Glady's Italy Journal - April 2007
Perugia - Etruscan Gate
Leaving California
We left Nevada City April 14th in pouring rain. The rain was VERY heavy around Sacramento. Stayed overnight at the San Bruno Courtyard the night before our flight. Lori, John and the kids came at 6:00 to swim in the warm indoor pool. We had dinner at TGI Friday's. I swam with the kids after dinner. Julian played his guitar for us in the hotel room - first time. He used to be too shy to do so.
Sunday, April 15th dawned clear and cool in San Francisco. Our Lufthansa flight left at 2 PM. The northerly route was over Reno, Boise, Saskatoon, Churchill, Greenland. Then the route turned south, going east of Amsterdam to Frankfurt. The Lufthansa airline food was better than most. They brought heated wet cloths before food. All wine and drinks were free! At Frankfurt we boarded another plane to Florence.
This Road Scholar tour was our first tour; before we have always made our own arrangements. Road Scholar is a branch of Elder Hostel, intended for younger, more active over 55's, providing lots of history and culture, but more free time. The hotels are four star, and the tour handles all transportation. (I do not want to drive in foreign countries!)
We arrived in Florence in the early afternoon and boarded a van with three other people from our tour for the drive to Perugia. The area around Florence looks a lot like San Jose or Napa - a valley with green hills on each side. One distant mountain had a little snow on top.
Perugia
We arrived in Perugia and cleaned up for an orientation meeting at 5:00 in the meeting room of the nearby Hotel Brufani, the classiest hotel in town. There were just ten others in our group, four couples and two women each traveling alone. Our leader was Agnese Battaglia (pronounced "ahn ngay seh" with the middle sound "ng" like "io" in onion.) One more person, a young woman training to be a Road Scholar guide, was with us throughout the tour: Maria Amodio. She was from the US, but was fluent in Italian. We all said a few words about ourselves. After the orientation, we walked to Café de Perugia for dinner. Dessert was baked whipped cream! See the wine list at the end of this journal.
Perugia was our "home base" for the first five days in Italy. Each day we would ride a small bus to different hilltop towns.
Our hotel, Hotel Locando della Posta (location of the mail), was originally a home, and in fact it still is. The homeowners live in another part of the building. The hotel's name comes from the fact that coaches once stopped here with the mail. The current building remodel dates from around 1700. The second floor dining room where we had breakfast has ornate frescoes painted on the ceiling. Goetha stayed here in 1802, Frederico III of Russia in 1824, and Hans C. Anderson in 1833. Michael and Jan had the hotel room next to us, with their bathroom looking out to the courtyard. They had two sinks: one modern, and the other very ornate, with an opening to the outside! Must have been the slops sink from before plumbing.
Next to the hotel here was a small bar with outdoor, umbrellaed tables in front. Each night at 1 AM when the bar closed, the customers would move out back to a small courtyard - just under our window! Sometimes the noisy laughter lasted until 4 AM. Fortunately, we had naps each day or slept on the bus. And we were usually full of "sleeping potion." We adjusted to the time change with ease. Not so easily on our return home.
The Cambio
We walked down the main street of Perugia, Corso Vannucci, from our hotel to tour the moneychangers' (Cambio) building. Its two large rooms are richly painted with religious/Christian as well as classical figures. The building is pre-Renaissance, but the moneychangers realized the importance of their classical heritage as well as Christian. The moneychangers were criticized for being greedy; in the décor they were saying, "Look we are good Christian men - not usurers." True, they were not usurers. Christian moneychangers were subject to Christian laws against usury. There were also Jewish moneychangers in town, and they were not subject to the Christian laws.
The original painter of the first room was Perugino. His student did the second room. He was angry over them insisting he paint like Perugino (now dead) and not allowing him to use his own style of painting - more Renaissance. In a small place he painted the foot of a bed with a sleeper's two bare feet sticking up. It was considered an insult to show the bottom of the foot. That is still the case for Arabs today.
At the time these frescoes were painted, the buried home of Nero was unearthed in Rome. On Nero's walls were frescoes of fantastic dragons, satyrs, flying monsters - from Roman mythology. These figures were incorporated into the designs surrounding the Christian motifs in works by many late-Medieval Italian artists of the Cambio. We saw these imaginary animals from Roman mythology again and again in art of that era.
At the end of Corso Vannucci is a square with a large, ornate fountain with sculptures by famous medieval artists. The Fontana Maggiore, completed in 1278, was originally supplied with water from the nearby well. Later, the fountain was fed by an aqueduct which brought the city's water from a distant mountain. The aqueduct no longer carries water and is used as a walkway outside town.
The original source of water from Etruscan times was the well just up the street from the square. We went there, walking down and down wet steps to its depth. It was dug into the rock by the Etruscans, the source of a spring there. It would be much fuller today, but the water is pumped out for the city's water supply.
Then we walked to the other side of town to the Chapel of San Savero to see the only frescoes by Raphael in Perugia, done in 1508.
The city of Perugia dates from Etruscan times, 800 BC. The name Perugia dates from Etruscans, but its meaning has been lost. This city of Etruscans was a rival to the Umbrians in Gubbio across the Tiber. The height of the Etruscan culture here was 3rd century BC. The city's walls, gates, and the base of many buildings date from that time. The city was crushed in 1st century BC during the struggle between Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) and Mark Anthony. The city sided with Mark Anthony, who lost to Caesar. Caesar demolished much of the Etruscan city and renamed it Augusta Perugia.
At the end of the Salt Wars in 1540, which Perugia lost, Pope Paul III ruled. He ran out the former ruling Baglioni family and built a fort over their old homes and neighborhood, which is preserved today. You can walk down lanes now roofed over with stone, and past houses now enclosed. Members of that family are still in the city, but without wealth or power. Even today, Umbrian bread has no salt - a practice dating from the Salt Wars.
Perugia - Cambio