Assisi

Day two in Umbria we visited the town of Assisi, the city of St. Francis of the same name. It was about a 40 minute ride from Corciano. I forgot my camera so these few pictures are from facebook from the other students, but you aren't allowed to take pics of the inside of the church anyway, so I didn't miss too much.

This is the facade of the Basilica of San Francesco, or St. Francis, of Assisi. There is and upper and lower basilica which were built through the centuries starting in the 15th century. The lower basilica is in the early roman style and the upper is in the gothic style. The frescos inside are of the life of St Francis and his road to founding the franciscan order of monks and the parallels to the life of Jesus Christ. These frescoes were done by the famous italian artist Giotto.

The scale of the church is amazing, for a 'small' church and the detail and decoration on every inch of the interior is very impressive. Unfortunately in 1997 an earthquake in Assisi badly damaged the church causing one of the vaults in the upper level to cave in killing four people in the basilica at the time.

Since then architects, engineers and restoration experts have been working hard to rebuild the vault and restore the frescos on the section of the vault that caved in. From the inside this involved piecing back together the fresco bit by bit, some of which could not be saved. On the outside engineers worked to build back the vaults in a similar manner, strengthening with modern light and flexible materials whenever possible. The italian engineer in charge of the rebuilding process gave us a special tour of the ceiling of vault which required a lot of steep, spiral stair-climbing!

It was very interesting listening to (the translation) of him explaining the challenges of restoring such a precious and fragile building. Certain special clay had to be used for the bricks that didn't have salt or too much water--which would damage the frescos underneath--but at the same time it had to be properly viscous, etc., etc. They used anchor studs that were made of fiber filaments that spread out into the bricks to hold them and the vault ribs in place. the attached springs , that you can see in the photo above, served to stabilize the structure immediately after the earthquake and aren't in use currently.

After we finished the tour, we headed down to the village of Assisi which was very quaint, cobblestone roads and all. Then we drove down a little further into the town to visit Santa Maria degli Angeles which is a church built up around the very small chapel that was there when st francis would come down from the monastery to pray. Notice the golden statue of the holy Mother Mary that stands at the entrance. Inside were a few chapels besides the main one for St Francis, many nice wood confessionals (most available in Italian, some in English!) which were almost open the entire day!

I thought it was really cool to be able to not only visit this famous, and very interesting town, but especially after the new pope, Francis, choosing his name from the saint from this very town.

After this experience we made the drive back to villa pieve in time for another delicious dinner!