Two Trees: Spello 5/4/11

Two weeks ago we were having breakfast on the terrace of our apartment in Spello, planning the day. The weather was a bit grey, so no mountain drives, cause the views would not be there anyway. We decided to drive to Foligno and Bevagna. In Foligno we quickly found this arch after parking our car and thought the centre has to be near.

But alas no luck, we only found it after an hour and a half, turned out we passed the tourist info on our search, but missed it and missed the centre too, we did see some nice houses on our walk though.

When we finally found the old centre we had a good look around.

And a detailed shot, one can only see these with a zoom or binoculars, so when they were created no one could really see them well, makes you wonder.

A nice surprise was a square with a statue dedicated to 18th centrury architect Giuseppe Piermarini

A man carrying a spike crawling with little man and on each side of the base a plaque with little faces, turtles and sketches of his work

After a nice lunch we set out for Bevagna and hoped to be more lucky and not spend first half looking for everything.

We quickly found a church dedicated to St Francis, it was apparently here that he preached to the birds :-)

Some nice views, the weather had cleared by now.

Somewhere in June Bevagna is send back in time to the middle ages. During the year several houses are open where one can see mediaeval crafts in progress. There was the paper maker:

Rags were sorted by type, cotton, linen, ... and torn, than meshed up in these stone containers with help of a watermill. The slush was transferred to a bigger vessel, were the paper was made by draining the slush through a screen, leaving the fibers behind. Once dry you would have paper, here some is drying further:

The bell maker, were bells for churches and so are cast, below the kiln were the will heat the bronze and let it flow into the pit were the mould of the bell is waiting to be filled.