ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Via del Aquedotto, showing Tower of the Cathedral

[5]

Lombard Arch on the Church of S. Agata

[14]

Palazzo Baldeschi

[23]

Arms of Perugia

[32]

Via delle Stalle

[39]

Niccolò Piccinino

[53]

Palazzo Pubblico

[57]

Fortress of Paul III., showing the Upper Part, now occupied by the Prefettura, etc., and the Lower Wing, which covered the site of the present Piazza D’Armi

[77]

Perugia from the Road to the Campo Santo

[83]

Etruscan Arch, Porta Eburnea

[87]

Mediæval Staircase in the Via Bartolo

[89]

Piazza Sopramuro, showing the Palace of the Capitano del Popolo and the Buildings of the first University of Perugia

[101]

Convent of Monte Luce

[107]

Piazza di S. Lorenzo, seen from under the Arches of the Palazzo Pubblico

[111]

Remains of the First Palazzo dei Priori in the Via del Verzaro

[114]

Oldest part of the Palazzo Pubblico

[121]

The Reaper. Detail in a panel on the Fountain

[127]

Geometry. Detail in a panel on the Fountain

[131]

On the Steps of the Cathedral

[134]

In the Cloisters of the Canonica (or Seminary)

[147]

S. Francis

[150]

Porta Marzia

[155]

Church of S. Ercolano and Archway in the Etruscan Wall

[157]

Detail of the Tomb of Pope Benedict XI. in the Church of S. Domenico

[166]

House in the Via Pernice

[179]

Arco d’Augusto

[189]

S. Agostino and Porta Bulagajo

[191]

Church of S. Angelo

[195]

The Old Collegio dei Notari, said to be the studio of Perugino

[202]

Torre degli Scirri

[203]

Etruscan Arch of S. Luca

[205]

Mercy. Detail on Façade of the Oratory of S. Bernardino

[209]

Perugino: Madonna and Patron Saints of Perugia, painted for the Magistrates’ Chapel at Perugia, now in the Vatican at Rome

[221]

First Translation of the Body of S. Ercolano (Fresco in the Pinacoteca of Perugia)

[243]

Gonfalone of the Annunciation attributed to Niccolò Alunno

[249]

Adoration of the Shepherds. By Fiorenzo di Lorenzo

[253]

Via Della Pera under the Aqueduct on the way to the University

[269]

Etruscan Mirror in Guadabassi Collection

[280]

Tomb of Aruns Volumnius

[287]

The Temple of Clitumnus

[301]

Narni (with Angelo Inn in foreground)

[307]
[Plan of Perugia]

The Story of Perugia

CHAPTER I
The earliest Origins of Perugia and growth of the City

SOMETIMES in a street or in a country road we meet an unknown person who seems to us wonderfully and inexplicably attractive. Perhaps we only catch a passing vision; the face, the figure passes us, oftener than not we never meet again, and even the memory of the vision which seemed so full of life, so strong, and so enduring, passes with the years, and we forget. But had we only tried a little, it would, in almost every instance, have been possible to follow the figure up, to learn what we wanted to know about it, to understand the reason why the face was full of meaning to us, and what it was which went before and gave the mouth its passion, the eyes their pain and sweetness. In nine cases out of ten we can, in this nineteenth century, discover the birth and parentage, the loves and hates, of any human being we may wish to know. But this is not the way with cities, and although they attract us in almost precisely the same fashion as people do, we cannot always trace their earliest origins. There are certain towns we come across in travel, of which we know very well that we want to know more. Perugia is one of these. It at once catches hold of one’s imagination. No one can see it and forget it. A breath of the past is in it—of a past which we dimly feel to be prehistoric. Boldly we set to work to learn its history, and at first this seems an easy matter: the later centuries are a full and an enthralling study, for as long as men knew how to write they were certain to write about themselves, and the writers of Perugia had a wide dramatic field to work upon. But then come the records which are not written—which, in fact, are merely hearsay; and further even than hearsay is the period when we know that men existed, but which has no history at all beyond a few stone arrow heads, and bits of jade and flint. Yet, to be fair to a place of such extraordinary antiquity as this early city of the Etruscan league, one is unwilling to leave a single stone unturned, and in the following sketch we have gathered together, as closely as we could, the earliest facts about a city which attracts us, as those unknown people attract us whom we meet, admire, and lose again in the crowd.

“It seems,” says Bonazzi, the most modern historian of Perugia, “that in the earlier periods of the world all this land of ours (Umbria) was covered by the sea, and that only the highest tops of the Apennines rose here and there, as islands might, above the waves. Then other hills arose, a new soil was disclosed, and great and horrid animals, whose teeth were sometimes metres long, came forth and trod the terrible waste places. In the silence of these squalid solitudes, no voice of man had yet been heard, and the stars went on their way unnoticed, across the firmament of heaven....”

But Bonazzi’s science, though highly picturesque, was not entirely correct, and the following account, written by an inhabitant of Perugia who has studied the history of his town and neighbourhood with faithful precision and from the darkest periods of their existence, may well be inserted here.