Umbria Untour, Fall of 2004
by Sandra Kohler & Walter Hagenbuch, Selinsgrove, PA
On a bright October morning we arrived in Rome after the usual delights of economy-class transatlantic travel (minor delays, seating that makes me think of what it must have been like to travel in steerage). JoAnne Rowe, our Untours contact person, met us at the airport along with several other Umbria Untourists, and we were soon en route to Spoleto on a comfortable small private bus, equipped with a picnic lunch provided by JoAnne, and a videotape on the towns of Umbria which lasted for much of our two-plus hour drive. I was torn between watching the videotape and the scenery. The Umbrian countryside struck me as even more beautiful than Tuscany: more rural, greener, more gentle though rocky and mountainous, the exquisitely sculpted hillsides studded with villas, farmhouses, towers – a landscape that was eerily familiar though I’d never seen it from all the paintings in which it figures. The bus deposited us at the car rental agency in Spoleto, where we picked up our cars and then were individually guided to our Umbria lodgings.For us, that was the La Silenziosa apartment at the Casa Rossa farmhouse, a two-story apartment with its own courtyard: private, attractive and well-equipped. The farmhouse is in a town called La Bruna which we eventually decided had more the character of a suburb of Spoleto than a real village like Calci, where we were based in North Tuscany when we did that Untour in September, 2003. La Bruna did have all the necessary shops, including a good bakery, but not the feel of a village that one wanted to spend a lot of time exploring. On the other hand, we were within relatively short driving distance of more charming places than we could possibly explore, even in two weeks, so we found ourselves on the road almost every day of our Umbria stay.
Rather than give a day-by-day account of our time in Umbria, I’m going to talk about the towns we visited (and the museums and churches in them), the countryside, the food, and two particular day trips we took that were just extraordinary. But first, as usual, our Untour began with an orientation on the day after arrival; this one was held at a partially restored castle, Castello La Poreta, near Spoleto, which is being run as an inn and restaurant. JoAnne reviewed possible day trips in Umbria with her recommendations, we met our fellow Untourists, we were taken for a tour of the chapel at the Castello by the manager of the inn, and we had a lunch which was our first – and worthy - introduction to the glories of Umbrian food, including two specialties of the region, spelt, a wheat product somewhat similar to barley, and truffles (I can’t describe them!).
Hill Towns, One More Charming than the Other:
Even with JoAnne Rowe’s more limited list of suggested day trips (as opposed to the videotapes’ profusion of possible destinations) there were more towns to visit in Umbria than time to visit them, and we know we missed some that were considered gems by other Untourists. But we did make trips to Spoleto, Montefalco and Bevagna, Perugia, Assisi and Spello, Orvieto, Gubbio, Trevi. (The towns linked by “and” were visited in the same day). We also went on day-long expeditions to Norcia and Castellucio, and to Panicale, which I’ll include later. How to describe the highlights of these hill towns without going on for pages? We spent a good deal of our time in each of them looking at art, most of it in churches, some in museums, some in the form of the buildings and monuments of each city. One of the pleasures of doing this was seeing different versions of the same content: two sets of frescoes on the life of St. Francis, for instance, one in little Montefalco and the other in the great cathedral at Assisi. We started counting the times we came across Saint Jerome (Girolamo in Italy) in his red robes and pointed hat, with or without book and lion, in different churches. I can list some of the works of art that were particular delights: in Spoleto the newly restored frescoes on the Coronation of the Virgin in the Duomo (cathedral), and also the stone bas reliefs of animals on the façade of San Pietro just outside the town; in Montefalco the wonderful Gozzoli frescoes on the life of St. Francis, and in the basement of the Archaeological Museum a small status of Hercules from the first century A.D. which seemed a miniature predecessor of Michelangelo’s David, assured and sensuous and quietly masculine; in Perugia more wonderful paintings in the National Gallery of Umbria than I can describe, my favorite among them a Piero della Francesca I hadn’t known was there; the Giotto fresoes (also on the life of St. Francis) in Assisi and the Pinturricio frescoes in the little Duomo in Spello; the magnificent façade of the cathedral in Orvieto and the recently restored overwhelming, almost terrifying frescoes of the Last Judgment inside it by Luca Signorelli (who painted his ex-mistress being carried off to hell by a devil in one segment of it). There were disappointments, not in the art work itself but its accessibility: some wonderful Peruginos we’d read about were in churches that proved to be closed for restoration and repairs (there is still earthquake damage being repaired in the region). But as you’ll see, we did in fact find a Perugino to die for eventually.But the delights of these towns weren’t only art works. I’ll talk about the pleasures of food and the landscape around them a bit later, but there are vignettes that stay with me from several of these towns. Each of them boasted narrow streets, picturesque old buildings, sudden glimpses of flowers in a windowbox or almost-hidden garden, openings onto views of the surrounding countryside’s Edenic landscape. But there were particular highlights: in Spoleto the spectacular Ponte delle Torri, a bridge and aquaduct of ten towering arches built in the 1300s, spanning the chasm between the Rocco Albornoz, a citadel and prison at the top of the city and Monteluco, Spoleto’s holy mountain, which has been inhabited by an assortment of religious hermits from the fifth century on. The presence of Benedictines and Franciscans, both orders founded by Umbrian saints, and the various memorials to those founders, was another recurrent motif of our travels in these towns. In Perugia we came out of the tunnels under the city into a piazza in the old upper town just in time to hear the strains of a brass band. We hurried to find it, and did. The small military band, wearing camouflage and the wonderfully feathered hats that identified them as “Alpini” (a military unit from the Alps), the clear pure brass sound, so fragile and assertive at once, the touching scene of their being conducted for a few numbers by a very old man in civilian clothes, leaning on a cane, who was introduced as their former maestro – it was an experience we won’t forget. In Gubbio we saw wonderful buildings, including the huge Palazzo dei Consoli, built into the hillside on arches, a civic building which dates from the 1300s. Now a civic museum, it houses a unique treasure: the Eugebine Tablets, bronze rectangles with the most important inscriptions ever found in the Umbrian language – their Rosetta stone – on which a code of religious observances and rituals is written in both the Etruscan and Latin alphabets. They were found buried on farmland outside Gubbio in the fifteenth century; the farmer who discovered them gave them to the city in return for a five years’ lease on his land. Gubbio is also a city with associations with St. Francis: it was here that he tamed the wolf who was ravaging the countryside, who thereafter lived and died peacefully in Gubbio. There’s a delightful statue of St. Francis and the wolf in the courtyard of a hospital near the entrance to the city. (And the Cadogan Guide to Umbria – which was supplied by Untours and was excellent! – reports that some years ago the skeleton of a gigantic wolf was found under a slab by workmen repairing a church.) Outside Trevi, near the underground springs called the Fonti di Clitunno, we visited the tiny Tempietto di Clitunno, an “obscure, lovely building” (as the Cadogan terms it) built as a Christian church somewhere around the 7th century AD in the style of a late Roman temple. Though the façade and mosaics are faded, it is still charming.
Landscape Around and Among the Towns
The drives to and from these destinations were as pleasurable as our experiences in them. The landscape of Umbria merits paintings and photographs, not language. The only disappointment (especially for the photographer) was that often haze obscures or dims some of the most appealing prospects. But we found the experience of driving through Umbria one of constant yet varied pleasures: the small farmhouses, the towers, the hill towns’ silhouettes in the distance, the fields of grazing sheep, the different crops – olives, grapes, tobacco, wheat – patterning the hillsides, the range of earth and crop colors. It was the season for harvesting olives, and several times we saw groups of people doing this. The olive trees were studded with green and black fruit (unripe and ripe). We also saw people harvesting Umbria’s most unique crop, truffles, in places. (More about both olive oil and truffles in other sections).Food and Drink in Umbria
Discussing the landscape leads right into food and drink; what makes Umbrian cuisine so wonderful is its use of locally grown or raised products: grapes, olives, wheat, lentils, truffles, lamb, pork. ). Our Untours “special event” was an olive-oil tasting at an old mill, hosted by a member of the family who had owned the oil mill for generations, a different and useful experience (I came home and bought Sicilian oil at a store in the Italian neighborhood outside of Boston where our son and daughter-in-law live to supplement the good Tuscan oil I’d been using). We drank some of the local wine, though we are not really connoisseurs, and enjoyed it all, and we ate one delicious meal after another. Umbria’s restaurants are less expensive and better than those we found in Venice, and perhaps even better than the ones we went to in Tuscany a year before. We found that the Cadogan Guide was an excellent resource: in Montefalco “Il Falisco”, in Orvieto “La Palomba”, outside Assisi “La Stalla”, in Gubbio, “Antica Frantoia” – each of these Cadogan-recommended places served us wonderful soups, pasta, meat, desserts that are local specialties. (And all were in the “cheap” or “moderate” category.) Another of the Cadogan’s suggestions (also noted by Untours) was only 15 kilometers from La Bruna, but what a trip! Pettino da Palmario is in the village of Pettino – on the map just a short hop from the SS 3, the main road from Spoleto north, but in reality that distance is almost straight up – except that of course one drives it on a road that curls and spirals and twists its way up the mountain. Luckily we decided to go there for lunch not dinner: though of course that meant we could see how precipitous the drop was! But it’s not a journey to take in the dark unless you know the road well. Every curve and gasp was worth it, though: the feast that awaited us at the top was one of the best meals we had in Umbria, generously and graciously served. The hospitable spirit we found there was also very evident in a much more convenient restaurant, “L’Antica Posta,” just off the highway to Spoleto. We ate dinner there several evenings, and enjoyed the food, the wine, the service and the grappa that we were always given to top the meal off. One final note on the subject: if something on a menu in Umbria is listed as “grandmother’s special...”, try it. The best dessert we had there was called “torta di nonna” and a wonderful entrée at L’Antica Posta had a similar name.Two Extraordinary Expeditions
There are two sights from Umbria that are unforgettable: one of natural beauty, the other a work of art. And each of these was the spur for a day’s journey that was an adventure and a reward in itself. The first is the Piano Grande or “great plain” east of Norcia, in eastern Umbria; the second Perugino’s painting “The Martrydom of Saint Sebastian” in a tiny church in the small town of Panicale, near Lake Trasimeno.The trip that took us through the Piano Grande had as its destination Castellucio, a tiny village in the Monte Sibillini National Park northeast of Norcia, an Umbrian town known for two incongruous things: its wonderful pork and the distinction of being St. Benedict’s birthplace. Castellucio, (population: 40) consisting of perhaps ten houses, a restaurant, a bar and a hang-gliding school, is the “lentil village.” The fields around it produce the tiny lentils considered the finest in Italy. We’d read about the lentils and the restaurant in Castellucio in a magazine article on fine Italian cooking, and then read about the Piano Grande in the Cadogan, which describes the landscape as “sublime.” I have a poet’s objection to hyperbole, but “sublime” is not an overstatement. Our trip started out in rain and fog, through which we drove what seemed increasingly perilous mountain roads toward Norcia. We stopped there for a coffee and a quick walk around the main square, and then pushed on for Castellucio. The road grew even more hair-raising and then suddenly we were looking down on a magical scene: the karstic basin (remains of a glacial lake) that makes up the Piano Grande. The plain, surrounded by mountains, looks like velvet, gold and tan, the trees on the hills around it are thick, embossed, as if embroidered there, the movement of clouds in the sky is reflected on the plain itself, so that the whole is dappled dark and bright, dun and gold, a moving pattern. Franco Zeffirelli used the Piano Grande as the scene for his movie on the life of St. Francis, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” and one can see why: there’s something surreal, something mystic, something unearthly in this utterly beautiful place. It seems banal to add that the restaurant in Castellucio where we feasted on lentils and sausage was all that it was supposed to be, and that our drive back “home” on back roads took us through mountains and valley views that were strikingly lovely, but all of this added to the perfection of the day.
Norcia and Castellucio came recommended in the Cadogan and by Untours; our other extraordinary expedition we owe to Jo Anne Rowe, our Untours contact person. In a conversation at the olive tasting we mentioned that we were thinking of going to see a certain Piero della Francesca painting in Monterchi, north of Umbria; “don’t bother,” Jo Anne announced, “go see the Perugino in Panicale.” Panicale? A small town south of Lake Trasimeno, in the northwest corner of Umbria. For this trip, we decided to forego the main roads which we’d taken in this direction to go to Perugia and other destinations; we mapped out a route through less traveled countryside and out of the way towns on back roads. Out of the way indeed – it took us a good three hours to make a trip that could have been done in half the time on main roads. But what a charming three hours it was: through vineyards and olive fields, into towns we’d never have seen otherwise, past more photo ops than even Walt could take advantage of. We arrived in Panicale to a sudden shower, and the discovery that San Sebastiano, the church we were seeking could only be seen with a Tourist Office guide at 3 p.m.. Tired, wet and hungry we didn’t even wait to see if we could find the Cadogan’s one recommended restaurant: we ducked into the first one we found, and as was so often the case in Umbria, were rewarded with a delicious meal. (The restaurant is “Masolino”, for any intrepid adventurers). When we left, the rain had stopped, and the Tourist Office was open, the guide preparing to lead the few tourists assembling there to San Sebastiano. On the way to the church we admired the town’s famous view of Lake Trasimeno, which is also seen in the background of Perugino’s painting. The church was tiny, the fresco dominating it. Perugino was commissioned to paint it by a guild for the protection of the town from plague – something Saint Sebastian was supposed to be good for. The floor of the church was the same pattern originally as the floor of the loggia (terrace) where Saint S. is being martyred, so that the painting appears to open right out of the church itself. The archers who are shooting at St. S. are arranged in a pattern so elegant it seems a dance; the saint himself, pierced but unbloodied, seems in a trance, another world. It’s an extraordinary sight, and we both found it worth not only the long trip there, but the almost equally long and less picturesque return journey, on which we got lost several times.