Assisi, Hill Town in Umbria, Italy

:01 begin
1:04 map route
1:56 start walking tour
5:01 Piazza del Comune
8:34 Chiesa Nuova and back lanes
9:49 San Rufino
12:08 Rocca fortress
16:15 walking downhill
17:25 cat lady
18:50 via San Francesco
20:43 Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi
23:05 Saint Francis

The hill town of Assisi in Umbria is one of Italy's best-preserved medieval villages. The ancient buildings are constructed from a local stone that has a slightly pink color enhancing the visual beauty of this special place with a lovely network of pedestrian lanes to explore, some of them so steep they are staircases rather than streets.
The main reason that most people visit the town is that it was the home of Saint Francis, one of the Catholic Church's most important saints, who is buried here under the great basilica that was constructed two years after his death in the early 13th century.
Later in the program will visit the Basilica of St. Francis to enjoy its Gothic magnificence and the beauty of these early Renaissance frescoes all around us.
But we will show you that is Assisi has much more to offer the traveler because it is one of the most beautiful and best-preserved of all of the Italian hill towns.
Assisi is in central Italy, a 30-minute drive from Perugia and two hours from Rome or Florence. You can also get there by train or bus.
That impressive Porta San Pietro gateway is part of the original medieval wall that went all the way around the town protecting it from attack, and the wall is still pretty much all there.
You'll quickly realize the streets are a little steeper than they look on the map.
When you come to Assisi, be prepared to climb some hills and go up the staircases, and up the paths, it's steep.
Typical of many Umbrian towns, it was built on a hill, partly to protect themselves from attackers, with origins of the town that go back thousands of years.
Some of the lanes in town are quiet residential areas with no shops but don't worry, there are plenty of streets that are filled with stores ready to sell you fascinating items, such as along busy via Portica, one of the main streets in town that will soon take us to the Piazza del Comune, the thriving heartbeat of the city.
This stretch of via Portica, just west of the piazza, has one of the biggest concentrations of places to eat. The self-service restaurant is one of those typical eateries that you're going to find all over Italy. You'll be out of there in 1/2 hour, enjoying a pretty good meal.
This brings us to the main Piazza Comune of Assisi – it's at the crossroads of town, you'll probably come back here several times in your visit.
The tower is 47 meters high. It's called Torre Del Popolo, the people's tower, connected to Palazzo Del Popolo/
The most fascinating building on the piazza is the ancient Roman temple of Minerva. Its façade is intact and very well preserved with six Corinthian columns and a triangular pediment.
The little streets around the piazza are an ideal place to just take a wanderer, kind of an aimless stroll. You can walk in these lanes just south of the piazza along Via Bernardo da Quintavalle. Like all of town, it's a very old neighborhood with stone buildings, mostly residential, and this lane is quite level like some of the others in this central area by the piazza.
Via San Ruffino is one of the most delightful streets in town, perhaps because it connects the main piazza with the Cathedral, and all along the way, it's got shops and restaurants, and beautiful old buildings.
Notice the perfect paving of the street. It was laid down with brick and stone in the most pleasant way, and it's so smooth and efficiently built that you will never trip or slip while walking on these beautiful lanes.
It's only 200 meters from the piazza to the top of via San Ruffino where you come upon the Cathedral of San Ruffino, one of the most popular attractions in town.
From the piazza in front of the church we get the best view of the fortress up on the hill the Roca Maggiore. You'll notice there is a slight difference in altitude from the piazza up to the fortress, and there's no elevator, no escalator. We'll need a little muscle power.
Walking around inside and exploring this Rocca Maggiore is just as fascinating as the views that you get looking out from it.
We've come down from the Rocca, heading now to the great Basilica of St. Francis, entering into Via San Francesco, the wonderful shopping street that will take us all the way to the Basilica of that great saint.
The Basilica of San Francesco ranks second only to St. Peter's in Rome as a point of Catholic pilgrimage.
Construction was started immediately after St. Francis's death in 1228 and was completed in 1253, with two churches in the same place. 28 frescoes by Giotto cover the walls of the upper church, depicting scenes in the life of St. Francis, the man who single-handedly revolutionized the Catholic Church through the return to values of peace and love.
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