Perugia travel guide

Top 10 sights in Perugia

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1. 

   1© Hagai Agmon-Snir حچاي اچمون-سنير חגי אגמון-שניר · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi

   A basilica begun in 1228, two years after Francis died, and built as two churches one above the other on the hillside. Giotto's cycle of the saint's life is in the upper church; the 1997 earthquake brought down part of the vault and killed four people, and the frescoes were pieced back from fragments.

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2. 

   2© Alekjds · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Portiuncula

   The small stone chapel Francis repaired with his own hands and where he founded his order in 1209, and where he died in 1226. It now stands, complete and tiny, inside an enormous basilica built over it in the sixteenth century.

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   Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli

   A basilica built between 1569 and 1679 on the plain below Assisi specifically to enclose the Portiuncula chapel, so that the object of pilgrimage sits under the dome like a reliquary. The rose garden beside it is said to have lost its thorns when Francis threw himself into it.

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   4© Hagai Agmon-Snir حچاي اچمون-سنير חגי אגמון-שניר · CC BY-SA 4.0

   San Damiano

   A twelfth-century church outside the walls where, in 1206, Francis heard the painted crucifix tell him to repair the church. Clare and her nuns lived in the convent behind it for forty years, and it is the least altered of the Franciscan sites.

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5. 

   5© Tetraktys · CC BY 3.0

   Perugia Cathedral

   Cathedral of Perugia, begun in 1345 and never faced in marble; one flank remains bare brick. It holds a ring venerated as the Virgin's wedding band, taken from Chiusi in 1473.

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   Basilica di Santa Chiara

   The Gothic basilica raised over the tomb of St Clare, who founded the Order of Poor Ladies with St Francis. Built between 1257 and 1265 in bands of pink and white Subasio stone, it also keeps the San Damiano crucifix from the chapel where Francis heard his calling.

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   Assisi Cathedral

   The cathedral of Assisi, the third church on the site of the tomb of the third-century bishop Rufinus, rebuilt in Umbrian Romanesque in the twelfth century. Both Francis and Clare were baptised at the font, which is still in the nave.

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8. 

   8© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palazzo dei Priori

   The communal palace of Perugia, begun in the 1290s and one of the finest public buildings of the Italian communes. It holds the Umbrian national gallery and the Collegio del Cambio, the money-changers' hall, frescoed by Perugino with a young Raphael probably helping.

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   Temple of Minerva

   A Roman temple front of the first century BC standing complete on the main square of Assisi, with six Corinthian columns, converted into a church in the sixteenth century. Goethe came to Assisi to see this and left without visiting the basilica at all.

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10. 

    10© Sailko · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Cippus Perusinus

    A stone boundary marker found in 1822 carrying forty-six lines and about a hundred and thirty words of Etruscan — one of the longest texts in that language. It records a legal agreement between two families over land and water rights, which is how much of Etruscan is understood at all.

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1. 

   1© Geobia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Santa Maria Maggiore

   A church in Assisi built over a Roman house, and the place where Francis stripped off his clothes in front of the bishop and his father and renounced his inheritance. It is now called the sanctuary of the Spoliation for that reason.

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   Perusia

   The Etruscan city that preceded Perugia, one of the twelve of the Etruscan league. Its enormous city gate of the third century BC still stands, with Augustus's name cut into it — he besieged the city in 40 BC and burned it, then rebuilt it under his own name.

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   3© Hagai Agmon-Snir حچاي اچمون-سنير חגי אגמון-שניר · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Rocca Maggiore

   A castle above Assisi, rebuilt from 1367 by a cardinal to hold the town for the papacy, which had lost it repeatedly. Frederick II spent part of his childhood in the earlier fortress on the site, and the keep and the long wall to the tower can be walked.

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4. 

   4© Superchilum · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Rocca Paolina

   A fortress built between 1540 and 1543 on the orders of Paul III after Perugia rebelled over a salt tax, deliberately raised on top of a whole quarter of the city — over a hundred tower houses were buried inside its base. Perugians demolished it in 1860; the streets underneath survive and escalators now run through them.

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5. 

   5© Sailko · CC BY 3.0

   church of saint Angelo in Perugia

   An early Christian round church at Perugia in Umbria in Italy. It dates from the fifth or sixth century, reuses the Corinthian columns of an earlier pagan temple, and is dedicated to the Archangel Michael.

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   6© Stifone · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sacro Convento

   Friary in Assisi built from 1228 on the slope below the basilica, resting on fifty-three arches. It holds the library and the relics given to Francis, including his tunic.

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   7© Georges Jansoone (JoJan) · CC BY 3.0

   National Gallery of Umbria

   The national gallery of Umbria, on the upper floors of the communal palace, with forty rooms of Umbrian painting from the thirteenth century onward — Perugino above all, along with Piero della Francesca and Fra Angelico panels made for churches in this city.

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   San Pietro

   Abbey church in Perugia founded in 966, with eighteen Roman columns down the nave. Its choir stalls of 1535 are among the finest wood inlay in Italy.

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9. 

   9© Georges Jansoone JoJan · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Chiesa Nuova

   A church at Assisi in Italy. It was built in 1615 on the site of the house of Pietro di Bernardone, where Saint Francis is said to have been born, and is called the new church because it was the last raised in Assisi at that time.

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10. 

    10© Parsifall · CC BY 4.0

    Collegio del Cambio

    The former hall of the money-changers' guild inside the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia in Italy. It was built between 1452 and 1457 and holds masterpieces including Perugino's frescoes, on which the young Raphael is thought to have worked.

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