Thursday, 18th August 2005 - Sant'Elena, imperatrice

History of the city

ssisi, wonderfully set on the eastern slopes of mount Subasio - 424 metres above sea-level -, stands guard over the mouth of the Umbrian Valley, at its widest opening.
Having been the place of pre-Roman settlements, it defined its urban structure in the II century B. C., according to a scenographic design derived from Hellenistic models. The great difference in level, in fact, suggested the erection of a terraced town, supported by walls, on which the public and religious buildings are standing.
The town acquired a typical graded aspect, the Latin poet from Assisi Propertius refers to, when he states to have been born "where Bevagna, in the low plane, is wrapped up in foggy vapours , / while the Umbrian lake gets warm under the summer sun, / and the wall of salient Assisi rises towards the peak, / that wall made more famous by your wits". The original structure is still visible in the medieval urban texture, which has maintained the ancient massive walls.
In the I century B. C. , having become a Roman Municipium, Assisi developed greatly after the foundation of a sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the Dioscuri.
The urban walls (II - I cent. B. C.), made with small limestone blocks from the Subasio, would enclose the built-up area within a 2500-metre perimeter.
The Roman town had got its centre already: the Forum, where the present square of the town hall lies, to which the main streets led to, and on which the well kept temple of Minerva is still facing.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Assisi fell into the hands of Totila, of Charles the Great and, afterwards, of the Longobard Dukes of Spoleto.
The perfection of the urban structure and the difficulties in being expanded, got the first medieval town to reutilize the Roman structure, and therefore, down to the middle of the XIII century the medieval expanse perfectly overlapped the Roman one.
In the XII century, having become a free Comune, Assisi experienced a happy period of building fervour, which, through the two following centuries, caused the formation of the new town.
Towards the middle of the XII century, Giovanni da Gubbio was entrusted with the erection of the new Cathedral of San Rufino, which, with its austere façade and the powerful bell tower on its side, is the most important Romanesque monument in Assisi.
In 1197 in San Rufiino's there was the solemn christening of Frederic II of Svevia , who was then under the protection of Conrad of Lutzen, duke of Spoleto, to whom the Barbarossa had given the investiture of the town, after submitting it. In the following year there was a popular rebellion against the imperial power and since then Assisi remained of the Guelph party; the citadel was entirely destroyed and no longer rebuilt until the XIV century, under Cardinal Albornoz.
The town must have been still made of different parts, separated by kitchen- gardens, when, at the beginning of the thirteenth-century, Saint Francis started preaching. In 1209-1210, having gathered together his first followers, he obtained by Pope Innocent III the approval "solo verbo" of his first Rule.
On the Saint's death, the spiritual fervour he had aroused took shape in the building of the great Basilica, destined to celebrate the glory of the "Poverello di Dio" and of his Order, and to characterize the physiognomy of the town with its imposing massive structure. The plant of the buildings, inclusive of the large Monastery standing on enormous arcades, looking like a grandiose fortress, and the two superimposed churches, was started on a hill to the west of the town, outside the city walls, in 1228, two years after Saint Francis' death. If not the architect, the first conceiver of it all was Friar Elias, who had been appointed Vicar-general of the Order. The building went on very rapidly, with the help of offerings collected from all over the Christian world; as early as 1230 the lower church, whose crypt housed a sarcophagus with the Saint's body, was almost finished.
The huge Basilica was completed in 1253: the church was still outside the walled perimeter, but it will condition the successive development of the built-up area, which was attracted by it to the point of becoming one with the convent premises.
While the basilica was being erected, Assisi, too, experienced a great fervour of life. The town became larger, and in 1260 the walls, too narrow by then, widened at the eastern far end, where in those years the Church of Saint Clara was standing, a copy of the upper church of Saint Francis.
In the early fourteenth century (1316) a still extant far wider boundary wall was built, including all the points of housing development (from the Roman amphitheatre, to the high-medieval fortress, to the Franciscan basilica); within it the residential areas, such as the Aretino village, were filled.
The rebuilding of the Major Fortress (1367) signalled the end of the communal autonomy and the reconquest of the town under the Church domination.
The political events of the XIV and XV centuries, with their inner struggles between the factions, the wars and the sacks Assisi underwent from Braccio Fortebraccio, Biordo Michelotti and, finally, from Valentino, caused the ruin of the last towers and damaged parts of the built-up areas, but, altogether, they didn't alter its physiognomy; neither was it altered, but very little, in the three following centuries, by the restorations and re-makings of medieval buildings and by the building of great baroque palaces.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in fact, many aristocratic palaces and sacred buildings were erected within the urban structure, already fixed by the previous expansion (Chiesa Nuova, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, oratory of Santa Caterina,; Giacobetti, Bernabei, Fiumi-Roncalli, Locatelli, and episcopal palaces).
The nineteenth century was characterized by the secularization of monasteries, often altered by their new functions and by a heavy depauperation of their artistic patrimony.
After annexation to Italy, the improvement in communications, due to the railway connection, brought new life to the town, still deeply bound to agriculture, breaking off its isolation, by the coming of the first tourists and the rising of the first receptive buildings.
Thus Assisi became an essentially religious tourist centre, and even more so after the first post-war period.
In 1926, on the seventh centenary of Saint Francis' death, over two million pilgrims poured there from all parts of the world.
Already at the beginning of the twentieth century the town started expanding outside the walls, where new houses, monasteries and religious institutions were built. The inner part was characterized by the revisiting of the mediaeval image of the town, by restoring the style and decorticating many façades: a heritage still weighing upon the policies for the safeguard of the historical centre!

byPaolo Rossi
paolorossi62@libero.it


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