Day 10 - Assisi and on to Orvieto
Our stop in Assisi was to learn about one of the most famous saints, Francis of Assisi. We had a wonderful guide for the day named Poula. We spent three hours walking the streets of Assisi learning about the history of the town and St. Francis. The town has a long history dating back to before Roman times. There are numerous Roman remains including part of the aqueduct and an almost complete temple to Minerva.
Back to St. Francis.
St. Francis was born in 1181 in Assisi to a middle class merchant family. He seemed to lead a fairly carefree early life. Was a bit of a partier, did some military service but eventually had a conversion experience while visiting the run down church of San Damiano just outside of Assisi.
Francis basically took a vow of poverty and eventually formed a new Catholic order around a simplified life style, the Franciscans. Francis also traveled around preaching in people's native language, trying to connect with the common man, so to speak. He died at the young age of 45. After his death, he was canonized and a large church was built in Assisi to honor him. His bones are buried there. The church is quite beautiful. Lots of mosaics done by Florentine masters such as Giotto, several hundred years after Francis's death. Unfortunately pictures aren't allowed in the Basilica, but Heather did sneak two inside. Otherwise you will have to use your imaginations or look it up online.
We also visited the church of St. Claire, a contemporary of St Francis. St. Claire formed the female equivalent of the Franciscans. She is also buried in Assisi in a church that is named after her. In addition to the church we visited the monastery where she and her sisters in faith lived. The home was found and repaired by St Francis.
After a quick lunch we then headed off to our next stop, Orvieto. Orvieto is another Italian hill top town whose origins date back to Etruscan times. We plan to tour it tomorrow.
We did avoid a mini disaster. Randy thought he had booked 2 rooms in a local hotel. Turns out he had booked a lovely guest apartment with 2 bedrooms that only slept 3. Luckily our host did some quick work and got us an extra cot, which Randy "gets" to sleep on.
Once we got settled in our B&B we found a laundromat and each couple did a load of laundry. We enjoyed meeting two other American couples doing the same thing and sharing our various travel experiences.
Then we enjoyed another delicious dinner and headed back to the B&B. Looking forward to learning about Orvieto tomorrow.
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