Touring Umbria: Assisi

Probably the fewest people you will ever see at the upper church of the Basilica of Saint Francis

At the beginning of our article on Mantua a couple of years ago we wrote that we had never met any Italians who had been there, hence the title of that article 'Mantua, Unfairly Unloved' because it's actually a fascinating place to visit and deserves more love from Italians.

This is the classic view of Assisi that we see every year as we drive past the town on the way from Lucca to Abruzzo and back

Conversely, after eleven years living in Italy I've yet to meet an Italian who has not been to Assisi. It's a place of pilgrimage, even for the least religious Italians I know, and everyone in this country feels the need to come here at least once in their life. Foreigners perhaps feel the same need to visit Venice at least once, but for many Italians Assisi is more important.

Piazza del Comune is not nearly as dramatic as a central piazza usually is in an Italian city of this size

All of this explains why you should expect crowds and lots of tour buses when you come here but the town is big and bold enough to absorb vast quantities of people and still be at its best. If you can avoid the high season, as we always do, then at least the crowds will be mostly Italian and I never complain about sharing a beautiful town with masses of Italians because they always know how to behave and have an innate reverence and appreciation for their unique heritage that many tourists seem to lack. The other thing to understand about Assisi is that it's a walking town and you will need to cover a lot of ground, and that includes hills, if you want to see the town properly.

The Roman Temple of Minerva in Piazza del Comune

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on old Italian churches, especially in a place as rich in religious history as Assisi, so before you come here I suggest you find a local Italian guide for a couple of hours or book a group tour. Elena and I however are as qualified as anyone to talk about wine, olive oil and food and with regard to the latter we are always looking for somewhere quick to eat at lunchtime so that we don't lose a couple of hours in the typical Italian restaurant with slow waiter service.

Fabrizio and Saverio in their element doing what they do best, making customers happy, while Elena peruses the wine selection

Quick for us doesn't have to mean sacrificing quality and in Assisi we found the perfect spot in Piazza del Comune at La Bottega dei Sapori. As soon as you walk through the door you can tell that you're in the right place.

An Aladdin's cave of interesting food and drink

There's a sandwich counter stocked with all the usual delicacies found in an Italian salumeria and on every wall there are shelves piled high with all manner of artisanal food products, olive oils and wines.

It's always a pleasure for us to see small boutiques like La Bottega dei Sapori carry bottles from wineries we've visited and written about, and here there was a full selection of their fellow Umbrian Nicola Chiucchiurlotto's Madrevite wines.

If you look closely at the short blackboard menu in the above photo, the final item, No.5, is the sandwich to order here.

It is described simply as 'Scelta della Bottega.....fidati' , so order it by saying 'prendo il numero cinque, mi fido di voi' and you'll get a smile, a great sandwich and a little conversation from either Fabrizio or Saverio as they prepare it for you. Then if you ask them nicely they'll find you a couple of chairs and sit you down in a far corner of the store amongst all the wine bottles so you don't have to go out in the street to eat.

This is a delicatessen not a restaurant but they are both very friendly and obliging people and were happy to accommodate us while we enjoyed their delicious sandwiches. Fabrizio and Saverio are father and son with the latter now representing the fourth generation of the family to run the shop.

Pilgrims who go to Assisi always visit the small chapel (above photos) in the narrow alleyway that runs down from Piazza del Comune. The inscription above the archway attests to this small place as the birthplace of Saint Francis, when it was a stable in the 12th century, but Thomas of Celano, who wrote The Life of Saint Francis in 1228-29 that is considered to be the first official biography of the saint, makes no mention of the time or place of the birth of Francis.

This location therefore owes more to the legend that began a century later than indisputable historical fact. Nevertheless it is certain that he was born in Assisi sometime around 1181.

Historically Assisi never really had a Jewish community but after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, a few brave citizens of this town together with the most celebrated professional Italian cyclist of the pre-war years conceived a plan that was instrumental in saving hundreds of Italian Jews from the holocaust.

Father Rufino Niccacci of the Franciscan monastery of San Damiano in Assisi was given the task by his Bishop of obtaining counterfeit identity documents to save the lives of Italian Jews being hunted by the Nazis and their Italian fascist collaborators.

Niccacci found Luigi Brizi, an elderly man with a small print shop in an alleyway in Assisi, who, together with his son Trento, soon became expert forgers though both of them risked summary execution if discovered.

Niccacci went to Florence in November 1943 to see Cardinal Della Costa and while there he witnessed first hand Jews being rounded up and machine-gunned against a wall by German soldiers. Della Costa was also in need of documents for the Jews that he was trying to protect in Florence but the expert forger was in Assisi and German checkpoints were everywhere in between. Anyone traveling at this time outside their home town was subject to a careful search as by this point the Germans didn't trust any Italians.

Enter Gino Bartali, winner of the Tour de France in 1938, the Giro d'Italia in 1936 and 1937 and probably the most famous and revered Italian athlete of the pre-war period. Dalla Costa was Bartali's spiritual mentor and also the priest who had officiated at his wedding and baptized his son.

Furthermore Bartali had Jewish friends in Florence and was fully aware of the situation so he volunteered to cycle the 110 miles to Assisi and return with the forged documents hidden in the hollow steel tubes of his bicycle frame. Over the winter of 1943 and into the spring of 1944 Bartali made this trip dozens of times, explaining away his journeys, even to his wife, as simple training rides.

An innocent and well-meaning thank you note from a Cardinal in Rome resulted in Bartali's arrest and imprisonment not long before the liberation of Florence in August 1944, but he talked his way out of a difficult situation. A true story of Assisi with a happy ending for all involved.