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| City Gate, Assisi, Italy |
Thanks to my husband who is passionate about history and insisted that we should visit Assisi on our European trip. I was glad that we did. I learned a lot about European history and that Assisi is the town where St. Francis was born and died.
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| The Basilica of St. Francis - World Heritage Site since 2000 |
The Basilica of St. Francis which was built to honour St. Francis who gave up his wealthy life style and dedicated his life to helping the poor, also a patron saint of Italy,
has been a World Heritage Site since 2000 and it is a sight to behold!
The Basilica sustained heavy damages in the 1977 earthquakes, but it was restored and re-opened after two years. The restoration was a hefty $50 millions.
The small, compact town is surrounded by a completely intact city wall with gates. When we looked up, we saw a fortress occupying the highest point of the town which is dominated by two castles. The larger one called Rocca Maggiore, with its massive presence meant to intimidate the people of the town. It was built in the 1300's.
Within thirty minutes of walking, we could go from one end of the town to the other.
We admired the Gothic architecture everywhere, including this little cafe where we took our lunch break.
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| Enjoying the scenery by a hill side cafe |
Assisi is a city built high on the hill that offers beautiful view of the towns and fields below. We had dinner by a hillside cafe, soaked in this spectacular scenery and took numerous pictures at this fairy tale location.
We attended a lovely evening concert - started at 9:15p.m. in the courtyard of the Basilica of St. Francesco.
The title of the concert was Ave Maria and no less than fourteen different versions of this song by various composers throughout the different periods and sung with gusto by the choir.
It was a hot night with hardly any breeze and we had to fan ourselves constantly.
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| Night View of an Assisi Street |
After the concert, we strolled around the streets of Assisi, taking in the scenery and experiencing the quiet life of a small Italian hillside town.
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| The street corner where St. Francis slept |
We even saw the corner where St. Francis called home after his decided to give up his wealthy life and lived like one of the poor people in his time.
I was so glad that my husband arranged for us to visit this exceptional well preserved beautiful town and allowed us a glimpse of what a medieval town looked and felt like during the medieval ages.
R.T. Assisi, Italy
Aug. 2012
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