Umbria and its Contents

 Moving back in time to a pre-wallet-loss time (situation fully resolved by now, which is: grand!) let's click past the jump and see what Umbria is all about! SPOILERS: it's dreamy and grand??

Back in 2016, I stopped in Umbria on my way from Rome up to Florence, in a small town called Spello, whose main claim to fame is an infiorata (think "festival of mosaics using only flower petals") every spring. I visited after the festival and found a sleepy, gorgeous little town with a couple of trattorie, cobblestoned lanes, aching vistas of rolling fields and forests, and some nice hiking nearby. I'd wanted to return to the region, having found it quieter than (and perhaps as - if not more - lovely as) Tuscany, but also had been wanting to visit Orvieto, where my sister had spent a semester studying as an undergrad.

Following the chaos (enjoyable!) and punishing concrete landscape (not a fan!) of Naples, Umbria was perfect. I arrived in Orvieto midafternoon, to find the funicular leading up the hill to the walled city was down for repair for one week - a slight bummer, as I adore funiculars - so I boarded a replacement bus, dropped my gear at my guesthouse, and set off to wandering the streets.

PRETTY GOOD STREETS, in my opinion, sorry to offend

There's something I love about Italy's walled towns that echoes what I love about Venice, which is that they're places where you almost definitionally can't get too lost. This sort of depends on the wall being present, or at least a historical wall now being demarcated in a ring road with heavier traffic surrounding the city core. It takes maybe an hour (at the absolute most, in the larger walled cities like Florence or Bologna) to walk from one end to the other, and as long as you don't go beyond the walls, you'll eventually find your way back to a recognizable piazza or church or shop. Particularly in smaller hill towns, it's a joy to leave your phone and everything back in your room and leave for what amounts to a mindfulness walk, fully present in the moment and not too worried about what you run into.

Is Hill Towns Nice? A Consideration

In Orvieto, this is a real treat. Virtually car-free, it's got narrow, winding roads that promise you almost constant access to shade, and any time you reach the edges of the city, the walls slope down away from you and give way to that gorgeous undulation that typifies the landscape here. There are some souvenir shops, but also a lot of little salumeria and bakeries and odds-and-ends shops and artists' studios to stick your head into, and it's got a spectacular duomo.

I tend these days to take maybe one photo for every 15-20 shots of footage I grab, so it's maybe telling that I have a half-dozen photos of the Duomo from varying angles. No I am NOT going to share them all! You are going to have to come approach me in person to get to see The Secret and Hidden Duomo Photographs That Look Like Most Everybody's Duomo Photographs I Think

Slowing down in Umbria and letting happenstance rule the day is pretty rewarding. The evening of my first day in Orvieto, after dinner in a garden patio of a fantastic little restaurant, I decided to stroll a bit aimlessly, finding myself spilling back out into the Duomo's piazza, with an enormous moon floating just over the horizon. (As an amateur photographer with heavy emphasis on the amateur, one thing that makes me wish I would take a photography class is figuring out how to photograph a landscape with the moon where it's not just a dumb tiny white dot, totally divorced from the hypnotic scene I'm usually trying to capture in some way.)

As I soaked in the scene, the piazza full of kids and their families at 11 pm, I heard music, and saw the doors of the duomo were open. Walking up, I saw that there was a concert taking place inside the chancel. Perfect. I wandered in, took in the grandeur of the space, walked up to the transept, perched to listen for a minute, and then was on my way again.

Orvieto wasn't my only stop in Umbria; from here, I trekked up and round to Assisi, where I spent an afternoon in a much more touristy town, thanks largely to its significance in the life of St. Francis. That said, it's also one where you can absolutely find quiet lanes and even find yourself alone in a church or two that loom large in St. Francis' trajectory. (As with all Italian cities - even places like Venice, in my 2016 experience - overtourism usually gets concentrated in main thoroughfares, and you can find your way to a more contemplative and rewarding corner without terribly much effort.)

Am I sure this photo is from Assisi and not Orvieto? Only SOMEWHAT, but whatever, rarrrr, unspecified Umbrian town edition.

Listening to an audio guide discussing the life and theology of Francis was rewarding and resonant; this stretch of the trip came a bit before the Dobbs decision came down, but any time I think about spirituality in 2022, I'm struck (and usually enraged) by the gulf between Christ's teachings and the perverse cult of greed, sanctimony, and hatred that typifies most of what calls itself Christianity in contemporary America. Francis' teachings on poverty, service, reverence for nature, and the acceptance of death and hardship as gifts that can teach and nourish us are bracing and vital; I also get, I think, why a friend of mine wrote a theology paper exploring parallels between Franciscan theology and Buddhist teachings, but that's substantially different can of worms. In any case, being in the midst of the landscape that inspired Francis's thinking and teaching was, as in-situ learning usually is, eye-opening, and I finished my visit contentedly, with a several-mile walk down the hillside to the train station, where I eventually found a cab to take me to my final Umbrian stop.... an agriturismo up in the hills.

That, I think, deserves its own post, so notwithstanding that the video in this post has a good dose of footage from the farm where I stayed, let's hang tight and learn more about it... SOON??