Metola Tower

It isn't a tower... it's mere sky

When I was a child, dreaming to live in a castle on the top of a mountain, there was always a high, big, white tower... like this:

It's Metola Castle.
No one knows when it was built; the early information is from XI century. It's ruined many time ago, and just only the tower survived. Recently well restored, with a small drawbridge also, we can only imagine the life and the people who lived there.



Last but not least, here was born - in 1287 - the blessed Margherita della Metola. She was blind... she haas never seen the sky around her... But she has known the real Sky...

  

When the time has the stroke of eternity...

...and the space seems to have the breath of infinity.

probably you are in one of the most suggestive hermitages of Umbria: "Speco of Narni".

Walking on St. Francis' Way, signed by the franciscan simbol "TAU",



you come in a pretty and pleasant olive-yard, at the foot of a steep hill.

Climbing it in about 20 minutes, you can arrive at the Convent, perched on the rock over the Ternana Valley



It's nice, but it isn't the most suggestive part of the hermitage (but inside you can visit a little chapel of XI century). Going up, above the convent, you can arrive at the real "speco" (it's a latin word, that means cleft), where St. Francis has leaved the mark of his contemplation

If you don't know St. Francis and his places, you cannot understand this territory; everywhere you walk, you are walking under his shadow.









When Christmas met the crib

There is a place...

...in Italy, between Umbria and Lazio, called Greccio, where "Christmas" was born.

Walking from north, up to a large green saddle,



among cows

and horses

(I'm sorry! I haven't seen any donkey...),

and then going down through the wood

you can arrive in a place perched on the face over the Reatina Valley,



 where St. Francis came many times
(here is his bed)



 and where above all, in the Christmas of 1223, remembering the night of Betlem,



 he invented the crib... the Christmas that we know.

Here you can see the old dormitory



and the church also.



This is Greccio... another suggestion for walk in Italy.

"Crudo sasso"

La Verna

A name, a place, a man

...And this is La Verna, the "crudo sasso" (severe, harsh rock) - as Dante Alighieri wrote in his Divina Commedia (Paradiso, XI) - where St. Francis of Assisi was stigmatized in 1224.

Surrounded by a hieratic beech-wood...



...the old "basolata" road rises steep to the Sanctuary.

A characteristic narrow stair-wall.