What amazes me most about Italy is that I travel a few kilometers and everything changes. A different pasta, a dialect incomprehensible from the last town’s. Different artists. There you have the Romanesque, here the Baroque, there the Venetian Gothic. Pastries, wine, the color of the stone, even the most popular tint of women’s hair, the preferred dog. We do it our way, each town maintains.
Bevagna lies only seven kilometers from Montefalco. Both are walled, both have Roman roots, and both are unspoiled and intact. And yet: They are light-years apart.
PIAZZA FILIPPO SILVESTRI, Bevagna’s main piazza, has an off-center fountain and the buildings zigzag, cutting each other off at odd angles, giving Bevagna’s centro a disorienting sense of surprise. I’m not lulled by beauty but fascinated by the dynamics. The intimate nineteenth-century Torti opera house, the severe church of San Domenico, a lone column standing next to an outdoor café where people are enjoying the first day of November sun, a surreal flight of steep stairs, an arcade—a harmony of disharmonies.
Two facing Romanesque churches, San Silvestro (1195) and San Michele Arcangelo (built shortly after and by Binello, the same architect), have raised altars that must be approached by many steps. From this exalted height, the priest looks way down onto his congregation. In San Silvestro, the square plan seems overtaken by two rows of robust columns out of proportion to the space. “This looks like an Egyptian tomb,” Ed says. Rough gray brick walls are stripped of ornament.
“Gloomy,” I agree. “But monumental.” Unless I miss something in the dimness, there’s only one painting—a damaged fresco of a saint, who must be Silvestro, holding a book and a long iron object that might be a key, as Ed guesses, or what it resembles more, handcuffs.
SAN MICHELE, NOT perfect with an odd oversize round window (was a rose window added later and not finished?) and cut-off top (was a matching campanile lost?), has a marvelous entrance. The wooden doors are topped with carved bull heads, foliage dangling from their horns—such a primitive welcome. In the tympanum above, Michael slays the dragon. Best of all, on either side of the door, carved into stone, are crude, long-legged birds. Not artistic, but here’s the hand of the maker. The symbolism is lost on me—it’s not the pelican often associated with the Virgin, but they meant something.
Inside, it’s light and airy, the rhythmic arches supported by a double row of stone columns of a pale buttercream color. There’s Catherine, with the wheel on which she will be tortured standing beside her for the portrait, and a fresco fragment of the heads of Mary and Jesus. The six pots of flowers on the altar stairs are arranged haphazardly—everything is wonderfully off-kilter!
WE’RE BROWSING ALONG the main street, Corso Matteotti, reading menus of restaurants, popping into the cashmere outlet, when Pasticceria Panetteria Polticchia’s window entices us. Mid-morning, time for a little something. We buy a few each of sagrantino-flavored cookies, fig pastries, pastarelle di San Nicolò (clove, cinnamon, nutmeg spice biscotti), and roccette alle noci (hazelnut biscotti). Then there’s pancaciato and some marron glacé for our neighbor who loves them. Ed may eat the whole loaf of pancaciato before we get to the car. The walnut and pecorino bread has slightly crunchy crust and a texture like cake. (It makes perfect toast.) I’ve heard of rocciata, decorated with streaks of red sugar and piled on a plate. Typically baked around All Saints’ and All Souls’ days, rocciata is one of the most historic Umbrian pastries. Often you see it formed into the shape of a snake. The dessert is a simple olive oil pastry rolled around a filling of dried figs, apples, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, lemon peel, and a moistening of wine. The recipe jumps straight out of a medieval cookbook. We are having people over for coffee tomorrow morning; all these treats will be fun to serve.
QUITE A BIT of the Roman endures. A curve of houses follows the ancient theater. There’s a bit of a temple. But nothing sings out from that pass like the mosaics that line the frigidarium in the Terme di Mevania, the public thermal baths. Black-and-white sea creatures—giant lobsters, octopuses, dolphins—must have appeared to swim as the waters of the second century moved over them.
BEVAGNA INVITES STROLLING. We climb up to the medieval neighborhood and come upon the cartiera, the place where rags become paper. The workshop is only twenty years old but it expertly employs the oldest methods, re-creating the once-upon-a-time of torn linen and cotton, mauling, slurry and vats, dank air, and emerging pristine pieces of thick white paper. We meet Francesco Proietti, the papermaker who works with these medieval techniques. He runs through the process for us. Open all year, the cartiera is also a main part of Mercato delle Gaite, the June festival where old crafts such as candle-making and silk weaving are demonstrated, jousts are fought among the four gaite (sections of town), medieval music and food are in abundance, and, judging from the photographs, the entire town parades about in period dress.
BEFORE WE LEAVE we stop into the Baroque Chiesa di San Francesco, which posseses the very rock the saint stood on when he preached to the birds outside Bevagna. We sit down and read the sermon. They should be grateful that they could fly, he told them. After his gentle words, the birds rose into a murmuration in the sky and formed a cross, before breaking into north, south, east, and west flocks and flying away.