_The City of Perugia_
"C'est une vieille ville du moyen âge, ville de défense et de
refuge, posée sur un plateau escarpé, d'où toute la vallée se
découvre."--H. TAINE, _Voyage en Italie_.
Having glanced thus rapidly over the history of Perugia we turn with
fresh interest to examine the city itself, and to trace through what
remains of its earliest walls and houses, the character of those same
fascinating, if pugnacious persons, who built those walls, fought over
them, lived and died within them.
Perugia is an excellent mirror of history, combining on its surface not
only a reflection of the immortal past but of a prosperous present, and
with the exception of ancient Roman influences, which, for some obscure
reason, have almost entirely vanished, it would be difficult to find a
nest of man more perfect or unchanged in all its parts. Battered and
abused by warfare and by weather the stones of the middle ages may be
and are, but they have not been destroyed, and there is something grand
and clean in the modern buildings which confirms, rather than destroys,
the æsthetic charm and splendour of the old.
Perugia is very distinctly the living capital of the province. After
travelling through Umbria and studying one by one the little dreamy
old-world cities--each perched upon its separate hillside, which seem to
have fallen asleep long centuries ago, letting the silence of
[Illustration: PERUGIA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAMPO SANTO]
the grass close in on their paved streets, as the need of
self-protection vanished--one returns to Perugia and recognises that
she, at least, has never died. She is often very silent, very brown and
grim; she has her dreams, but the hope in her: the desire for rule and
power, has never really vanished. The most remarkable change about the
town, if we are to take what we read of her history for certain fact, is
the change in her people. The inhabitants of Perugia, in every class,
are unmistakably gentle and amiable, both in mind and manner. They are
courteous to strangers, kind, helpful and calm. Even the street boys ask
one for stamps instead of pennies. In their leisure they are gay, and in
their work persistent. They are never frantic or demonstrative. As one
sits at one's window on warm spring nights, one almost wishes the people
in the street would either fight or sing, but they do neither. They take
their pleasures calmly, and hang upon their town walls by the hour,
gazing out upon a view they love. Perhaps in their inmost hearts they
are counting the numberless little cities, all of which their fathers
won for them in battles of the past. The fact of their supremacy may
make them thrill, but there is nothing to mark their triumph in their
faces.
This is no place in which to discuss the rapid change of personality in
the Perugians. We note it as a fact, and pass to a description of the
town itself, which certainly contains abundant marks of that same
"warlike" character which time has washed away from the minds of its
inhabitants.
The city is built, as we have shown in our first chapter, on one of the
low hills formed after thousands of years by the silting up of the
refuse brought down by the Tiber, and not, as one naturally at first
imagines, on a spur of the actual Apennines which are divided from her
by the river. Much of the power of the town in the past may be traced to
her extraordinary topographical position. Perugia stands 1705 feet above
the level of the sea, and 1200 above that of the Tiber. She stands
perfectly alone at the extreme edge of a long spine of hill, and she
commands the Tiber and the two great roads to Rome.[43] But looked at
from a merely picturesque point of view, few towns can boast of a more
powerful charm. Perugia, if one ignores her history, is not so much a
town as an eccentric freak of nature. All the winds and airs of heaven
play and rush around her walls in summer and in winter. The sun beats
down upon her roofs; one seems to see more stars at night, above her
ramparts, than one sees in any other town one knows of. All Umbria is
spread like a great pageant at her feet, and the pageant is never one
day or one hour like the other. Even in a downpour, even in a tempest
the great view fascinates. In spring the land is green with corn and oak
trees, and pink with the pink of sainfoin flowers. In winter it seems
smaller, nearer; brown and gold, and very grand at sundown. On clear
days one can easily trace a whole circle of Umbrian cities from the
Umbrian capital. To the east Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Montefalco, and
Trevi. The hill above Bettona hides the town of Spoleto, but its ilex
woods and its convent of Monte Luco are distinct enough. To the south
Todi and Deruta stand out clear upon their hillsides; and to the east
the home of Perugino, Città della Pieve, rises half hidden in its
oakwoods. Early in the mornings you will see the mists lift slowly from
the Tiber; at night the moon will glisten on its waters, drawing your
fancy down to Rome. Strange lights shine upon the clouds behind the
ridge which covers Trasimene, and to the north the brown hills rise and
swell, fold upon fold, to meet the Apennines. In autumn and in winter
the basin of the old Umbrian lake will often fill for days with mists,
but the Umbrian towns and hamlets rise like the birds above them, and
one may live in one of these in splendid sunshine, whilst looking down
upon a sea of fog which darkens all the people of the plain.
The inhabitants of Perugia swear by the healthy nature of their air, and
indeed, were it not for the winds, the most fragile constitution would
probably flourish in the high hill city. But it must be confessed that
there come days when man and horse quiver like dead leaves before the
tempest, and when the very houses seem to rock. Indeed, it would be
almost impossible to exaggerate the arctic power of a Perugian
whirlwind. Yet the average temperature is mild, and myrtles grow to the
size of considerable trees in the villa gardens round the town.
To fully understand the city of Perugia, the marvellous fashion of its
building, and the way in which its houses have become a part of the
landscape and seem to creep about and cling to the unsteady crumbling
soil, one should pass out into the country through one of its gates,
and, rambling round the roads and lanes which wind beneath its walls,
look ever up and back again towards the town. In this way only is it
possible to understand what man can do with Nature, and how, with the
centuries, Nature can gather to herself man's handiwork and make of it a
portion for herself. Birds and beasts have built in this same fashion,
but rarely except in Umbria have men.
"The unstable quality of the soil on which Perugia is built," writes
Mariotti, "has made strong walls and very costly buildings a necessity,"
and he goes on to point out the different and expensive ways in which
the town has been bolstered up with solid masonry. The Etruscans were
the first to recognise this necessity. They may have been a peaceful and
a rather bourgeois set of human beings, differing in all ways from
their combative successors, but they understood the science of building,
and their walls, which encompassed only about one-third of the space
covered by the mediæval town, remain a monument of splendid solid
masonry wherever they can be traced.
[Illustration: ETRUSCAN ARCH. PORTA EBURNEA]
* * * * *
The Etruscan walls are a marked feature of some Umbrian cities, and
although it is rather the fashion to dispute their authenticity in
Perugia, the bits which remain of them there are probably quite genuine.
They have, however, become such a part of the mediæval and the modern
town, and are often so embedded in later buildings, that without close
study it is difficult to trace them; we have therefore marked their
course in red on the map of the town.
Five of the present gates of the town, namely, _Porta Eburnea_, _Porta
Susanna_, _Porta Augusta_, _Porta Mandola_, and _Porta Marzia_ are the
genuine old gates of the Etruscan town, and although the Romans altered
them a little, enlarging them from below, a great part of their masonry
is the work of the Etruscans, and from three to four thousand years old.
Of these gates, the _Porta Augusta_ is familiar to every one, as it is
one of the most remarkable and impressive features of the town. Rome and
the Renaissance have combined to give it a fantastic and a fascinating
appearance, even as these same influences have made a miniature museum
of the now disused _Porta Marzia_. Strangely enough the work of the
Etruscan masons is far better preserved than any which followed them,
and the great blocks of travertine neatly placed (as some suppose
without mortar) on one another, are easily distinguishable from those
built above and below them. Perugia always felt a certain respect for
her oldest walls, and even in the fifteenth century, when she was in her
prime, and bristling with new towers and churches, the work of the dead
people was respected. In 1475 we read that a law was passed for the
preservation of the Etruscan walls, as "they were very marvellous, and
worthy to be preserved into all eternity."
Beyond the city walls nothing remains of the Etruscans at Perugia,
except what is found in their tombs. That the town was rich in temples
and other beauties we may gather, but these, together with the houses,
were
[Illustration: MEDIÆVAL STAIRCASE IN THE VIA BARTOLO]
destroyed when Augustus took the town in 40 B.C., and when her devoted
citizen, Caius Cestius, set fire to his native city, to cover her
disgrace. Of the Roman occupation, which covered a period of many
centuries, no trace remains in Perugia. The present town is therefore a
monument of the purest mediæval building crowned by some rare and
beautiful bits of Renaissance architecture.
But before entering into a description of the city, it may be well to
insist once more on the fact already made plain in our history, that if
men made Perugia, men also marred her.[44] The impatience of man is
everywhere discernible in her streets her palaces and churches, and only
the latest buildings have their towers and stones intact. The towers of
S. Pietro, S. Domenico, and others have had their tops all truncated by
popes, by nobles, and by people in moments of their fury or their
vengeance. The city was built for warfare and defence, and not for
beauty, luxury and peace. In these comparatively quiet times of ours we
go about in foreign towns and look for art, and art alone. We seem to
forget that art is but a small affair--a little landmark in the history
of nations. There is an art in Umbria, an art so pure, so sweet, so
tender that thinking of it we may easily forget the history of her men,
or, if remembering, we seem to dream a dual dream. The art of Perugia
was, maybe, the outcome of her almost fanatical religion, but the wars
of her inhabitants have always been her life-blood. The very first
walls were built for defence, or, as some say, to store the crops, the
corn and hay, in; and the houses of the earliest mediæval town were also
built purely with a view to personal safety and protection. Bonazzi
gives a curious account of the growth of the city, and the almost
fantastic fashion in which its inhabitants hammered its houses together,
and then proceeded to live in them. "There were," he says, describing
the town in about 1100 and 1200, "few monuments or buildings of
importance up to the sixteenth century. The houses were all on one
floor, the sun barely reached them; some of them were of stone and
bricks, but the greater part of mud, clay and straw. Hence incessant and
considerable fires, increased by the lack of chimneys. And they were so
inconveniently arranged that often eight or ten persons slept in a
single room. A motto, a saint, some small sign took the place of our
modern numbers, and the lamp which burned in front of the many shrines
served to light the streets at nightfall. There were no flags or
pavements then upon the streets, which took their names from the
churches or houses of the nobles which happened to look down upon them;
these were narrow and tortuous, simply because they grew without any
method or premeditation, they were horrible to behold as all the dirt
was thrown into them, and because of the herds of swine which passed
along them, grunting and squeaking as they went."[45] Bonazzi next goes
on to trace the topography of the mediæval town, which was much smaller
than the present one, and lacking in large monuments. There was no Corso
in those days, no Piazza Sopramuro, no Palazzo Pubblico. Where the
present cathedral now stands there was only the little old church of S.
Lorenzo and a big and beautiful tower with a cock on the top of it. The
towers of Perugia were a most marked feature of her architecture and,
indeed, in old writings she is always mentioned as _Turrena_ because of
them.[46] "About this time," says Bonazzi, "another great work began in
our city, which was continued into the following centuries. The feudal
lords who came in from their own places in the country to inhabit the
town, brought with them each the tradition of his own strong tower in
the abandoned castle. Great therefore was the competition between them
of who should build the highest, and this each noble did, not so much
for decoration as for a means of defence and of offence, and according
to the amount of power possessed by himself or by his neighbour.... In
the shadow of the massive feudal towers," Bonazzi writes in another
place, "like grass which is shaded by giant plants, rose the little
houses of the poor. The more elegant houses were of terra-cotta (bricks)
without plaster or mortar, and their windows were arched in the Roman
fashion.[47] After 600 they were roofed with flat tiles in imitation of
the Lombards."
The city gates were always closed at nightfall, and some of the streets
were blocked by means of huge iron chains which stretched across the
road, preventing the passage of horse or carts, from one house to
another. One can still see the hooks and holes belonging to these
somewhat barbaric defences in some of the more solid houses of Perugia;
and in the neighbouring town of Spello the chains themselves have been
left hanging to one of the houses. In 1276 we read that the law of
closing the city gates was abolished, but a little later on it was again
found necessary to barricade the town at nightfall, and during some of
the fights between the nobles in 1400 and in 1500 we hear of the
difficulties which one or the other party had to combat in the "chains
across their path."
Strange scattered relics of this nest of mediæval man linger and come
down to us even in the nineteenth century. Amongst these are the _porte
del mortuccio_, or doors of the dead. All the best houses had these
doors alongside of their house-doors, but they are bricked up now and
quite disused, and might easily be ignored in passing through the
streets. The _porta del mortuccio_ is tall, narrow, and pointed at the
top; it is, indeed, just wide enough to pass a coffin through. It seems
that in very early days, even so far back as the Etruscans, there was a
superstition that through the door where Death had passed, Death must
enter in again. By building a separate door, which was only used by the
dead, the spirit of Death passed out with the corpse, the narrow door
was closely locked behind it, and the safety of the living was secured,
as far as the living can secure, from Death. Other charming details of
the mediæval city are the house doors. They are built of travertine or
_pietra serena_, and have little garlands of flowers and fruit bound
with ribbons, and delicate friezes above them. Some of them have very
beautiful Latin inscriptions, which show a strong religious sentiment.
We quote a few of them here: _Janua coeli_ (door of heaven, over a
church); _Pulchra janua ubi honesta domus_ (beautiful the door of the
house which is honest); _A Deo cuncta--a domino omnia_ (all things from
God); _Ora ut vivas et Deo vives_ (pray to live and thou shalt live to
God); _Prius mori quam fædari_ (die rather than be disgraced); _In
parvis quies_ (in small things peace); _Solicitudo mater divitiarum_
(carefulness is the mother of riches); _Ecce spes I.H.S. mea semper_
(Christ always my hope).
Over one or two of the doorways in Perugia you will find almost
byzantine bits of tracery with figures of unknown animals--beasts of the
Apocalypse--carved in grey travertine all round them. One of the very
earliest bits of mediæval building is the fragment of a door of this
sort, belonging to the first palace of the _Priori_, which is now almost
buried in the more modern buildings of the sixteenth century. There is
another amusing procession of beasts over a gateway below S. Ercolano.
These odd animal friezes were probably first designed for some sort of
closed market where beasts were sold, and the old Pescheria has
medallions of _lasche_ on its walls.
As for the ways and manners of the people who inhabited this mediæval
city, Ciatti and other writers supply us with plenty of fantastic
information:
"Perugia lies beneath the sign of the Lion and of the Virgin," Ciatti
says in his account, which is as usual, unlike the account of anybody
else, and highly entertaining, "and from this cause it comes that the
city is called _Leonina_[48] and _Sanguinia_, and the habits of the
Perugians are neither luxurious nor effeminate. Like those of whom
Siderius writes, they came forth strong in war, they delighted in fish,
were humorous in speech, swift in counsel, and loved the law of the
Pope.... The women," he continues with a certain monastic indifference
to female charm, "were not beautiful, although Siderius calls them
elegant;[49] the genius of Perugia was ever more inclined to the
exercise of arms than the cultivation of beauty, and many famous
captains have brought fame to this their native city through their brave
deeds. In Tuscany the Sienese have the reputation of being frivolous,
the Pisans astute and malicious, the Florentines slow and serious, and
the Perugians ferocious and of a warlike spirit."
Concerning the clothes and the feasts of this combative race of people
who lived for warfare rather than for delight, we hear that they were
accustomed to wear a great deal of fur, the nobles using pelisses of
martin and of sable, the poor, sheep or foxes' skins. The fur tippets
still worn by the canons of cathedrals in Italian towns in winter are
probably a remnant of these days. For the rest an adaptation of the
Roman tunic was perhaps worn by the men, whilst the women kept to the
tradition of the Etruscan headgear. "Victuals," Bonazzi tells us, "were
of a coarse description, more lard and pepper was eaten in those days,
than meat and coffee in ours. But at the feasts of the priests and
nobles an incredible quantity of exquisite viands was consumed; great
animals stuffed with dainties were cooked entire, and monstrous pasties
served at table, from which, when the knife touched them, a living and
jovial dwarf jumped out upon the table, unexpected and to the great
delight of all the company."
* * * * *
But from the Age of Darkness men awoke both in their manners and in
their buildings. Perugia of the Middle Ages shook the sleep from off her
heavy eyelids, and with that passionate impulse towards Light which was
perhaps the secret of the Renaissance, she too strove toward the
Beautiful, and in a hurried, fevered fashion, she too decked herself
with fairer things than castle towers and hovels. The fourteenth and the
fifteenth centuries were, as we know, the Age of Gold in later art, and
Perugia, in spite of all her tumults, in spite of her feuds, and even
her passionate religious abstinences, woke with the waking world. Most
of her churches, and most of those monuments which mark her as a point
for travellers, date from that period. "And at that time," says the
chronicler Fabretti, "there was so great a building going on in
different parts of the city that neither mortar nor stones nor masons
could have been procured even for money, unless a number of Lombards had
come in to build. And they were building the palace of the _Priori_
(Palazzo Pubblico), they were building S. Lorenzo, Santa Maria dei
Servi, S. Domenico, S. Francesco, the houses of Messer Raniero ... the
tower of the Palazzo, and numerous other houses of private citizens all
at that same time."
But it was not merely a love of beauty which prompted the Perugians to
this sudden departure in the way of architecture; the spirit of the
great saint of Umbria had much to do with it. In Perugian chronicles and
histories we find a strange silence about the influence of S. Francis on
a city which was only separated by some fourteen miles from Assisi. Yet
it is not possible that so strong a force as that of this man's
preaching could have been kept outside the walls of the neighbour town,
and Ciatti declares that at one time nearly a third part of the
inhabitants of Perugia took the Franciscan habit. In 1500 and 1600 there
were more than fifty convents in Perugia, many of which had sixty to
eighty inhabitants, but that was during the rule of the popes. Of the
great period of building in the fourteenth century, which included many
fine churches and convents, the buildings of the people and not of the
priests remain intact. The splendid Palazzo Pubblico and Pisano's
fountain in the square belong to this period. But because the work of
the Renaissance is so conspicuous and charming we have described it in
another place, and in our description of the town have lingered rather
over the fragments of the Etruscan and the mediæval city.
As it would be impossible in this small book to give anything beyond a
cursory sketch of all the different buildings of the town, we have
decided to deal with the details of some of the principal ones, leaving
the rest for the discovery of those whose leisure and intelligence will
always make such exploration a delight. There is no lack of excellent
guide-books to Perugia. Of the fuller and rarer ones we would mention
those of Siepi and Orsini and the more modern one of Count Rossi Scotti.
These are in Italian. Murray's last edition of "Central Italy" contains
clear and excellent general information, and there are several small
local guides--the best of these by Lupatelli--which can be had in the
hotel. No one who really desires to study the town should fail to read
the fascinating books of its best lover, Annibale Mariotti; and the
works of Conestabile and Vermiglioli are invaluable for students. All
these can be had in the public library of the town where there is a
pleasant quiet room in which to study them, and the excessive courtesy
of whose head--Count Vincenzo Ansidei--makes research an easy pleasure
there.
The topography of Perugia is simple: "The entire city," says Mariotti,
"since the very earliest days, was divided into five quarters or
_rioni_, which from the centre, that is to say, the highest point of the
town, and with as gentle an incline as the condition of the ground
allows, stretch out in five different directions like so many sunbeams
across the mountain side. These gates are: _Porta Sole_ to the east,
_Porta Susanna_ to the west (formerly called Trasimene), _Porta S.
Angelo_ (formerly Porta Augusta) to the north, _Porta S. Pietro_ to the
south, and _Porta Eburnea_ to the southwest. Each of these separate
gates bears its own armorial design and colour. Porta Sole is white and
bears a sun with rays; Porta Susanna blue, with a chain; Porta S. Angelo
red, with a branch of arbutus; Porta S. Pietro yellow, with a balance,
and Porta Eburnea green, with a pilgrim's staff."
Owing to the extraordinary situation of the town there are hardly any
level squares or streets. The two considerable flat open spaces on
either side of the Prefettura, the site of the Prefettura itself and of
the hotel Brufani are artificial spaces, the result of the demolition of
Paul III.'s fortress (see chap. vi.). We imagine that many intelligent
persons have passed through the comfortable hotel of Perugia not
realising at all the artificial nature of the ground on which it stands.
The Corso and the Piazza di S. Lorenzo may be said to be the heart of
the town; its pulse beats a little lower down in the Piazza Sopramuro
where fruit and vegetables are sold and where there is a perpetual
market-day.[50] The other big open square is the Piazza d'Armi, on a
lower level of the hill and to the south of the town. There the cattle
fair is held on Tuesdays, and there the beautiful white Umbrian oxen,
with skins that are finer than the cattle of the plain, and the grey
Umbrian pigs, and tall Umbrian men and girls can be seen in all their
glory. Here too is the convent of S. Giuliana with its splendid
cloisters and little Gothic campanile, and here above all do the
soldiers of Perugia practice their bands, their horses, and their bugles
every morning.
There are three things lacking in Perugia, as there are naturally in all
hill-cities, and these are gardens, carriages, and running water. But
all these wants have been delightfully overcome by the inhabitants. As a
matter of fact, there are plenty of hidden gardens, behind the houses in
the town, but in almost every house you will see that iron sockets or
rings have been fastened to the walls below the windows, and in
[Illustration: PIAZZA SOPRAMURO, SHOWING THE PALACE OF THE CAPITANO DEL
POPOLO AND THE BUILDINGS OF THE FIRST UNIVERSITY OF PERUGIA]
these, pots of geraniums, daisies, and carnations are hung and tended
with excessive care. Some of the better palaces or convents have stone
brackets in the shape of shells for window gardens, and even in the dusk
of grim December days the old stone walls seem green and living. The
lack of carriages is really only felt in winter when the inhabitants
seem to fall for the while asleep, leaving the streets to assume their
mediæval character, and to be swept by winter hurricanes; in spring and
summer the place is gay enough; indeed the Corso is a very good specimen
of Umbrian Piccadilly on a fine May evening, and there are plenty of
carriages in the tourist season. But go into any palace of Perugia and
you will find the sedan chairs of our grandfathers ready for instant
use, proving that carriages are quite a modern innovation in the town.
The need of running water is, of course, the most serious point about so
big and prosperous a city, and a running stream to turn a paper mill
would heal more ills than all her pictures and her wide calm view. The
great rushing stream of the Tiber down at the foot of the hill seems
like a sort of solemn mockery to people who have only wells and a little
river from the hill to drink from and to wash their linen in. We have
realized this on winter nights when the Tiber was out in flood in the
moonlight down below our windows, and small drops freezing, one by one,
on Pisano's fountain behind us in the square.
Yet the town is prosperous. Its inhabitants and those of the commune
have increased by some six thousand since the days of its first
prosperity. Commerce, it is true, seems somewhat at a standstill. There
is the commerce of travellers, which is by no means inconsiderable; and
there is the commerce of Mind. This last Perugia has always had since
the days when she grew powerful, and the University of Perugia has
played a constant and important part throughout her annals. It was
founded in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and its management,
like other things in the city, was chiefly in the hands of the people
and their representatives, the _Priori_. Five _Savi_, one from each
_rione_, were told off to regulate its affairs and to elect its
professors. Urban VIII. brought it under the management of the Church,
but this did not in any way alter its first rules and laws. We hear that
"the Emperor Charles IV. bestowed upon the University all those
distinctions which were enjoyed by the most celebrated universities of
the Empire," and Napoleon confirmed these and added much to the
magnificence of Perugia's university. It was during the Napoleonic rule
that the college was transferred from its old quarters in the Piazza
Sopramuro to the vast new buildings at Montemorcino. Her three main
branches of study are jurisprudence, science, and theology. Several of
the popes studied in Perugia. S. Thomas Aquinas lectured here, and many
distinguished men of science and of law passed through their first
schools in the Umbrian hill town. The two great lawyers Baldo Baldeschi
and Bartolo Alfani were students in the University of Perugia, and
Alberico Gentile, who afterwards lectured in Oxford, studied here at the
University. The affairs of war were never allowed to interfere with
those of the mind, and we hear that a guarantee of safe conduct was
given to any scholar who came here from a distance.
The arts of peace, such as the manufacture of wool and silken stuffs,
were known in the middle ages in spite of the want of water (the hand
and foot looms of Perugia are almost prehistoric in their simplicity),
and in 1297 we hear of the magistrates of Perugia sending an embassy
into Lombardy to fetch two friars thence who should teach their
townsfolk the secrets of weaving. This art was zealously kept up for
many years, but finally it fell into decay. A branch of it has lately
been revived by a Milanese lady, and thanks to her efforts we are again
able to buy the strange flame-patterned carpets which we find on the
altars of so many of the older Umbrian churches.
* * * * *
Except in the Corso, life seems very quiet in Perugia. Yet though there
is poverty, there is none of that feeling of decayed splendour, of
arrested magnificence and luxury which we feel in so many cities of
Italy. The Perugians were probably never very luxurious. There are one
or two beautiful old palaces, but they are plain to look at, and the
palaces of the nobles had a bad time of it and were constantly pulled to
bits as their different owners were driven into the country. The town is
a town of a strong people; it is dignified and peaceful. When the wind
is not battering about its roofs and howling through its narrow streets
one becomes aware of an extraordinary silence.
And in that silence the questions rise--one cannot stifle them: Where
are the _Beccherini_ and where are the _Raspanti_? Are the Baglioni
really dead, and the Oddi, where are they? And the Flagellants and the
_Penitenti_--have even their ghosts departed? Will not a pope ride in at
the gates with his nephews and his cardinals and take up peaceful
quarters in the grim Canonica? Will not some warlike Abbot come and
batter down the church towers to build himself a palace? Will no
procession pass us with a banner of Bonfigli, and women wailing that the
plague should be removed?...
The snow falls silently upon the roads in winter. No blood of nobles
stains it. In May all Umbria is green with crops. No _condottiere_
comes to trample down the corn. But high upon her hill-top Perugia
stands as she stood then, and in her silence seems to wait for something
yet to come.
* * * * *
Before closing this chapter we would once again repeat that no one with
a few hours' leisure should forbear to wander round the outer walls of
the town before leaving Perugia. With only one break: that which is
formed by the deep ravine (or _bulagnjo_ in the local dialect) between
Porta Sant Antonio and Porta S. Angelo, one can walk on quite good paths
and roads under the outer walls of the entire city. The Via della
Cuparella is a pleasant lane reached by passing out through Porta
Eburnea. It skirts under the mediæval and Etruscan walls to the west of
the town and re-enters the city again a little below Porta Susanna. This
lane is one of the most sheltered corners in Perugia, and we have
wandered up and down it in the early days of January, and found the
sleepy lizards basking on its banks and yellow aconites in all the
furrows. The trees bud early there; their young green shimmers like a
vision of immortal youth against the grim walls of the mediæval and
Etruscan city up beyond.
Another charming walk is that along the eastern side of the town,
passing out through Porta S. Ercolano and through the Corso away along
the broad high-road to the convent of Monte Luce, which is quite one of
the most fascinating buildings of Perugia, with its front of white and
rosy marble, its court-yard and rose window, and the splendid block of
its nunnery walls covering the crest of the hill behind the church. The
convent was built early in the thirteenth century on the site, some say,
of an Etruscan temple dedicated to the Goddess Feronia, but more
probably in the sacred wood or _lucus_ from which it derived its name.
It was one of the most prosperous convents of the country, and Mariotti
gives a delightful account of a visit paid by the great Farnese Pope,
Paul III., to its Abbess. The Pope, it seems, gave himself the
permission to visit the nuns, who received him, "marvelling," as the
most learned nun of her day relates, "that the Vicar of God on earth
should so far humiliate himself as to visit such vile servants, as we
were." The Pope came into the church and took the seat prepared for him
in the choir, "all of his own accord, without being helped by anybody,
and like a meek and gentle lamb ... and being seated, he said to the
sisters, 'Come everyone of you and kiss my foot.'" Then the Abbess and
the sisters kissed the feet of the Pope. A long conversation and
exchange of compliments followed, and finally at sundown the Pope
departed, "very greatly edified."
[Illustration: CONVENT OF MONTE LUCE]
From Monte Luce one road winds down to the Tiber, passing under the
charming villa of Count Rossi Scotti, and another back into the city,
first through a strange row of wooden booths which are opened on the
feast day of Monte Luce (August 15th), and then on through the walls of
Mommaggiore's fortress and back into the town through Porta S. Antonio.
* * * * *
But it is not possible to describe all the details of a place which,
like all fair things, should be explored to be enjoyed. The discovery of
its hidden lanes, its little wayside villas, and its churches must be
left as it was left to the present writers, who never will forget the
tramps they took in the brown winter twilight, the drives on warm spring
afternoons when honeysuckle scented all the hedges, and the strange
excited feelings which possessed them when they found the hidden wayside
house or chapel, which had no written record to tell them who had built
it, and nothing but its own Perugian charm to endear it to them, and to
give it history.