The Canonica.
One great building in the square remains to be described, namely, the Canonica, or, as Bonazzi calls it, the “Vatican of Perugia.” Although a mere wreck of its former splendid self, this building is still one of the finest relics of the mediæval times that the city boasts of. It stands to the left of the Duomo—a great mass of bricks, with huge cavernous rooms inside, and walls some six to eight feet thick in places. The cloister is comparatively modern, but the beautiful open-air staircase which leads from it down into the Piazza Morlacchi is probably very much the same as it was in the days when the popes arrived to take a holiday in their loved Umbrian city.
In old days the magistrates and the Podestà shared the abode of the clergy, but, as may easily be imagined,
this arrangement did not answer, and was, as Bonazzi tells us, the cause of most extreme contention between the canons of the Church and the councillors of State. The canons had a very comfortable time in the Canonica. “Professing to follow the rule of St Augustine,” says Bonazzi, “they had much to fear from the manifold terrors of conscience.” Their cellars must have been excessively well stocked, for on one occasion when the Podestà’s property was burning, the flames were quenched by wine: “To extinguish the flames, nothing would do save the immense cellars of the colossally rich Canonica.”