Buon Natale a tutte! (Merry Christmas to all!) it is a gray Christmas morning in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago as I write this final post of the 2024 trek and since Santa has long since stopped dropping presents at this location, it is a good time for me to do so.
The “runners flu” of the prior day did allow us to get some housekeeping, such as laundry completed which paid a dividend in the for of the fact that we had this entire day to discover the “storico” or historical district of Spoleto.
As I mentioned previously, Spoleto is a very artsy city with street sculptures scattered throughout. This day we decided to start at the top and work our way done. Thus we started at the Castello di Spoleto. Also known as “The Rocca Albornoziana” this fortress was constructed in the late 14th century by the Pope to establish and defend the boundary of the Papal States as the region was known at the time.
It was a long way up to the castle. Fortunately, the city of Spoleto at some point in the past installed what we were told is the longest series of escalators in Europe. A total of eight sections of escalators takes one from the lower portion of Spoleto (“centro”) all the way to the castle….unfortunately we only discovered this after walking up to the castle LOL.
Italy has a couple of “Blue Zones” where the life expectancy of the local population is much longer than average….this has been studied extensively as to why, my hypothesis? It’s because they have to walk these damn steep sidewalks all the time :-)! One walks one’s dinner off just walking back and forth to the ristorante LOL.
The castle was originally a fortress, then a residence for the local regent (Lucretia Borgia resided there for a period of time) after the unification of Italy in the 1860’s it was turned into a prison and used as such until 1982. Most of the castle has been restored though many of the frescoes have been damaged over the years. The castle truly has an outstanding view of the surrounding region as one can see below:
The castle itself is quite imposing as one approaches:
And as with castle and their purpose, I sure would not have wanted to have been the poor unfortunate soul who would have to storm the castle walls as it is quite a formidable approach:
With a series of two person wide bridges and redoubts, the castle was and is a formidable defensive position.
Moving into the castle was our next move and I must compliment the people who organized the museum as the flow made sense to me (and trust me while I appreciate museums generally I have little sense of flow or direction when in a museum which typically means I wander around rather aimlessly) starting with the various functions of the castle over time and then, on the upper level an art museum tracking regional art from pre roman times through the modern era. I am not going to bore you with explain all of the different uses but if you are interested, here’s the link: https://www.comune.spoleto.pg.it/turismoecultura/en/
So, I will share some photos in a series of galleries first showing the lower levels and moving upward into the art museum with as little commentary as I can get away with 🙂
As one moves along through the castle their is a second piazza in the area where the regent and their retinue would reside. In this area several frescoes have been at least partially restored.
We then moved into the castle where the exhibition began with a series of funerary items.
From there we moved into a series of exhibits that showed some of the restoration process that then morphed into a series of art exhibitions from various points in time in the region.
From the Castle we took the enclosed eight unit escalator down to the Duomo di Spoleto
While the Basilica is pretty but not ornate from the outside, the inside was truly beautiful.
After touring the Duomo it was time for lunch. Not usually an event worth doing more than mentioning, but, in this instance, where we had lunch had a certain level of significance. This is because the Duomo complex and its surroundings are the set of a very popular Italian television series called Don Matteo. The series has run for over twenty seasons now with the actor Terence Hill (“My name is nobody” and “They call me Trinity” are two spaghetti westerns he starred in in the 70’s). His given name is actually Mario Girotti and he was born in Venice but in Don Matteo he plays an american priest who ends up in Italy after being a missionary in Brazil. Honestly his english is so good that I thought he had lived in the USA at some point in time. ANyway I have used the Don Mateo series as an immersive adjunct to my ongoing study of the Italian language as one can watch Don Mateo on Amazon Prime. Thus I was looking forward to having lunch at the cafe next to the Duomo where Don Mateo and his Carabinieri friend solve many of their mysteries. The lunch was lovely ad the three of us had a great time>
The show is so popular that the stairway in the background is marked on maps as “Il Scale di Don Matteo” or “The Stairs of Don Mateo” a better view of which is below:
As Giancarlo our luggage transport/taxi driver observed during a discussion about the show, “You always see Don Matteo riding down the stairs, you never see him riding up the stairs.” LOL. I should also note that Spoleto is the home of the Festival of Two Worlds (Festa di due Mondiale) which is a combined arts/jazz festival which occurs at the end of June through early July and that a sister jazz festival is held in Charleston SC USA during the summer as well.
Well folks thanks for hanging in there with me on our trek through Umbria. I want to thank my sons, William and Stephen as well as Mike and Melanie Salvino for sharing their photos with me as most of the shots in the blog were from one of them as they have a much better eye for photos than I do :-). Next year? Who knows? I don’t think I have quite scratched my Italian itch yet but it is a situation of “So many places to go versus time to do so” so who knows, good Lord willing, where I’ll show up next. Take care, be safe and “Buon anno a tutte” Happy New Year to all. Ciao!
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