After a good night’s sleep and breakfast, which we made ourselves, we headed to Perugia for the day. There were very few tourists, and little traffic, which made Linda very happy!
Linda dropped us off at the main center of town, a block or two from the central piazza which has a large, circular fountain with two levels. The city is on a hill so steep that the government has built escalators and special stairways to enable people to reach the top of the old city which dates back to Etruscan times. It was fascinating to note the many types of stone and brick used in a single building, giving a visual history over hundreds of years. Many, many arches interconnect buildings just off the piazza.
We were free to wander, enjoy a cappuchino, and re-joined Linda at the fountain at 12:45, then walked to Ristorante Peppone for lunch. We stopped to look quickly at some machine woven fabrics so that we could better appreciate the hand weaving we would see after lunch. Had a great lunch – beer, salad, four different pizzas to share, then walked for about 20 minutes (luckily mostly downhill!) to an old stone church built in 1212. It was purchased in 1950 by the Brozetti family, along with the houses that surround it. The great grandmother of the present resident opened a hand-weaving business in 1920 as a cottage industry, and she and her daughter managed the business which moved to the church in 1950. It is presently being used as a weaving studio by Marta Brozetti, the first person in her family to actually weave.
Marta, probably in her early 40’s, has collected old looms of her great grandmother’s and uses them to weave jaquard fabrics, most of which are reproductions of medieval ore earlier patterns she sees in paintings, frescos, etc. She figures out these old patterns, and makes “cards”, which she punches by hand, to allow the proper threads to be lifted during the weaving process when the shuttle gets thrown across the loom. It is hard work, and her legs do all the lifting of threads, which can weigh as much as 60 pounds. The looms are as much as six feet wide.
The church itself was the first church in Perugia to be dedicated to St. Francis. It is vaulted with brick ceilings, tiled floors, and wonderful light for a studio.
Some of Marta’s thread dates back to 1920; it is very hard to get good quality silk thread now other than from China, and they will only sell theirs in 1000kg lots, which is too much for her to buy. We all bought something. She has so much passion for weaving!
We returned to Maridiana, checked email, I quilted a bit, then at 7:30 we drove up the valley to Mimmi’s restaurant. Our dinner included two homemade pastas (lasagna, and spinach manicotti with nutmeg and ricotta), sliced roast pork with eggplant, sliced turkey with roasted yellow peppers and zucchini, and chocolate cake with espresso. Back home at 10:30. (The day here runs about 3 hours late compared to ours!) Full moon!
A new alpaca was born today…..I think Gianni should name her Lune for the full moon.
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