The [Assisi] Adventure

When you picture a perfectly quaint, quiet and beautiful Italian town, with buildings of brown and golden stone climbing gently up a lush hillside and bell towers chiming the hours of the day while endless fields of green dotted with stately cypress and orange tile rooftops flow into the distance under a sky so soft it looks like a delicately painted canvas…you are picturing Assisi.

This town is breathtaking in its simple charm.

The cobbled streets wind in and out and up and down, creating secret little alleys and stairways so pristine and charming you would be pleased to get lost in them.  The shutters of every house differ in charming muted hues, and on most stone walls hang flower boxes or pots overflowing with beautiful blooms.

It seems too good to be true.  And yet it is here.

Olive orchards surround the town and fill the hillsides

Our window

The view from our window, with Santa Chiara on the left

Assisi was home to Saint Francis and Saint Clare (Chiara), and their presence is still very much alive, whether in the churches bearing their names, in the hundreds of tasteful gift shops lining the streets, in the paintings and icons of them gracing every restaurant and hotel, or in the hundreds of Franciscans you see walking around daily.

The Basilica of Saint Francis

Santa Chiara from up the hillside

Assisi from above

The Basilica of Saint Francis from above

Saint Francis' mountain retreat, now a church

This place is peaceful.  The pace is slow, the days are simple and the views never fail (even when it rains, as it has for most of the time we have been here) to be perfectly picturesque. 

 

There could not have been a nicer way to conclude our time in Italy.