Close to the Heavens in Assisi

Assisi is one of those places where you just feel close to something wonderful and awesome.  Is it the sky?  The sky is certainly close, it seems, and filled with clouds that shape-shift and dance about.  The sun beats down on you but when the clouds drift over it seems like a performance of the Divine.

What is this amazing place that, like so many Italian cities, is built in layers.  Layers upon layers of time, architecture, beliefs, the dead and the living.  It's picturesque no matter where you look.  It's significant no matter where you look.  Etruscan first, the Romans came in and built on top.  Look at this very impressive 1st century Roman temple to Minerva that was transformed into a church during the Middle Ages.  It's huge!

But above all, Assisi is known as the birth place and home of St Francis and St Clare, both reformers of the Catholic Church in their own way.  'Francesco' as he was called, was born into a well-off family.  His father was a successful cloth merchant and his mother a high born French woman.  When he was a young man, he did his duty and went off to war when Assisi was fighting the armies of Perugia.  He had a rough time, was captured, imprisoned and essentially shell shocked.  He returned to home a broken man.  After being in a coma of sorts for weeks, one day he awoke a new man.. in love with nature, animals and simplicity.  In his wanderings around Assisi, he enjoyed visiting a broken down church, St Damiano.  According to legend, one day the crucifix spoke to him, "Francis, rebuild my church."  Meant to be understood literally and figuratively.  Rebuild St Damiano AND rebuild the Church, which had fallen into corruption.

The Basilica is massive and can be seen from quite a distance because of its whiteness!  The upper and lower basilicas are filled with work by masters, Giotto being one of them.  NO photos inside though.  Trust me.... they're BEAUTY!

Here are some other rules:  Silence! no cell phones!  no dogs!  and don't even TRY to get in half naked!
Fabulous!!!