Properzio is reputedly
the finest enoteca in Umbria,
and possibly Italy. The
interior wraps ancient
architectural origins with chic
modern lines and surfaces.
Everything that the enoteca of
your dreams would have, is here:
marble floor, prosciutto slicer,
coffee machine, cheeses beyond
inventory, hams galore, that
wonderful aroma of Italian food
shops and some 2,200 wines
alongside typical Umbrian
products such as olive oil,
honey, marmalades, sauces,
mushrooms and truffles.
The owner, Roberto Angelini,
served us antipasti of
prosciutto, hams, salami and six
types of pecorino. He put a pot
of acacia honey on the table and
left with the remark: "The honey
only goes with the first four
pecorinos." He then proceeded to
give us a wine-tasting of rare
and exotic bottles, each one
served with a brief discourse.
**follows complete article
Umbria: Italy's
spiritual heart
Packed with
picturesque hill-top towns, resplendent with
religious treasures and offering a feast of
irresistible edibles, Umbria is Italy's
spiritual heart. Rory Ross laps it up
For many
years, Italians have hailed Umbria
as Tuscany's prettier sister, a
dramatic, mountainous country
towered over by the Apennines to the
east. Being the only landlocked
county on the Italian boot and
lacking the concentration and range
of cultural treasures of Tuscany and
Rome, Umbria has successfully
avoided the worst of the
beach-seeking, culture-hungry
coachloads. There are no big cities,
and the people are kind, honest and
Mafia-free dwellers in towns and
villages that cling to mountainside
niches, or perch on top of hills
girdled by ancient fortifications.
Through it all meanders the Tiber,
in whose green valley most of the
historical life of Umbria has
unfurled.
The
architectural vernacular is
typically rustic. Traditional
farmhouses have massive hearths and
thick walls built on quiet,
tree-lined slopes, perfect for
taking in the magnificent panoramas
of the surrounding countryside which
makes instant painters of even the
most purblind among us. It comes as
no surprise to learn that this is
where the first stirrings of the
Renaissance took place. Umbria
inspired the likes of Giotto,
Rafaello, Michelangelo, Perugino,
Pinturicchio, Fra Angellico, Piero
della Francesca and Lucca Signorelli,
who all lived and worked in this
valley. They wandered about, with a
mule and a box of paints, hoping to
find a virgin wall or ceiling to
immortalise, followed by a meal, a
bed and a patron, or even a
patroness. Their art is everywhere,
not just in the large cities - or,
in Giotto's case, gracing the walls
of St Francis's basilica, in Assisi
- but strewn among tiny churches,
convents and palazzi.
Umbria was also the seat of the
12th-century renaissance of
Christianity, and has produced more
saints, hermits and religious
leaders than any other part of
Italy. Pre-eminent among them is St
Francis, born rich at a time of
chronic clerical corruption. His
mother was French, his father, a
landowner and merchant who operated
out of Foligno. At first, Francis,
born Giovanni, was a tearaway, but
he forsook his wealth and, defying
parental disapproval, spent his life
converting people to the view that
money wasn't everything. He found an
unexpected ally in the reforming
Pope Innocent III, who, instead of
destroying him, blessed the Order of
St Francis. Today, St Francis is the
symbol of Assisi, which Italians
regard as the spiritual centre of
Italy.
One
place St Francis visited at least
twice during his travels was the
Celestine Abbey, which lies just to
the north of Assisi on a spur
overlooking the Tiber. Building
began in 1064. Thirty-six years and
three architects later, the Abbey of
San Paolo di Valdiponte, as it was
then called, was completed. In 1367,
Sir John Hawkwood, the mercenary
whom Conan Doyle characterised in
The White Company, ransacked the
place on behalf of the Florentines.
While the abbey survived Hawkwood as
well as the incessant local warfare
that raged hereabouts from the 13th
to the 15th centuries, it was an act
of God in the form of an earthquake
that proved Celestine's undoing in
1593. Thereafter, it effectively
became a quarry for other buildings.
After a brief revival as a
Cistercian monastery in the late
18th century, Celestine lay more or
less ignored until, in 1969, another
Englishman, Guy Norton, bought it.
He set about planting the grounds
and transforming them into a
remarkable English-style garden.
You
never know what you might find in a
ruined Umbrian monastery. During
Norton's custodianship, he
discovered many curious things about
Celestine, some of which evoke the
more breathless passages of a Dan
Brown bestseller. Besides the odd
human skeleton, he unearthed behind
a false wall a painting of the
Madonna with child. The work was
attributed to Marino d'Elemosina and
dated 1313. It now hangs in the
National Gallery of Umbria, in
Perugia. Who knows what else might
be uncovered at Celestine? Scratch
the surface of Umbria, and you find
all sorts of hidden treasures.
Four
years ago, Norton sold Celestine to
another Englishman, Graham Smith,
48, self-made creator of software
company LiveNote. Smith, his
Bolivian wife, Marcela, and his
sister Helen and her husband,
Fabrizio, have set about continuing
Norton's work at Celestine, which
you can visit by appointment. As
soon as I arrived, one glorious
April morning, I realised how wise
St Francis was to come here. It
feels very close to heaven.
"In
July, Wellington College is going to
put on a production of Julian
Mitchell's play Francis, about St
Francis, in the ruins of the abbey,"
said Smith. "The head boy plays St
Francis. The mayor of Perugia and
the British ambassador are coming
too. I'm hoping to invite the Pope.
Well, why not?"
The
worst thing you can do in a garden
is see it all in one eyeful, and the
gardens at Celestine know a trick or
two. Everywhere the eye comes to
rest, there is something to beguile.
And every time you look up, another
glade, grotto or vista comes into
view, planted with specimens that
are rare, spectacular and exotic. In
the middle of the Japanese garden
are several enormous rocks worn and
smoothed into unusual shapes, as if
they were contemporary sculpture.
"Er, not quite," laughs Smith. "They
are actually rocks nicked from the
Tiber. Mr Norton took a fancy to
them."
Umbria is home to the black truffle.
Ninety per cent of all black
truffles in Italy come from Umbria.
Celestine has its own truffle wood.
"We have a chap who has a dog," says
Smith. "When the dog starts going
mad, he stops and digs out the
truffle. They usually grow two or
three inches under ground. You can
smell truffle in the air."
If
Umbria was the cradle of the
12th-century religious renaissance
and of the later artistic
Renaissance, it has more recently
been at the forefront of another
radical movement: Slow Food. The
Umbrian table is legendary. Local
traditions are handed down from
mother to daughter at home. The
stars of the Umbrian table are
truffles and mushrooms, backed up by
a noisy rustic chorus line of beef,
pork and veal, eaten in the familiar
sequence of antipasti, pasta, main
course and then a light dessert and
sometimes cheese.
To
experience the apotheosis of Umbrian
cuisine, I recommend Locanda Il
Capitano in the immaculate hilltop
town of Montone, where Giancarlo
Polito and his delightful wife,
Carmen, own a creamily lit
restaurant with food as beautifully
dressed as the women. The food and
wines here offer everything you need
to know about Umbrian gastronomy
under one roof.
Picture-perfect, medieval, hilltop
towns are an Umbrian speciality,
most famously Perugia, Assisi,
Gubbio, Bevagna, Spello and Todi.
The following morning, Smith and I
set off in his Aston Martin to
explore some of them. One of the
first things you notice about the
Umbrian countryside is that, while
almost all the buildings seem to
date from the 12th and 13th
centuries, little seems to have been
built since. This makes any journey
feel a * * bit like a trip back in
time, but with added motor cars.
"Umbria is traditionally the heart
of communist Italy," said Smith,
plying a thoughtful steering wheel
as we passed Assisi on our left,
with its vast basilica dedicated to
St Francis.
