Suppose you love Italy. You want to know it better. You’ve been to Rome, seen
Florence, done Venice. You want to savour the country’s delights but not be
drowned by too many tourists. Then may I suggest you try Perugia. It’s a
modern city with some 150,000 inhabitants, but the old town perched at the
top of the hill is as ancient as anywhere in Italy, full of palazzos and
piazzas that make you feel as if you’ve wandered onto the set of Romeo and
Juliet.
You can walk in streets so narrow that you feel lovers could lean out and kiss
across them; and eat your pasta in an osteria carved out of the Etruscan
wall that was built centuries before the Roman bullyboys arrived. Indeed, if
you go to the five-star Hotel Brufani Palace, right at the top of the town,
and go down in the lift to its health spa, three floors below ground level,
you can swim in a pool with a transparent floor revealing the Etruscan
artefacts underneath.
They date from about 600BC. On the other hand, perhaps you’re more interested
in jazz or art, antiques or chocolate, or learning a bit more of that lovely
language. In all these cases, Perugia will be happy to oblige.
The obvious place to start is the mighty Corso Vannucci, that spacious
thoroughfare down which people pass each evening in the Italian ritual of
the passeggiata, the leisurely amble between work and dinner when everybody
wants to see and be seen.
Half-close your eyes till those hundreds of Perugian heads become small black
dots and you can imagine yourself back in the Middle Ages – perhaps in one
of those dreamy paintings by local-boy-made-good Perugino (real name Pietro
Vannucci, c 1450-1523).
At the southern end of the Corso lie the Carducci Gardens, with their long,
stone balustrade and fabled view of the rolling Umbrian countryside below.
Sit there in the afternoon sun and even in February, when we were there, you
can get a bit of a tan.
The Sunday we arrived, though, was the third day of the monthly antiques
market, the biggest in Umbria, with acres of stalls selling paintings,
silver, statues, jewellery and antiques, and with dozens of well-heeled
women bargain-hunting in furs: sable, seal, leopard and ten-a-penny minks –
the animal-rights movement has made little impression in Italy.
Strolling north, we must certainly pause at Collegio del Cambio, the medieval
headquarters of the city’s moneychangers’ guild. Since usury was frowned on
by the church, it got hold of Perugino and got him to paint a series of
frescoes that depicted Christian, classical and secular virtues – but with
each person shown in it dressed in the haute couture of the time.
So we get a catwalk view of what the fashionable world was wearing when
Perugino was at the height of his powers. The result is one of the finest
Renaissance rooms in Italy. Next door stands the Collegio della Mercanzia,
seat of the merchants’ guild, with its richly decorated 15th-century wooden
panelling; eloquent evidence of the power and wealth the merchant class of
Perugia enjoyed (judging from those fur coats, many still do).
But now it’s time to sit on the steps outside the cathedral in the sun, as
people have done here for centuries, and contemplate the marvellous 24-sided
Fontana Maggiore, the most beautiful medieval fountain in Italy, which has
stood here since the 1270s.
Many of those enjoying the afternoon sun are students; for this is a city
where learning has flourished since Perugia’s university was founded about
the same time as Oxford. It still enjoys a world-class reputation,
especially in medicine and law. The University for Foreigners dates from
1921 and is highly regarded too, especially for teaching Italian, but its
classes tend to be large. A more intimate milieu is provided by the Comitato
Linguistico, a small, independent language school.
It teaches students aged anything from 16 up – the oldest so far was an
American woman of 82 – and the courses are tailor-made. A bewildering range
of students make their way there: Japanese, Americans (Oklahoma University
books a four-week summer course), Chinese from Taiwan, Australians – and, of
course, the British. The reasons people come are equally disparate; the
Japanese, for example, send cooks, opera singers and violin-makers, who all
need Italian for their work.
When class begins to pall, the countryside beckons. On Saturday we hired a
guide who drove us round the enchanted little hilltop towns that ring the
city. We went first to Assisi, and saw the little chapel where St Francis,
the playboy turned pilgrim, had slept on straw, then visited the Basilica of
San Francesco, so miraculously restored after the earthquake 10 years ago.
We drove on to Spoleto, where the composer Gian Carlo Menotti decided to
site his Festival of Two Worlds half a century ago and where the magnificent
Roman amphitheatre still provides the principal mise en scène for its
orchestral concerts.
We stopped at the sleepy, sun-soaked village of Montefalco, famed for its
upmarket red wine, which you can sample in the enoteca. We strolled through
Bevagna, where the locals dress in medieval costumes each summer to perform
their mystery plays. And then we marvelled at the astonishing Roman mosaic
floors depicting in myriad stones the lobsters and calamari that the local
foodies had tucked away 2,000 years ago.
Our majestic backdrop throughout all this was the Umbrian countryside, with
its range of snow-topped mountains, and, at every turn, the pale pink stone
that gives the buildings that inimitable motif of crushed strawberry.
St Francis made Assisi world-famous and the third-most-frequented destination
in Italy for pilgrims; but this gave Perugia, its nearest large city, a
reputation for sanctity and antiquity that sat oddly with the modern world.
So it was an inspired idea of the city fathers to dream up the ambitious
Umbria Jazz festival 34 years ago. Since then it has mushroomed into one of
the greatest, and the ancient squares and streets become the joyous
receptacle for famous names.
The divine Sarah Vaughan swung here, Stephane Grappelli worked his
legerdemain, Wynton Marsalis blew his fabled horn, and Charlie Mingus got
the joint jumping. This month, the soaring tenor saxophone of Sonny Rollins
will startle the saints in their shrines.
HARDLY HAS the city settled down after the last cat blows his tailgate
farewell than it’s time to prepare for the great chocfest.
In October, chocoholics and chocolatiers from all over Europe throng the Corso
Vannucci for Eurochocolate, a nine-day celebration of the magic bean. This,
after all, is the place that has given the WOrld millions of its Baci, or
chocolate kisses.
Or if you thirst for less Visceral delights, book now for the first
Pinturicchio exhibition in Perugia’s National Gallery this December; this
treasure house is already home to some of his masterpieces and will be
giving wall space to other triumphs of his rich expertise lent by galleries
from around the world. Nor should we forget that this region has long been a
cornucopia for classical music. Amici della Musica (the Friends of Music)
offers an international programme of classical concerts. In Umbria last
summer you could have heard The Barber of Seville in Spoleto or Jesus Christ
Superstar in Assisi. And Perugia itself is home to a plethora of little
theatres.
For questing minds, there’s a popular new diversion: urban trekking. It’s a
demanding four-mile walk up and down the precipitous city, unfolding for the
locals many new insights into the historic place they inhabit. They take a
thousand on each walk, in groups of a hundred at a time. Four in five on
this latterday odyssey are locals; but you’re very welcome too.
In the end, though, the most romantic, if slightly scary, way to understand
Perugia is to go down by escalator into the bowels of the immense Rocca
Paolina, headquarters of the bloodthirsty Baglioni family who once dominated
the city and were finally crushed by the equally appalling Pope Paul III in
the 16th century. He ordered the burial under tons of rock of their
fortress, with all their palaces, 138 houses and seven churches.
You can still see their shells down in the rock’s echoing vaults and corridors
– now used for exhibitions. And this August some student film-makers are
presenting Le Nozze di Sangue (Wedding of Blood) – part tour, part film – to
recreate the dire comeuppance that befell the Baglioni family. Perugia, in
short, has learnt over the long centuries how to stop fighting, make a euro
or two and have fun.
Travel brief
Getting there: fly to Perugia from Stansted with Ryanair (0871 246
0000, www.ryanair.com). The city is
about a two-hour drive from Ancona, Rome and Florence. Airlines flying to
these cities include Ryanair, EasyJet (www.easyjet.com),
Alitalia (0870 544 8259, www.alitalia.com),
Air One (020 8939 2434, www.flyairone.it)
and Meridiana (www.meridiana.it).
Where to stay: budget: Primavera Mini Hotel, Via Vincioli 8 (00 39-075
572 1657, www.primaveraminihotel.it);
mid-price: Priori, Via dei Priori (075 572 3378, www.hotelpriori.it);
luxury: Brufani Palace, Piazza Italia 12 (075 573 3541, www.sinahotels.com).
Restaurants: budget: La Botte, Via Volte della Pace (075 572 2679);
mid-price: Altromondo, Via Cesare Caporali 11 (075 572 6157); luxury: La
Taverna, Via delle Streghe 8 (075 572 4128).
Events: the antiques market is held on the last Friday, Saturday and
Sunday of each month. Festival of Two Worlds, until July 15 (www.
spoletofestival.it). Eurochocolate takes place October 13-21 (www.eurochocolate.com).
Institutions: Comitato Linguistico, Largo Cacciatori delle Alpi 5 (075
5721 471, www.comitatolinguistico.com).
University for Foreigners, Piazza Fortebraccio 4 (075 57461, www.unistrapg.it).
Perugia National Gallery, Palazzo dei Priori (www.galleria
nazionaleumbria.it). Amici della Musica, Via Danzetta 7 (075 572 2271, www.perugiamusicaclassica.com).
Activities: Rocca Paolina is open to all. Urban Trekking, www.comune.perugia.it.
National Archeological Museum of Umbria, Piazza Giordano Bruno 10 (075 572
7141).
