SPOLETO SEGRETA E SOTTERRANEA

program

friday 7 July at 10.30

_Alternative pathway with visit to the "Cyclopean" and Medieval walls _

meeting at Via del Trivio (Posterna alternative mobility entrance)

An interweaving of ancient and modern. Alternative Mobility, a pedestrian subway serving the historic center completed in 2016, becomes the preferred means of discovering the remains of Spoleto's ancient city walls: the Umbrian-Roman and the wider 13th-14th century walls. The oldest walls, called Cyclopean walls, consist of from layers of limestone blocks of different shapes.

The lower layer consists of from large polygonal boulders, dating from the 4th - 3rd centuries to.C. The course of the walls, about 2 km, strictly followed the conformation of the slope lines of the Sant'Elia hill (453 a.s.l.) on the top of which centuries later the Albornoz Fortress would be erected. In medieval times, as recorded in the Statutes of Spoleto of 1296, it was decreed to incorporate within new walls the urban settlements that had in the meantime grown to edge of the ancient city, so much from doubling its extension.

to follow

Tasting of trebbiano spoletino doc wine, extra virgin olive oil and other products to Km 0

Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 10:30 a.m.

Franciscan itinerary: from St. Francis' letter to Brother Leo to the first Franciscan settlements in the city

meeting in Freedom Square

The historical link between St. Francis and Spoleto is well known: "Nihil jucundius vidi valle mea spoletana" is the phrase attributed to the saint, who would thus have extolled the beauty of the landscape surrounding the city, which for Francis was one of the most joyful representations of creation and God. It was precisely to Spoleto that his so-called "first conversion" took place, when, around 1204, he set out from Assisi for Lecce in order to move, together with other Christian knights, to Jerusalem. His visit to Monteluco, already the ancient site, since the fifth century, of a large hermit community, is well known. And the foundation, in 1218, at the top of the mountain and at the limits of the ancient "sacred forest," of a primitive Franciscan cenacle. The itinerary departs from Piazza della Libertà, toward the area where the church of Sant'Apollinare was located, the first Franciscan settlement to Spoleto. Then to the Cathedral to see the autograph letter of St. Francis, one of only two manuscripts of the Saint in existence in the world. We then reach Piazza Campello and from here Colle Sant'Elia to admire the remains of the ancient Franciscan church of Sant'Elia, where Blessed Simone from Collazzone, a Franciscan friar and follower of Francis, died in 1250. Finally, the complex of the former convent and church of St. Simon the Apostle, actually erected in honor of Blessed Simon, will be visited.

to follow

Tasting of trebbiano spoletino doc wine, extra virgin olive oil and other products to Km 0

friday July 14, 2017 at 10:30 a.m.

Filippo Lippi, Pinturicchio and Jacopo Siculo in Spoleto Cathedral.

appointment in Piazza Duomo

Works by extraordinary artists of the Italian Renaissance are preserved in Spoleto Cathedral (12th-13th centuries, restored inside in the 17th century). The apse is covered by the splendid frescoes by Filippo Lippi and helpers, depicting Stories of the Virgin (1467-1469): this is the last opera of the Florentine artist, who to Spoleto died precisely in 1469. In the two chapels of Bishops Costantino and Francesco Eroli, located on the right aisle, are preserved instead a fresco with Madonna and Saints (1497) by Bernardino di Betto, known as Pinturicchio, and other frescoes executed from Jacopo Siculo (c. 1530).

to follow

Tasting of trebbiano spoletino doc wine, extra virgin olive oil and other products to Km 0