One of the good things about staying in Perugia is that it’s quite easy to get around to other parts of Umbria and the best way to it is to go by bus. It was a short walk from my hotel downhill to the bus station but the first thing I noticed when I got there is that there wasn’t a lot of information about. There were no timetables or posters and the booking office could easily be mistaken for a job centre reception. It really could have been anywhere. There was an information counter inhabited by a bloke sporting the world’s largest quiff. Appearances weren't deceptive and he was every bit as disinterested as he looked. He parroted out the times of buses to Assisi and looked decidedly fed up when I asked him if there was a timetable to take home. He rattled off the times again as if I dared to doubt his knowledge and then he sat down. Clearly the effort of answering a routine enquiry had worn him out. After a few seconds he realised that I hadn’t left and reluctantly took to his feet again. This time I asked for bus times to Gubbio and Todi and listened to him rattling off a well-rehearsed list of departures though he didn’t explain which ones applied to each destination. This was going nowhere and neither was I if this continued. I waited politely and annoyingly until he finished and asked him to start again. He pointed to a departures monitor which I hadn’t noticed before and said with thinly disguised contempt “The same time every hour”. He then disappeared off through a doorway: dealing with three enquiries presumably qualifies him for a lie down.
If you arrive in Perugia via the bus station, you are spared the uphill walk to the centre of town by a series of escalators. The first one leads you upwards through a plastic looking tunnel which has the usual type of advertisements plastered on the walls and leads to another street where you get on another. At first there’s nothing to talk about; the route looks exactly like any other escalator on any underground you care to mention, but then things change spectacularly. The escalator suddenly emerges into a big stone cave and which opens into a grey stone street, complete with the remains of houses and other buildings – all of this with a big stone roof 15 metres above you and lights hanging down from it. This is the Rocca Paolina the remains of medieval fort. It was built by Pope Paul III after the papacy finally defeated the city in a war fought over salt. He decided to build a fort on top of the area of the town owned by his enemy, the Baglioni family. It’s a bizarre feeling coming up through a modern tunnel and then finding yourself in this enclosed road which has no daylight and looks as unreal as a film set. There’s still another level to go before you surface by a former palazzo with Perugia’s main street Corso Vanucci stretching out ahead and the small but beautiful Carducci gardens overlooking the Tiber valley below.
The Corso Vanucci is a wide, largely pedestrianised street of small shops and rather big pavement cafes and restaurants. It plods gently uphill to the Piazza IV Novembre which I suppose is the heart of the city. I base this on the facts that it seems to be the largest square in the town and that is where a lot of ice creams shops are concentrated. On one corner of the piazza and Corso Vanucci is the medieval Palazzo dei Priori. A white bricked elegant building with a bell tower and a series of pointed arched windows divided into three separate oval panes and topped by crosses. Even by Italian standards, this must be one of the more spectacular town halls around. They clearly blew the budget here because on the other side of the square is a solid and unspectacular box of a building that is the cathedral.
I spent most of the rest of day wandering round the streets I had got lost in the previous evening. I had lunch in a quiet restaurant which was decorated by newspaper cuttings and photos. They featured a short bloke with a big moustache who seemed to be called “Frankie Banana”. From what I could make out, he was a boxer and probably not a successful one as there were no pictures of him actually winning himself. There was the obligatory picture with boxing promoter Don King and newspapers making a few references to his legendary status. There were also reviews of his restaurant. I was actually served by the man himself who didn’t look much like a boxer to me but I wasn’t going to take the risk of finding out. I made a note to look him up when I got the opportunity and I have to admit that I’ve drawn a blank so far. He may be a legend in Perugia but he doesn’t register much on Google. His restaurant’s good though.
Later that evening I returned to the Carducci gardens. Most of the benches were taken up and it wasn’t difficult to see why. The views are spectacular. I found myself sitting in a café which looked across the valley to Assisi. Darkness falls in Perugia in a beautifully gentle way, a pale blue mist seems to envelop the distant mountains and head gently towards the city gradually turning darker and darker as it gets nearer. It’s like being swallowed. Assisi gradually lit up as the skies darkened. I sat and watched it all in breathless silence with a glass of prosecco in my hand. There are perhaps too many street lights on the valley floor to make it truly beautiful but it is still a remarkable thing to watch before heading off to eat.
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