Ponte delle Torri, Spoleto

Christina at the bridge

Christina and I planned to hike what, from my research, seemed to be a popular trail to one of St. Francis’ hermitages, yet specifics were pretty vague.  Maurice took us into Spoleto and we managed to find the tourist office.  The woman there gave us a tourist map, which a writer of one of the articles I had found said was perfectly adequate for the walk.  (And yet, with the HQ of the CAI in Spoleto, you’d think we could have managed to get a real topo map….)  We set off about 10:15 from the tourist office toward the bridge.  The bridge!  The Ponte delle Torri (elevation 396 m) is a soaring medieval aqueduct, perhaps on Roman foundations, crossing the deep gorge of the Tessino River.  As breathtaking as it looks on approach, only one side of the pedestrian walkway is open, with a high enough wall on the other side that it wasn’t scary to traverse.

Looking back the way we came, with the aqueduct and the Rocca

On the opposite bank we followed the Monteluco trail upward, consulting our map often.  Intersections were reasonably well marked, with painted red and white CAI markings on rocks or trees shortly after every choice.  Up we went and up; the path never leveled off.  About noon we reached Monteluco, 804 m.  A dilapidated building, maybe once a hotel, sat in a clearing; ahead in the woods was the “restroom,” two dreadful cubicles along the lines of what I had been expecting to see in Italy but had so far been spared on this trip; down to the right we glimpsed a snack bar.  We walked to the left past the building, came upon another road, and a house, and a view across a clearing (maybe a sports field), and looped around to the snack bar.  Where was St. Francis?  Christina was ready to charge across the field, where it seemed the trail headed.  But the map showed a hermitage here.  I asked at the snack bar.  Right up there, pointed the vendor.  And up a steep path, almost back to where we had entered the clearing and turned left, but to the right and hidden, with typical Italian minimal signage, it was a short walk to the stone wall of the hermitage, the Santuario de San Francesco, established by St. Francis in 1218.

The convento was lovely.  There was a well in the little courtyard, an oratorio with a display and some possessions of the local Blessed Leopold who preached two centuries ago with “a zeal for the salvation of souls,” another smaller oratorio where Francis used to pray, a chapel, and the row of cells where the original brothers lived (men who were either very short or who had to stoop to enter their rooms).  The property is currently used to house Franciscan postulants.  As we walked around, young men were gathering for a midday service in a modern chapel, young men of handsome Italian faces with gentle eyes; I was glad for the life and hope they promised the church.

We ate our lunch at one of numerous sturdy tables in a rocky grove under the trees, surrounded by birdsong and ginestra, then refilled our water bottles at a freely flowing fountain of spring water.  A gate in a high stone wall beckoned.  It opened to St. Francis’ woods, a large enclosure of old and stately trees, cool, dark and mysterious.  We soaked in the atmosphere for a few minutes before consulting the map, studying the signs and locating, across the field, the correct trail to the church on the edge of Spoleto where we were ending our hike, San Pietro (30 minutes ahead).  The tourist office lady had shown us a trail on the map to shorten the return hike and avoid reported dogs ahead but she said it was unmarked.  It wasn’t long before we reached an unmarked trail to the right–too soon, I thought, but Christina thought it must be our turnoff and I deferred to her expertise (since she hikes regularly in the Swiss Alps).  The turnoff had another turnoff, which seemed to go the wrong way according to the map but which proved right in the end; when we came to the next turn and CAI sign directing us to San Pietro (still 30 minutes!), we were quite pleased with our success.  The path went a short way across a ridge in sunshine, then returned to the woods and descended, gravelly and steep.

Almost back to Spoleto

We walked past San Giovanni, a Romanesque church settled in tall grass and locked up tight, and a nearby shelter where spring water gushed from a pipe into a big disreputable-looking basin.  In a short while we were at the back of San Pietro; we cut down the final slope on a narrow trail through thick growth, and there we were.

The church was first built in 419 to contain the relics of St. Peter then rebuilt in the 12th-14th centuries (and remodeled in the 17th).  The white Romanesque in-your-face facade contains interesting stone carvings.  Just inside the main door were two 15th-century baptismal fonts, part of a 16th-century fresco of the kneeling commissioner of the church, and a passel of named cardboard sheep (Davide, Sofia, Francesco, Lorenzo) around a cardboard Jesus.  Between enormous pillars near the front was a colorful collection of small plastic tables and chairs, apparently for the little sheep to use during the service.  More life in the church!  Maurice and Ted picked us up about 3:30.  Six miles, 400+ meters up and down, fascinating bits from the Middle Ages–definitely another excellent adventure.