I booked a group tour to Assisi since it seemed the most convenient and reasonably priced way to get to the church of San Francesco to look at the frescoes, perhaps not by Giotto, but definitely in his style. The tour also included Orvieto.

I was picked up at 7:50 am. The drive started by going to Orvieto which is about 1 hour and 15 minutes heading towards Rome. Orvieto is in Umbria. The main attraction is the Cathedral which was built in the late Medieval period to house a miraculous host or communion wafer.

The facade is highly decorated Gothic with mosaics in very good shape.

Inside is more austere.

The big art history draw is the Chapel San Brizio with some decorations by Fra Angelico started in the mid-1400s but mainly by Luca Signorelli who worked on the chapel from 1499 to 1504.

His Last Judgment is considered his masterpiece and Vasari claimed it was Michelangelo’s favourite Last Judgment.

From there we went to Assisi which is larger than I thought. There’s a lower city and the upper part of city on the hill surrounding the Basilica.

The main attractions in Assisi are related to Saint Francis of Assisi and there are a lot of people on pilgrimage.

The lower city includes St Francis’ original church, a tiny, humble structure, which tradition says St Francis built with his own hands.

It is now located inside a huge Baroque church decorated in the “more is not enough” style which seems to have missed the point of Saint Francis’ message about eschewing worldly goods and helping the poor. No photos allowed inside and the Baroque monster was not worth a photo, I think.

From the upper level of the city, there are some great views.

Some ancient Roman structures still exist along side medieval ones.

The Basilica of St Francis was begun in 1228, when Francis was canonized (made a saint), just two years after he died. It has both an upper and lower level which were finished relatively quickly before the end of the 13th century, although the convent and other buildings were added later.

There are a lot of stairs both inside the basilica and the area outside.

One of the drawbacks of going on a group tour is that there may be others who want to see things that I don’t. In this case, it was a small group with only two others, a couple from Argentina. Unfortunately, they were practising Catholics who wanted to see tombs and relics. They also wanted to see the small church hosting the body of a teenage boy who was made a saint, last week?, last month? All I really remember is that it was unbearably hot in there and the body, which looked unreal, creeped me out.

I just wanted to see the frescoes by Giotto (possibly) and two Sienese artists, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini. I took some photos before I found out that photos weren’t allowed and in the area with the most famous Giotto-esque frescoes, there were security people stopping any photo taking. Here’s what I managed to snap.

Before we left, the Argentinian couple had one of the church friars bless us and even bless a bottle of water so they could take it home to their daughter. I was not unhappy to leave at that point.

A substantial lunch along with a glass of Umbrian wine, Montefalco Sagrantino, made for a sleepy drive back to Florence which was over 2 hours because of rush hour when we hit Florence.

As a pick me up, another gelato, this time from Edoardo, which has organic gelato, but while good, is not on the top of the list. The nocciola was a bit too sweet; the fondente had a very dark almost bitter flavour. The gelateria has a great location, across from the Duomo.