered from wells and springs known to have been sacred to pagan deities or demigods (and for that matter, have you ever thrown a coin in a wishing well or fountain?). The continuation of this practice into the Christian era has been described as the pragmatic appropriation of pagan practices by the early Church, in the same way that they built churches on the site of pagan temples. But if it is such a fundamental impulse, it may be that people were going to do it anyway, whatever the church fathers thought.

I’ve wanted to do a post on ex-votos for a while, but a couple of things have inhibited me. One reason is that if I put phrases like per grazia ricevuta in these articles then various algorithms will group this site with religious websites, which is already happening due to some of the historical, artistic and architectural subjects I have covered. So be it, but I fear that those who come across this site by that route will be disappointed.

A more important reason for caution is that I am worried that any treatment of this subject will come across as condescending. And it is hard not to smile indulgently when you see an ex-voto of a child surviving a fall from a merry-go-round through divine intervention, like this one in a museum in Taormina in Sicily.

You can find votive pictures like these in many museums and galleries across Italy, typically folk museums and small municipal galleries, and of course the churches in which they were originally displayed. Most of the pictures which accompany this post are from a particular church – the Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni in Umbria. It is located south of Perugia, in rolling hills which descend to the middle Tiber valley, just near the town of Deruta. The name “dei Bagni” apparently refers to mineral springs nearby.

The story of the sanctuary’s origin is that in the early 17th Century a wandering Franciscan friar found a pottery fragment depicting the Virgin and Child lying in the road. He picked it up and placed it reverently in a young oak tree. Over the following decades the tree grew around the image and fixed it in place, making a natural version of a roadside shrine. Travellers who prayed there, either to seek divine assistance, or to give thanks for assistance received, would often have left ex-votos.

It is the proximity to Deruta that makes this place special. Then as now, Deruta was a centre for glazed pottery, and not surprisingly one of the things that Deruta’s potters would make you was an ex-voto illustrated to your requirements. Traditional Deruta ware, with its folk designs and its cheerful primary colours, is not much in fashion at the moment, as it doesn’t really go with contemporary design taste. But one thing you can say about it is that kiln-fired and glazed ceramic is a good deal more durable than pictures painted on bits of wood. The style and appearance of the pictures have changed little over the centuries – for they are still being offered by the faithful. In deference to the story of the origin of the sanctuary, the image of the Virgin and Child in the pictures appears in an oak tree.

In 1687 the present church was built to house the shrine and growing collection. Since most of the pictures bear dates, many can be seen to predate the building of the church, and perhaps even started their lives attached to that oak tree.

Santa Maria dei Bagni — Behind the altar at Madonna dei Bagni. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Behind the altar, behind a pane of glass, a piece of oak is preserved. It would be wonderful if it were from the original tree of the story.

This man, being possessed, was liberated by recourse to the Blessed Virgin, 1678. Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni, Deruta. Phone camera (click to enlarge).

These days the main road is the busy E45 motorway, and the trucks that thunder through its concrete channel are thankfully a bit further away from the church than the old road.

As you look at the illustrations you will be struck by how the details remind you that these are real things that happened to real people.

Giovanni Bresciano is attacked by corsairs, 1551. Church of Saints Vittore and Corona, Feltre, Veneto. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

As I said, it is hard not to smile indulgently at some of these, and feel a bit superior when seeing mental illness ascribed to demonic possession, and recovery from it attributed to miraculous intervention.

For five years, this woman was tormented by four spirits that were telling her to drown herself, 1668. Santuario della Madonna dei Bagni, Deruta. Phone camera (click to enlarge).

Or at the modern kid on the motor scooter who has had an accident when racing the traffic lights (honest officer, the light was still amber, just look at this ex-voto). Other contemporary disasters include car accidents, close encounters with trains, and the crash of a light aircraft.

But then you might reflect that in some ways it is not the metaphysical explanation that is important. It is the fears and hopes and gratitude of real people that you are seeing recorded before you, whether it is the husband whose wife has survived a dangerous childbirth, or the wife whose husband has returned safe from the wars.

And if in that moment of empathy you find yourself wiping away a tear, then you might have just received your own gift of grace, in some sense.

_________________________________

Postscript: we returned to the Santuario in September 2022, and sure enough, found an ex-voto giving thanks for a family’s survival of the COVID pandemic.

July 4, 2020March 29, 2024

Valnerina: The Green Heart of the Green Heart of Italy

Umbrians will tell you proudly that their region is “il cuore verde d’Italia” (the green heart of Italy), and moreover that the phrase, ubiquitous in promotional material, comes from a poem by Giosué Carducci. Even the comprehensive Wikipedia entry on Umbria says so. Well, all I can say is that it’s always a good idea to check original sources, because I did, and that is not actually what Carducci wrote. In fact, in the poem Le Fonte del Clitunno, what he says is “Salve, Umbria verde” (hail, green Umbria). Whether he considered it the heart, liver or spleen of Italy cannot be determined on that evidence.

Having said that, looking at the picture of the town of Vallo di Nera above, you can see why he would have said it, had he only thought of it.

And one can forgive the Umbrians for wanting a slogan with a bit of cachet. After all, when Umbria came into existence as a region of the newly-unified Italy in 1860, it was largely for administrative reasons, and the first time that the name had been used to denote a discrete region since antiquity. Not for them were the Renaissance glories of neighbouring Tuscany. Instead the period between the fall of the empire and the Risorgimento first saw the various towns and cities absorbed into the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto, then fighting each other in the interminable proxy wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, then picked off one by one by the Papacy.

I have read that, even today, Umbrians are less likely than any other Italians to define themselves by their region. They are more likely to say that they are from Perugia, Terni, Assisi, Spoleto or so on.

Umbria is defined by its valleys and rivers. South of Perugia is a large horseshoe-shaped valley that was once a huge lake, then a swamp, then fertile farmland. The western lobe is the valley of the Tiber river, and the the eastern is that of the Clitunno. The third main river in Umbria is the Nera, which is further east yet, into the Apennines. We met it earlier where it flows through the gorge of Narni before it joins the Tiber.

Map of part of Umbria, (source: Google Maps) with the course of the River Nera approximately marked, from where it rises in the Apennines to where it flows into the Tiber near Orte (click to enlarge).

The Nera has two very different personalities. Downstream, it flows from east to west past the city of Terni, through a broad floodplain, now partly industrialised. Upstream, it flows roughly from north to south in a steep valley in the Apennines. That valley has the happy title of Valnerina, or the “valley of the little Nera”.

The Nera river as it flows past the town of Piedipaterno in the Valnerina. Canon EOS-3 35mm camera, Canon 28-135mm IS lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

And the Valnerina is charmingly beautiful. The river winds through steep gorges, the hillsides covered with thick woodland. Towns, villages, abbeys and monasteries perch on hilltops in defensible positions, or tumble down the slopes behind fortifications.

The town of Castelsantangelo sul Nera. Contax G1 35mm rangefinder camera, Zeiss Planar 45mm lens, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Unhappily, being on one of the Apennine fault lines, the towns of the Valnerina have suffered major damage repeatedly from earthquakes, most recently in 2016. It is a tribute to the stoicism and grit of the inhabitants that most towns have been rebuilt many times over during their recorded history.

Castel San Felice, Valnerina. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, Horseman 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The great currents of history have largely passed the Valnerina by. The big powerful towns like Spoleto and Perugia are further west where the country is flatter and wealthier. The local saints tend to be hermits and founders of monasteries. They were attracted there, one assumes, precisely because one was less likely than elsewhere to encounter an invading army on one’s way down to the narrow floodplain to harvest some turnips for dinner.

Cerreto di Spoleto, Valnerina. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Rodenstock Sironar-N 180mm lens, Horseman 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

We stayed in the Valnerina during an unusually cold and wet June. The compensation was that in the mornings the valley filled with mist and was at its most mysterious and beautiful.

December 30, 2019March 29, 2024

Castelluccio and the Piano Grande

Nestled among some of the highest parts of the Apennines in eastern Umbria is the Piano Grande. Not a grand piano, but a “great plain”, surrounded by the peaks of the Monti Sibillini, in the national park of the same name. At the northern end of the plain is the little town of Castelluccio (literally “little castle”), perched in a very picturesque way on a small conical hill, dwarfed by the massive slopes around it. We love this place.

I had been meaning to write a post on this area for a while, because although it has no momentous historical associations that I know of, it is very beautiful and I have taken many photographs of it over the years. But it took me a while to bring myself to do so, because the act of writing it was going to be tinged with sadness. In 2016 the town was so badly damaged by an earthquake that 60% of the buildings were rendered uninhabitable, the population was evacuated and access prohibited for several months.

However some cafes and restaurants have now reopened in temporary accommodation, and although this is not really a tourism blog, I urge you to visit. Visit in late spring or early summer to see the beautiful wildflowers that carpet the floor of the plain, and spend some money there, because they need it.

When you are there, be sure to try the local speciality, a stew of lentils from Castelluccio and pork sausages from nearby Norcia (also, alas, damaged in the earthquake). It is the lentils that made me finally decide to get around to doing a post on Castelluccio, because as I write it is the 30^th of December. A traditional new year’s eve good-luck dish in Italy is lentils, and the lentils of Castelluccio are the most highly prized in Italy. So it seemed appropriate, somehow.

They must in any case have been hardy folk who lived here. Winters are hard at this altitude, and trees only grow on a few sheltered slopes. In winter the roads can be closed by snow.

In late spring, when poppies have already appeared in the lower Umbrian valleys, up here there is still snow on the peaks, and crocuses are only just appearing. In high summer though, when the lower altitudes are sweltering, you can drive up here and see flowers that disappeared weeks ago down below.

There are only three roads into the piano grande. If you come from the north, you pass a series of fortified villages that pour down steep valley sides, often with a fortress at the topmost point, forming a typical teardrop shape. The road winds upwards and then you finally crest a ridge and see the plain before you, with Castelluccio in the middle distance.

If you approach from the east, you will leave the town of Ascoli Piceno on the coastal plain, but not before trying their famous stuffed and fried olives (gosh, this really is a tourism post). When we took this route it was in summer and the slopes were covered with poppies and wild cornflowers.

(By the way – if you look closely you will see that the copse of trees in the distance on the left is planted in the shape of a map of Italy. I didn’t notice it myself for a while, either.)

But the best way to approach is from the south. That will take you through the Valnerina (the valley of the little Nera River) and the town of Norcia. I will stick my neck out and say that this is one of the prettiest places in Italy – a big call, I know. I have some good photographs of the Valnerina that I will save for a separate post. Also for Norcia.

Edit: you can now find the post on the Valnerina here.

After leaving Norcia, you will drive up winding roads on the side of steep hills and enter the Piano Grande through a pass at its southern end. For us, since it is where we first saw it, this is the classic view.

November 17, 2019November 19, 2023

The Serious Business of Dressing Up – Part II

Lest anyone need more evidence that dressing up to take part in historical festivals in Italy is taken very seriously, I provide the following exhibits.

Foligno, Giostro della Quintana 2019

The first four photographs were taken at the Giostro della Quintana (“Joust of the Quintain”) which has been held twice a year in the Umbrian town of Foligno since its revival in 1946. The joust (where mounted lancers try and hit a target on a rotating wooden dummy) is preceded by a parade in costume. I took these photographs in the park in which the participants were forming up.

Foligno is located, somewhat unusually for this region, on the valley floor rather than perched on a hilltop or halfway up the side of a mountain. That means it has spread out a bit and the outskirts are quite industrial (which also means it was bombed during the Second World War). So our visits to Foligno had been restricted to shopping trips to the outskirts, until friends recommended we take a look at the centre.

That turned out to be good advice. The centre of Foligno has lovely buildings, nice restaurants, and cheap parking. And being flat, you can wander around it with less effort than in most Umbrian towns. It also has a museum (the Palazzo Trinci) with extraordinary frescoes and a staircase that could have been designed by M.C. Escher. I plan a separate post on all that one day. Edit: I have now posted two articles on the Palazzo Trinci. You can find the first here and the second here.

My readers, being all very educated, will have noticed that the Renaissance costumes in these photographs are consistent in both period and authenticity, unlike in some festivals where the concept of – say – “medieval” can be a bit elastic, as is how the participants’ trousers are held up . This consistency is not the result of careful selection of the photographs; they are all consistently based on Renaissance originals, and consistently this good.

You can find more on the actual joust here.

Todi, La Disfida di San Fortunato 2019

The remainder of these photographs were taken at the annual festival of the patron saint of the town of Todi, also in Umbria. I wrote about the 2018 festival here. The grand parade in Todi is preceded by various events, including an archery competition between the town districts, flag-tossing, and a competition between drumming groups from various towns in the region.

Todi San Fortunato — La Disfida di San Fortunato, Todi 2019. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Some of the drumming groups were very good indeed, but the prize went to the local team (admittedly a popular decision).

Although some Renaissance (and later) themes appear in the parade, here the emphasis is on the medieval, and specifically the High Middle Ages, because let’s face it, the costumes were more fun then than earlier.

San Fortunato Todi — La Disfida di San Fortunato, Todi 2019. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 150mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

However just because the costumes are a bit flamboyant, that does not mean that the participants are not extremely serious about it.

Indeed, sometimes it seems that there is an inverse relationship between the exuberance of the costume and the demeanour of its wearer.

There is one group of participants who have trouble maintaining the regulation straight face, and that is the children, because they are all having such tremendous fun.

June 7, 2019November 19, 2023

Carsulae: On the Legions’ Road to Rimini

I’d been meaning to visit the ruins of the ancient town of Carsulae for almost a year. It is mentioned in all the historical guides to Umbria, and every time we drive up or down the E45 motorway we see the signs to it. After an unusually cold and wet May, last Friday finally promised some fine weather, and we determined to go there.

We (that is, Lou and I and you, gentle reader) had our last good look at the Via Flaminia where it passes through the gorge of the River Nera below the town of Narni, still called the Via Flaminia, but also the Strada Statale 3 (SS3), carrying heavy goods traffic. As I have said in other posts, this was the major Roman military road in central Italy. It was built in 220 BC during the consulship of Gaius Flaminius, from whom it took its name. It went north from Rome through Umbria and crossed the Apennines near Iguvium (modern Gubbio), finishing at Ariminum (Rimini). From there the roads led north, towards the frontiers of the empire.

‘When I left Rome for Lalage’s sake
By the Legions’ Road to Rimini,
She vowed her heart was mine to take
With me and my shield to Rimini—
(Till the Eagles flew from Rimini!)
And I’ve tramped Britain, and I’ve tramped Gaul,
And the Pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall
As white as the neck of Lalage—
(As cold as the heart of Lalage!)
And I’ve lost Britain, and I’ve lost Gaul,
And I’ve lost Rome, and worst of all,
I’ve lost Lalage!’

That is an excerpt from a marching song of the Roman legions – at least as imagined by Rudyard Kipling in Puck of Pook’s Hill. It is overheard by the two children in the story as it is sung by Parnesius, the centurion of the Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth Legion – the Ulpia Victrix.

I’ve just done a bit of googling on these chapters of Puck of Pook’s Hill, and needless to say various po-faced modern scholars have written papers on the bits that Kipling got wrong – apparently he overstated the height of Hadrian’s Wall by several feet. But there is something about the books you read as a child that penetrates deeply, and when it dawned on me that the Via Flaminia was in fact the “Legions’ Road to Rimini” of my childhood, the memories came straight back. I realised that when I imagine a legion swinging along on the march – the tramp of sandalled feet, the sound of metal armour on leather, the smell of sweat and dust – it is not some academically impeccable history that created those impressions for me, but Kipling. And I’ve always remembered that a legion marched a set distance each day. As Parnesius explains to the children:

“A Legion’s pace is altogether different. It is a long, slow stride, that never varies from sunrise to sunset. “Rome’s Race—Rome’s Pace,” as the proverb says. Twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less. Head and spear up, shield on your back, cuirass-collar open one handsbreadth—and that’s how you take the Eagles through Britain.”

And through Italy too, of course.

The original route of the Via Flaminia led due north from Narni. Later, a more easterly alternative route was added which took in Interamna (Terni) and Spoletum (Spoleto), rejoining the original route a bit further north, but for now we will follow the original route. After crossing the plain of the lower Nera, the road starts to rise and runs over pleasant rolling country on the western side of the steep Martani Hills. There, about half a day’s march from Narni by Kipling’s reckoning, the legionaries would have come up a long hill and found themselves in the town of Carsulae. If it was on a warm day I hope that they got an early break and that there was some cool white wine available, made then as today from the local Grechetto grape variety – described by Pliny the Elder as “typical of the area”, and still available in the local supermarkets!

For much of this part of the Via Flaminia, it is followed closely or even covered over by modern roads such as the SS3 and the E45 motorway. It makes sense that they should all follow the same route in hilly country – after all, the topology imposes the same sort of constraints on modern engineers as it did on ancient ones.

However just before you get to Carsulae the old and new roads separate. The old road runs along by itself for a couple of kilometres through oak woods, and it is here that you can find the ruins of the old town.

Parking beside the modern road we walked to the archaeological site along a path through fields of young green barley, with poppies and wild orchids lining the path, and wild roses in the hedgerows.

It took some effort for me to try and mentally superimpose an image of bustling Roman Carsulae on what is now a sleepy rural scene. An oak wood has grown up within the northern boundary of the town, and a small flock of sheep and goats was grazing under the trees.

For me the best way to try and visualise it was to walk along the Via Flaminia as it goes through the middle of the town from south to north. You start by coming up a hill and then encounter the first ruins. If you turn around and look back down the hill, you are looking at the road from Rome.

Via Flaminia at Carsulae — Carsulae: looking back down the Via Flaminia in the direction of Narni and Rome. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Turn around again, and up to the left there are the remains of baths, built over natural springs. Away to the right is some slightly more modern architecture – the church of Saints Cosmas and Damiano, built in early Christian times on the foundations of an existing building, then extended in the 11^th Century using material scavenged from elsewhere on the site. Passing that, we get to the site of the forum, on raised ground to the left. Parts of it, including the entry arch, have been re-erected, which purists might object to but I don’t mind.

Carsulae Forum — Carsulae: the Via Flaminia passes the entrance to the forum. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 40mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Carsulae forum arch — Carsulae: looking east towards the amphitheatre from the forum. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Continuing uphill along the road you can see the remains of a theatre and amphitheatre off to the right, and then the road runs into the oak wood. Looking down you can see that the paving stones in the road are grooved by chariot and cart wheels, as they are at Pompeii.

Carsulae Via Flaminia — Carsulae: the Via Flaminia with wheel ruts. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

The road starts to run downhill again and you reach the remains of a substantial town gate, beyond which the road bears left into more oak woods. This is where the northbound legions would have passed on their way to Rimini and beyond. I have no idea whether the land was wooded or cleared in ancient times, but in my imagination I saw the legionaries marching away through the gate into the cool shade of the wood, to be lost from view.

Carsulae town gate — Carsulae: northern town gate. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Carsulae was abandoned by the 5th Century. The Wikipedia article says that the reason is unknown, but that it could have been destroyed by an earthquake, or during the wars and invasions at the end of the Roman era, or that it may have become impoverished after road traffic dwindled. Signs at the site say that the town was abandoned because its position in relatively open country meant that it could not be defended in troubled times.

Note, added January 2022: I am currently reading Tim Parks’ latest book The Hero’s Way in which he and a companion walk the route taken by Garibaldi and his men after escaping from Rome in 1849. It turns out that they came through Carsulae, so while my mental image of the legionaries marching away into the wood might have been a bit fanciful, the oak trees were probably there in 1849. So Garibaldi would have ridden under that arch, and led his force off into the shadows.

May 25, 2019November 19, 2023

A Visit to Narnia

We went to Narnia the other day – not in the conventional way through the back of a wardrobe, but in a Fiat Panda. Ancient Narnia, or modern Narni, is a place that illustrates the way the geography of Italy has shaped military and political strategy, and in turn the geopolitics of Italy at various critical times. It is also a pretty medieval town.

In peninsular Italy – that part south of the Po Valley – the mountains all run roughly north-south. This means it is hard to move overland in an east-west direction, and easier to move north-south, but your opportunities to do so are constrained to certain valleys and passes. Which in turn means that certain places are natural choke-points. One such – in 1944 as well as in the Middle Ages – is Cassino, between Naples and Rome. Narni is another.

Narni sits on high ground on the edge of a deep ravine through which the River Nera – a tributary of the Tiber – flows south out of Umbria into Lazio. It is literally on the edge of the ravine; houses and palaces on the western side of the old town, including the Eroli Museum, look straight down into it. To the north and east of the town is the valley of the lower Nera, which, although surrounded by mountains, contains a good deal of industrial development. On the plain around Narni is the modern industrial town of Narni Scalo, which makes getting a decent photograph of or from the old town something of an exercise in artful composition.

Narni from the Rocca Albornoz. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

To the northeast, at the other end of the valley, is the town of Terni, the provincial capital (Umbria is divided into two provinces: Perugia and Terni). Thanks to nearby sources of hydro-electricity, Terni was a centre of industrialisation and was known as “The Manchester of Italy”. Unfortunately, one of the industries was arms manufacturing, as a result of which Terni was heavily bombed during the Second World War, destroying much of its medieval centre.

Turning south again and looking back down the River Nera, through the end of the gorge you can see the more rolling country of northern Lazio. There is a road running along the side of the gorge; now carrying heavy road traffic, this is the Strada Statale 3 (SS3), which as I noted here is still known as the Via Flaminia, as when it was first built by the Romans in 220 BC. If you were a legionary marching from Rome to the northern Adriatic coast (and beyond to the eastern frontiers of the empire), this is the way you would come. And if you were a traveller in the other direction – in an army of barbarians after the fall of the empire, or a medieval pilgrim, this is one of the few roads by which you would approach Rome. If you were coming from France or Britain you would come by sea or over the western Alps on the Via Francigena.

Looking down the Nera Gorge from Narni — Looking south down the Nera Gorge towards Lazio and Rome. The road that runs along the side of the gorge is the Via Flaminia (modern SS3). Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Dominating Narni from an even higher point is a fortress or Rocca, of a type known as a Rocca Albornoz, of which there are several examples in central Italy, and of which there were once several more. This requires a bit of explanation.

Between 1309 and 1376 a series of seven popes ruled not from Rome but from Avignon. All were French. This happened as a result of some naked power politics from the French Crown, bringing the papacy under effective French control.

When a range of factors, including the influential advocacy of St Catherine of Siena, caused Pope Gregory XI to decide to end the “Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy” and return to Rome, Gregory faced several challenges. One was the re-establishment of political control over the Papal States – formerly independent states in central Italy which had been brought under secular papal rule, and which, during the exile in Avignon, had started to show renewed signs of independence.

Another challenge was how to rebuild the military capacity of the Papal States to defend themselves against invasions from the “Holy Roman Empire¹” in Germany.

Both these problems Gregory assigned to the eminently capable Spanish fighting prelate Cardinal Albornoz, a representative of the church militant if ever there was one. Albornoz built a series of fortresses in towns throughout central Italy, with the immediate purpose of subduing the local population, and the longer-term aim of defending the Papal territories against foreign incursions from the north. In time many of these became prisons and symbols of the suppression of intellectual and political freedoms under Papal rule. Apart from in Narni, you can see surviving examples of Albornoz Roccas in Assisi and Spoleto among other places. They are all similar in design, with few aesthetic embellishments as they were intended for rapid construction (the Narni Rocca went up in only five years) and were to be used by garrisons, not local aristocrats. The fact that they have square towers, not round ones, shows that they pre-date the widespread use of cannons in siege warfare (cannon balls are more likely to bounce off round towers).

Narni’s most famous son, born shortly before the papal return from Avignon, was the condottiere (mercenary military leader) Erasmo di Narni, better known to history as Gattamelata or the “honeyed cat”. After serving various rulers, Gattamelata worked for the Venetians and ended up as podestà (governor) of Padua. If you have been to Padua you may have seen the celebrated statue of him by Donatello outside the basilica of St Anthony. Incidentally, this was the first free-standing equestrian statue cast in bronze since ancient times; Donatello had to rediscover the technique.

Donatello's Statue of Gattamelata — Donatello’s statue of Gattamelata in Padua. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

If you visit the Rocca of Narni, and are fortunate enough to have as a guide the same knowledgeable young lady that we did, she will point out where the original large stone blocks of the castle walls have been replaced with smaller, more haphazard stones. This marks rebuilding after the destruction of the Rocca, and much of the town, by the landsknechts forces of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, part of a much greater cultural and human catastrophe – the Sack of Rome in 1527. Guarding the approach to Rome was not a good thing if the invading forces turned out to be stronger than you.

Narni Rocca Albornoz — The Rocca Albornoz at Narni. The lower, lighter stones, are original. The higher, darker stones show the rebuilding after 1527. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

We can recommend a couple of places to visit in Narni. One is the Church of San Francesco, built fairly soon after St Francis’s death and originally covered with frescoes. While we were there a pleasant chap turned up, who turned out to be a custodian. He offered to open up the richly-decorated Eroli chapel for us which was a bonus as it is normally only open on weekends. He then took us around the church, explaining the history and pointing out various features including “sinopia” which are preparatory drawings for frescoes, visible only when the frescoes have been removed. He also explained that the poor condition of the frescoes is due in part to the fact that in the 17^th or 18^th century, they were all plastered over and the church redecorated in the baroque style. This vandalism only started to be undone in the 1950s, but there is still a long way to go. If you visit there, please be sure to make a donation to the fund for restoration of the frescoes.

St Francis Exorcises Arezzo — St Francis drives out the demons from Arezzo, Church of San Francesco, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Eroli Chapel, Narni — Ceiling of the Eroli Chapel, Church of San Francesco, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Next door to the Church of San Francesco is the other place we would recommend – the museum and gallery in the Palazzo Eroli. The collection is small and eclectic – from a pair of preserved mammoth tusks, through various bits of Roman stonework, some medieval and Renaissance art, some third-rate baroque religious art, some strange re-creations of relics from the Napoleonic conquest of Italy, through to some Second World War memorabilia. There are two highlights. One is a room where there is an Annunciation of Pinturicchio and a Crowning of the Virgin by Ghirlandaio, both from the 15^th Century. The other is the view from the windows on the west side of the building, which looks straight down into the gorge of the River Nera.

Coronation of the Virgin by Girlandaio — Coronation of The Virgin by Ghirlandaio, 1486. Palazzo Eroli Museum, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

After leaving the museum we walked around the medieval town; there is an old fountain, some impressive municipal buildings and an appealing little Romanesque church called Santa Maria Impensole, built in 1175 on an older site on which once stood, according to local tradition, a temple of Bacchus. It retains some of the form and components of the older building, including a classical-style portico.

Narni Palazzo del Podestà — Palazzo del Podestà, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Narni, Church of S Maria Impensole — Portico of S Maria Impensole, Narni, showing antique Roman inclusions. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

From there we walked along the northern town wall, enjoying the sunshine after a period of indifferent weather in this part of Italy, and the view of the mountains to the north and east. There we found a restaurant called “La Gallina Liberata” (the liberated hen) where we had a lunch of traditional Umbrian cooking which was excellent value.

Narni Looking North — Looking north along the old town wall, Narni. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Note (¹) In the words of Voltaire, “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”.

May 10, 2019March 3, 2024

Of Emperors and Onions

Last Tuesday we went to a town near us called Bevagna. There had been some unusually cold weather for May, so as we bounced along atrocious Umbrian back roads in bright sunshine, through the vineyards, olive groves and spring wildflowers of the Martani Hills, we could see fresh snow on the Apennine peaks across the valley.

Apennines from Colli Martani — The Apennines from the Colli Martani. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150 lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Bevagna sits on the north-eastern side of the Colli Martani where the hills come down to what is now a fertile plain, but which, before being drained in the Middle Ages, was marshland. Across the valley are the towns of Spello and Assisi. Like many towns here Bevagna has exceedingly ancient pre-Roman beginnings, but in Roman times it was called Mevania and lay on the western branch of a principal military road, the Via Flaminia, the route of which still runs through the town.

After the end of the Roman period, being on the Via Flaminia ceased to mean that you were on the route by which the legions marched north, but rather that you were now on the route by which invading armies marched south (more on that one day). So Bevagna would have seen Goths and Lombards in the Dark Ages. In the early Middle Ages it was part of the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto, and in the later Middle Ages it was on the route of several campaigns by the Hohenstaufen Emperors in the struggles between Papacy and Empire (whose factions were the Guelphs and Ghibellines, respectively).

During some of these later incursions, the town was largely destroyed a couple of times, so although there are a few Roman remains, including some temple pillars which survived through being incorporated into a medieval building, these days the general air of Bevagna is of the (middle) Middle Ages. It sits within a medieval town wall, the River Clitunno (the Clitumnus of the ancients) flows past, and you enter through one of the town gates. It’s very pretty, and deservedly a member of I Borghi Più Belli d’Italia.

Bevagna San Silvestro Rear — Bevagna – the rear of the Church of San Silvestro. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

If you enter the town from the south you cross a bridge over the Clitunno and there below is a weir which creates a reservoir for what Lou identified as a public laundry, surrounded on two sides by a stone wall with a flat top on which to pound the clothes.

Bevagana Public Laundry — Bevagna – The Public Laundry on the River Clitunno. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The main piazza is particularly attractive, surrounded by several medieval buildings including two 12th Century Romanesque churches – both built by a local master craftsman by the name of Binello – and a Gothic town hall from the 13^th Century. All were damaged in the 1997 earthquake which so badly damaged the Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi, but have now been restored. On the front of the church of San Silvestro is a stone bearing an inscription saying (I think; medieval Latin is not my strong point) that the church was commissioned in AD 1195 by the Emperor Henry, and built by Binello.

Bevagna Inscription on Church of San Silvestro — Inscription on the front of the Church of San Silvestro, Bevagna. Nokia 6.1 phone camera (click to enlarge)

The Henry in question would have been the Emperor Henry VI Hohenstaufen, son of Frederick Barbarossa and father of Frederick II “Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world”, who was the child of Henry’s marriage to Constance de Hauteville of Sicily. I mentioned Constance in the post on the Normans in Sicily.

San Silvestro isn’t always open, but if it is you should definitely have a look inside. It is one of the most beautiful little Romanesque churches I have seen (NB: in architecture, “Romanesque” has nothing to do with the Romans, and “Gothic” has nothing to do with the Goths.)

Opposite San Silvestro is the church of San Michele Arcangelo which has around the door some wonderful carvings of the eponymous archangel taking on the devil in single combat. The stone carvings are original; the wood carvings are relatively modern, being a mere 500 years old.

Bevagna San Michele Arcangelo — Church of San Michele Arcangelo at Bevagna. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Not far from Assisi, Bevagna is the location where St Francis is supposed to have preached his famous sermon to the birds. There is a church dedicated to the saint elsewhere in the town – at some point (presumably either in the 17^th or the 18^th century) the interior was comprehensively renovated (or comprehensively ruined, depending on your taste) in the baroque style.

Apart from its being historic and beautiful, good reasons to visit Bevagna are its gastronomy and oenology. Although the wines of this part of Umbria are not particularly famous, apart from the Sagrantino of Montefalco, they are pleasant and good value. The reds are mostly based on the Sangiovese grape, while the whites, which are very good, are made from a grape called Grechetto which I have not seen a lot elsewhere in Italy. I have read that Grechetto was the grape used to make wine round here in antiquity, but I am not sure of the authenticity of the claim.

There are some good restaurants here. I have tried a couple, but the one we will come back to is “Antiche Sere” in Piazza Garibaldi. It is a small trattoria with a limited menu, but the food is very good and made from seasonal ingredients, which is as you would expect, since it is affiliated with the Slow Food Movement . Last time we visited, in October last year, I had an omelette with black truffle and Lou had pasta with pumpkin. This time I had fresh mozzarella with Cantabrian anchovies and Lou had strangozzi pasta with freshly-gathered wild asparagus, which is much thinner than the cultivated stuff. You see people gathering it at this time of year beside the roads.

Just down the road from Bevagna is a town called Cannara which is famous for its strongly flavoured onions. The picture below is of a poster for a shop in Cannara which sells them, and which was on display in the Antiche Sere. In translation, it reads “there are more tears in a Cannara onion than in a hundred love stories”.

Note: I updated this post in June 2022 to include the interior shot of the church of San Silvestro.

The Duomo

The Interior and the Cappella Nuova

The Frescoes

The Rule of the Antichrist

The Apocalypse

The Resurrection of the Flesh

The Damned in Hell

The Elect in Paradise

The Zoccoli

A note on sources

A note on the Photography

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Sant’Erasmo

Monte Torre Maggiore

Sources

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Pliny the Younger

Cospaia

Sources

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Sant’Angelo, Perugia

San Salvatore, Spoleto

The Little Temple of Clitumnus

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The Oratory of St Bernardino of Siena

The Abbey Church of San Pietro

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The Porta Marzia

The Porta Etrusca

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The “Gothic Staircase”

The Private Corridor

The Chapel

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A brief History of Foligno

The Trinci Family

The Palazzo Trinci

A Miraculous Survival

The Hall of the Liberal Arts

Further Reading

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The Lombards

Conflict and Truce

Linguistic Evidence

The Byzantine Corridor Today

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Rubbing Salt into the Wound

A brief aside on unsalted bread

The Conquest of Perugia

Later Years

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What was the Via Amerina?

The Via Amerina in Central Umbria

The Roman Bridge at Pesciano

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Water Politics

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