Streets and Saints

Assisi is a white stone city perched precariously on a hillside. The only thing keeping it from sliding down is the wall around it, which holds all the buildings and church steeples tightly together, like the rubber bands you get around bunches of asparagus at the grocery store. The city looks simple on a map: it is long and skinny, neatly outlined by the wall, and has strangely few streets. Two-dimensional maps are highly deceiving, though, and the area has far more city in it than it appears. At the same time, the city itself seems to defy basic laws of space, so that without making more than one turn, you can often end up back where you started. You can climb until you are out of breath, and then with barely a downward slope find yourself back on a lower level, or you’ll end up on a bridge over the road you just walked on, when you could’ve sworn you hadn’t taken a single ascending step.  I’m sure there’s at least one Escher’s stairway that you can climb (or descend) forever without actually changing altitude.  In the early mornings, the city appears to float in it’s own cloud, the valley below completely covered in fog that rises slowly through the streets as the sun begins warming everything up. There are some shadowy alleys that stay dark and misty all day, because they tunnel under houses or through the castle walls. 

Our first visit once we arrived was to the Basilica of St. Francis: it is a huge stately church made of white stone, sitting grandly at the end of the city where all the roads meet. The inside is no less grand. Every section of ceiling, every apse, every pillar is painted in bright frescos by one or another famous artist of the time. All this rich decoration for a saint who gave up his wealth and worldly possessions to aid the poor. That is only the main cathedral, though, and below it is a smaller church much more suiting to the saint’s character. In the lower church it is hushed and dark, and lines of pilgrims file solemnly into the basement (two levels under the grand cathedral now) to St. Francis’ tomb. There you can almost feel the weight of the whole Basilica on top of you- the ceilings are low, the lights dim and torch-like, and nuns and tourists alike pray on their knees in front of the stone crypt, eyes closed, lips moving silently. One cannot help but feel the awe and reverence of the place. People have left photos and notes in the niches of the rough stone. There are pictures of children, of old women, and many soldiers. Notes are folded neatly, some with rosaries wrapped around them. A silver necklace with a wooden cross on it hangs from a crack between stones. Even after we leave, it is hard to shake off that feeling of so many silent prayers.