Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The best streets to wander around for a feel of the old city are to the easterly and west of the duomo, Via dei Priori being the most characteristic. Just behind the Palazzo dei Priori in the Via della Gabbia there once hung a large iron cage used to imprison thieves and sometimes even clergy. In Jan 1442, according to a medieval chronicler, priest Angelo di Ferolo “was place back into the cage at midday, and it was very cold and there was much snow, and he remained there until the first day of February both night and day and that same day he was brought out dead”. You can still make out long spikes on some of the lower walls, used as hooks for the heads of executed criminals. Medieval Perugia was evidently a hell of a place to be. “The most warlike of the people of Italy”, wrote the historian Sismondi, “who always preferred Mars to the Muse”. Male citizens played a game (and this was for pleasure) in which two teams, thickly padded in clothes stuffed with deer hair and wearing beaked helmets, stoned apiece other mercilessly until the majority of the other side were dead or wounded. Children were encouraged to join in for the first two hours to promote “application and aggression”. In 1265 Perugia was also the birthplace of the Flagellants , who had half of Europe whipping itself into a frenzy before the movement was declared heretical. In addition to some hearty scourging they took to the streets on moonlit nights, groaning and wailing, diversion in white sheets, singing dirges and clattering human bones together, all as expiation for sin and the wrongs of the world. Then there were the infamous Baglioni , the medieval family who misruled the city for several generations, their spell-binding history - full of vendetta, incest and mass-slaughter - the stuff of great medieval soap opera.

Via dei Priori passes Madonna della Luce (Madonna of the Light) on the north side after the medieval Torre degli Scirri, little more than a chapel dominated by an impressive altarpiece (by a follower of Perugino). The church takes its study from the story that in 1513 a young barber swore so profusely on losing at cards that a vocalist in a wayside shrine closed her eyes in horror and kept them closed for four days. The miracle prompted celebrations, processions and the building of a new church. Some way beyond is a nice patch of grass perfectly placed for relaxing with the crowd from the art school next door or for admiring Agostino di Duccio’s colourful Oratorio di San Bernardino , whose richly embellished deception (1461) is far and away the best piece of sculpture in the city. Again to the north is what’s left of San Francesco, once a colossal church, now ruined by centuries of earthquakes and neglect, but with a curiously jumbled and striking deception still just about standing.

From here you can wander along Via A. Pascoli, past the hideous university buildings, to the Università Italiana per Stranieri in Piazza Fortebraccio. The big patched-up gateway here is the Arco di Augusto , its lowest section one of the few remaining monuments of Etruscan Perugia. The upper remnant was added by the Romans when they captured the city in 40 BC. The university bar region is friendly and cosmopolitan, but don’t expect much joy out of the Information Desk in the foyer. Terms run from April to December, and posters around the place give details of concerts and English films (especially in the summer).

About a minute’s achievement north on Corso Garibaldi is the sadly half-defunct Sant’Agostino , once Romanesque, now botched Baroque and filled with wistful signs explaining what paintings used to hang in the church before they were spirited to France by light-fingered Emperor troops. The church, however, is not entirely ruined: there’s a beautiful choir (probably based on a drawing by Perugino) and a couple of patches of fresco on the left-hand wall, giving a tantalizing intent of what the place must once have been. Next door to the north side is the fifteenth-century Oratorio di Sant’Agostino , its ludicrously ornate ceiling looking as if it’s about to erupt in an explosion of gilt, stucco and chubby plaster cherubs. Fifteen minutes’ achievement up the street is the fifth-century church of Sant’Angelo, situated in a tranquil spot and based on a circular pagan temple; the 24 columns, apiece prefabricated from a different stone, are from the early building.

Tags: baglioni, chronicler, deer hair, duomo, expiation, flagellants, frenzy, human bones, iron cage, long spikes, madonna della luce, male citizens, mass slaughter, medieval family, midday, moonlit nights, Perugia, sismondi, soap opera, vendetta