Introduction to Assisi

27km (17 miles) E of Perugia; 190km (118 miles) SE of Florence; 175km (109 miles) N of Rome

Assisi should be a perfect Umbrian hill town. It's a tiered, overgrown village of pink and pale-gray stone drawn out along a mountainside and surrounded by a valley patchwork of fields and olive groves. It boasts Roman roots, a glowering castle and twisting alleyways from the Middle Ages, and some of Italy's finest early Renaissance art -- all backed by the brilliant green slope of sacred Mt. Subasio. But this city with a population of fewer than 3,000 (and shrinking) saw, at the end of the 20th century, an average of four to five million visitors every year. This constant flood of travelers has polished the usual hill-town charm right off Assisi. Countless pilgrims, art lovers, and just plain curious travelers over the last 700 years have imparted to the town a thick tourist shellac it often can't quite shake even in its quietest, least visited corners. It's no accident the University of Perugia's "tourism studies" program is based here.

All this aside, Assisi is still one of Italy's top sights, ranking with the Colosseum, Pompeii, and Venice's canals. It preserves the remarkably intact portico of a Roman temple on its main square, one of the better-preserved Albornoz Roccas with sweeping views, and a two-story basilica hulking at one end of town that's a festival of frescoes. The basilica showcases the talents of the greatest geniuses of the early Renaissance, both Sienese (Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini) and Florentine (Cimabue and the incomparable Giotto).

In the late Middle Ages, Assisi witnessed the birth and lives of saints Clare and Francis. Francis is Italy's patron saint, founder of one of the world's largest monastic orders, and generally considered just about the holiest person to walk the earth since Jesus. The town is choked with visitors from Easter to June, and you sometimes can't move in the basilica on religious holiday weekends. The tourism support network, though, is in full force only when the crowds are in town, so while Assisi is packed beyond the limits in high season (book well in advance), you'll find it a ghost town January through March; about three-quarters of the hotels, restaurants, and museums close.

Earthquakes in 1997 rocked the heart of Umbria. In Assisi, Santa Chiara church and the Duomo were both damaged, but the Basilica di San Francesco was the worst hit. Part of the ceiling in the upper church collapsed, killing four people, destroying frescoes by Cimabue and his followers, and damaging Giotto's Life of St. Francis frescoes. Knowing the Papal Jubilee celebrations would begin at Christmas 1999, the pope pulled some strings (luckily, the basilica is the only sovereign land belonging to the Vatican outside Rome's Vatican City) and restoration sped along at a remarkable pace. The lower church reopened within weeks, and the upper church and its frescoes by early 2000, but the city wasn't fully restored until 2007.