Assisi, Montefalco, and travel to Ravenna

                Today we visited Assisi which is where St. Francis was born. St. Francis formed the Franciscan religious order in Assisi in 1208 and St. Clare the founder of the Poor Sisters was also founded there. We first visited the Basilicia di Santa Chiara. It is dedicated to and contains the remains of Saint Clare of Assisi. Next, we went to the Piazza del Comune which has the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo and the Torree del Popolo on two sides with a fountain in the middle. The Temple of Minerva is also facing this Piazza. We then walked through the streets of Assisi to get to the Basilica di San Francesco. It is the mother church to the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor, or the Franciscan Order. It is one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in Italy. In 2000 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Basilica is split in to two sections known as the Upper Church and the Lower Church and also a crypt; this is because it was built in to the side of a hill. In the crypt, the remains of St. Francis are buried. Both the Upper and Lower Churches are decorated with frescoes by various late medieval painters from the Roman and Tuscan schools. The range and quality of the difference frescoes makes the basilica an important example of the development of Italian art in this period.

The Upper Church consists of four ribbed vaults. The entrance vault shows the Four Latin Doctors of the Church: St. Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine. The frescoes in the Upper Church show different parts of The Bible. Both sides of the nave are decorated with 32 different scenes from the Old Testament and the New Testament. The most important frescoes here are in the lower part of the nave that were painted by Giotto. These frescoes demonstrate major events in the life of St. Francis and are painted so vividly that it is as if Giotto was right there when the events occurred.

The Lower Church was designed by Brother Elias. The large doors have a rose window above. The doors portray stories from the lives of St. Francis, St. Clare, St. Louis and St. Anthony. The bust of Pope Benedict XIV is also portrayed here because he granted this church the title of Patriarchal Basilica and Cappella Papale. When you enter the lower basilica, you feel as if you are actually underground. The frescoes are darker and there are not many windows so it seems as if you are below ground when in fact you are not. The oldest fresco in the church is in the Lower Church, the artist is unknown. This fresco is five scenes from the Passion of Christ on the right side and on the left side there are another five scenes from the Life of St. Francis.

Both the Upper and Lower Churches were beautiful. It was unfortunate that some of the frescoes were not as in tact as they used to be because of the earthquakes that had occurred, but they were still very impressive. After Assisi, we travelled to Montefalco where we had an olive oil tasting, lunch, and a lesson with a certified sommelier. I was a little disappointed with the olive oil tasting. I was expecting our visit to be more about the olive oil than the wine tasting, but it was the opposite. We tried multiple types of wine and the sommelier we had accompanying us showed us how wines are tasted and graded. We were told to pick out certain flavors and aromas. She did a good job of showing us how wine does not just taste like wine to a lot of people and how much of a process the flavoring of wine takes. What it is aged in makes a difference in the taste; there can be more of a rosy taste in it because of how it is aged, etcetera. After lunch were able to see the machinery used to make the olive oil and we were explained the process which was interesting to see. At the end of the day we left for Ravenna, our last destination of our travel.