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164km (102 miles) SE of Florence; 176km (109 miles) N of Rome
Perugia is a capital city in a medieval hill town's clothing -- a town
of Gothic palaces and jazz cafes, where ancient alleys of stone drop
precipitously off a 19th-century shopping promenade. It produced and
trained some of Umbria's finest artists, including Gentile da Fabriano
and Perugino (born Pietro Vannucci in nearby Città della Pieve), from
whose workshop emerged Pinturicchio, Lo Spagna, and Raphael. It's a
respected university city whose student population ensures a lively
cultural calendar. After a long and bloody history, Perugia seems to
have settled well into its role as capital of Umbria.
Perugia was one of the 12 cities of the Etruscan confederation, and
though it submitted to general Roman authority in 310 B.C., it remained
a fractious place, always allying itself with a different Roman faction.
It chose the losing side in Octavian's war with Marc Antony, and when
the future emperor defeated Marc Antony's brother here in 40 B.C., a
panicked Perugian noble set fire to his house in a suicide attempt. The
flames spread quickly, and most of Perugia burned to the ground. Soon
after, Octavian, now Emperor Augustus, rebuilt the city as Augusta
Perusia. Throughout the Dark Ages, Perugia held its own against the
likes of Totila the Goth, but it became subject to the Lombard Duchy of
Spoleto in the later 6th century.
By the Middle Ages, Perugia was a thriving trade center and had begun
exhibiting the bellicose tendencies, vicious temper, violent infighting,
and penchant for poisons that would earn it such a sunny reputation
among contemporary chroniclers. When not out bashing neighboring towns
into submission, Perugia's men would put on minimal padding and play one
of their favorite games, the Battaglia dei Sassi (War of Stones), which
consisted of pelting one another with hefty rocks until at least a few
dozen people were dead.
What they did to others didn't even come close to the nastiness that
went on among Perugini themselves. The Oddi and Baglioni were just two
of the noble families who waged secret vendettas and vied with the
middle-class burghers for absolute power. Burgher Biordo Michelotti,
egged on by the pope, managed to seize power in 1393 by murdering a few
rivals from the Baglioni family. Five years later, his despotic rule
ended with a knife in the back. A period of relative calm came in 1416
with the stewardship of Braccio Fortebraccio ("Arm Strongarm"), under
whose wise and stable rule the city's small empire expanded over the
Marches region. In the end, he was done in by a fellow Perugian while he
was besieging L'Aquila in 1424. And then there were the Baglioni.
When their rivals, the Oddi, were run out of town in 1488, the field was
more or less clear for the Baglioni to reign in all their horrible
glory. The family turned assassination, treachery, and incest into
gruesome art forms. When not poisoning their outside rivals, they killed
siblings on their wedding nights, kept pet lions, tore human hearts out
of chests for lunch, and married their sisters. In a conspiracy so
tangled it's almost comic in its ghastliness, the bulk of the family
massacred one another on a single day in August 1500.
The last of the surviving Baglioni, Rodolfo, tried to assassinate a
papal legate in response to his uncle's murder at the hands of the
pontiff. All that did was anger Pope Paul III, who upped the salt tax a
year after promising otherwise. The rebellion Paul was trying to provoke
ensued, giving the pope the excuse he needed to subdue the city. Papal
forces quickly quashed the city's defenses and leveled the Baglionis'
old neighborhood. After riding triumphantly into town, the pope had all
Perugia's nuns line up to kiss his feet, an experience he reported left
him "very greatly edified."
The enormous Rocca Paolina fortress he built to keep an eye on the city
quelled most rebellious grumblings for a few hundred years, during which
time the Perugini slowly mellowed, save for the uprising in 1859. The
pope sent his Swiss Lancers to halt the rebellion, a task they
accomplished by pillaging the shops, torching the houses, and murdering
citizens in the streets. Within a year, though, Italian unification hit
town. King Vittorio Emanuele prudently sent a contingent of troops to
protect the Swiss guards as they hastily retreated from a Perugia
finally free from papal control.
Since then, Perugia has thrown its energies into becoming the most
cosmopolitan medieval city in the world. It's home to one of Italy's
largest state universities as well as the Università per Stranieri, the
country's most prestigious school teaching Italian language and culture
to foreigners. Local industry's biggest name is Perugina, purveyor of
Italy's finest chocolates, and the city stages an urbane and stylish
passeggiata stroll every evening and one of Europe's most celebrated
jazz festivals every summer. |
