Perugia

In between Cinque Terre and packing to go home, we managed to squeeze in a day trip to Perugia, a city in Umbria, up in the hills about 2 hours southeast of Florence.  Theresa had been there 20-some years ago with her sister and mother and remembered a nice city square and interesting escalators that took her up past Etruscan ruins.  The Etruscans were a people who inhabited the areas north of Rome at the time Rome was founded.  In the end, the Romans won and the Etruscans got swallowed up in the much more powerful empire.  But they left a lot of artifacts behind, mostly funerary.

Row after row of Etruscan funeral urns at the Archaelogical Museum

Perugia was one of their strongholds, so there are also a lot of stout stone walls and foundations still hanging around.

The Augustinian Gate.  The bottom third is Etruscan, most of the top is Roman (they destroyed Perugia when it took the wrong side in the civil war after Julius Caesar's murder), and the arched porch on the very top is Renaissance.

A part of the old city wall - from bottom to top: Etruscan/Roman/medieval (brick).

The historical center is a typical walled medieval (or earlier) town set waaay up on steep hills.  They have several sets of escalators to help tourist up and down.

These are the escalators that Tre remembers

The train doesnt go up there, so we took a bus up and a cute new people-mover back down.

The old city does indeed have a nice piazza flanked by a cathedral.

and a fountain (every city should have a fountain):

The city is bodaciously hilly:

Tre didnt want to tackle this kind of steps, so while she people-watched I wandered around a bit.

Great views from some of the walls

An old aqueduct that's been turned into a pedestrian walkway

Whole blocks of an underground city, formed when one of the popes decided he just had to build a palace over top of them.

Of course, as every chocoholic knows, Perugia is where Perugia chocolates come from.

 What the world needs......chocolate sandwiches!

We'll just leave it to you to guess whether we actually bought any to bring home...

But our trip must have been blessed because on the way home it poured, and when we looked out the train window...

...A RAINBOW!!!!!