Assisi

Friday

Jane Stannus

The journey to Assisi, 800 years after St. Francis

“Assisi – best spiritual vibrations anywhere I’ve been, along with India,” enthused the mustached British man next to me on the bus to Florence. Pleased to find a fellow anglophone, he chatted away happily, telling me how he’d retired, sold his house in London and moved to Assisi. He hadn’t yet learned Italian but could manage enough Sanskrit to read the Upanishads. A spiritual dilettante. Wonderful. It was 7:30 a.m., I’d missed coffee, breakfast and a train, and my feet, after walking for eight days and 115 miles to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis, hurt. Yet when my companion gave his verdict on how Francis had transformed his world, my cranky heart warmed to him.

Tuesday

John Pietro

Umbria: Italy’s underrated gem

Nestled in the Apennine Mountains due east of Rome is the region of Umbria, a hidden gem at the heart of Italy. It's characterized by lush green countryside, rolling hills carpeted in olive groves and picturesque medieval hilltop towns. The region has the beauty of Tuscany but without the mobs of tourists. Its food is the best Italy has to offer — fresh, traditional, high-quality and spectacularly tasty. The senses, then, are satisfied — but Umbria also harbors a rich religious legacy. Home to some of Catholicism’s most titanic saints — Francis and Clare of Assisi and Benedict of Nursia — and dotted with ancient and medieval churches of great beauty, it's as much a pilgrim’s paradise as it is a tourist’s Italian dream.

umbria