ASSISI

The municipality of Assisi counts 25.000 inhabitant, 6.000 are inside the walls.It is a medieval city, kept intact for centuries and still sheltered by an egregious surrounding wall, built on the mount Subasio’s western spur (m.424), with a longitudinal inclination (from south-west to north-east), and overlapping terraces: in the middle, lonely and dominant,la Rocca. A proper geographical position, a mild and dry weather, make the stay pleasant in every season of the year. Architects, masons and gouges gave to Assisi a peerless face. The time seems still because of its beauty. The moyen-age predominates. The viability is the one of a little medieval town placed on a mountain slope. The wider streets follow the mount longitudinal ways, rising until the Piazza del Comune. Among them there are several narrow streets, arches, staircases. To the streets’s sides there are the medieval cots, built with Mount Subasio’s stone, it get live after the rain, red with the warm light of the sunset, pale with the moon beam or with the snow flakes. Even The acute bowed houses doors, are often of stone. Along side of a big door, with a low doorstep, there is another walled-up door, narrower and with an higher threshold. This is the “deads door”, opened to let the departe enter and immediately closed. There are no symmetrical structures, also because the houses have been changed many times during the ages: the many walled-in doors and windows are an evidence of it . The roofs made of tile and terra-cotta run out the street supported by wood consol tables. As a guarantee of safety, the city centre is placed inside the urban walls. The walls went through many vicissitudes and keep the secrets of the past history. Their perimeter measures about five kilometres. The purpose of the strait and perpendicular alleys was to make people to reach the walls in event of a sudden attack. The eight city walls (San Giacomo, Perlici, Moiano, San Francesco, Nuova, San Pietro, Cappuccini and Sementone) complete the urbanistic area, giving to the visitors the sensation they are living in the past.