The now secularized convent and its triple church have all the characteristics of a mediæval fortress when viewed from afar.
The town itself owes most, if not all, of its fame to its beloved San Francesco. His birthplace has disappeared and its site occupied by the Chiesa Nuova, but a part of it has been built into the church, making it another shrine of the holy man who did so much good to his fellows during his life, and to his native town in these late days by bringing tens, nay, even hundreds, of thousands of tourists thither to spend their money on local guides, cabmen and inn-keepers. A sordid point of view some may think. But is it? What would Assisi be without the tourists? Still wooing the Lady Poverty, there’s no doubt about that. What would Venice be without the tourists? Not what it is to-day. No indeed. It is dead and dull enough even now at certain seasons. It would become so for all time without the strangers.
Perugia is the big town of Umbria. To-day it boasts of twenty odd thousand souls, but in the days when it struggled against papal control it was even more populous. Its history is one long drawn out tale of revolt and submission in turn, from the days when it first submitted to the Romans in 310 B. C. until it threw its fate in with that of the other states of Victor Emmanuel in 1860.
If ever a city was blood-baptized that honour is Perugia’s. It has not a crooked old street nor gate nor fountain nor piazza or palazzo but what is gory with bloody memories.
Perugia was a dominant mediæval influence all through the neighbourhood and levied tribute on all her vassal cities and towns. Foligno’s walls and ramparts had fallen and the people of Perugia came and carted off the stone for their own needs; Arezzo stripped her churches and palaces to provide the marbles for Perugia’s cathedral.