Spoleto

31 October – 03 November 2019

Halloween

We arrived in Spoleto on Halloween. Before dinner we took a long walk and followed all the parents who followed all their kids as they headed to high-yield candy-givers. This holiday has picked up in Italy over the past years. We saw only hints of it on prior trips. Now the little kids get dressed in traditional costumes—mostly witches, goblins, skeletons, and ghosts. The parents are right there with them. Unlike in the US, the kids in Italy go to shops for candy. No going to homes. This is nice because the businesses are mostly small and local, giving the kids lots of opportunities for gathering candy. It is also nice because it further enlivens the retail streets and keeps the holiday geographically focused. Makes it an urban celebration. There were lots of small kids racing around shrieking on a sugar high.

One on the fun parts of travel is stumbling onto celebrations like this. In Spoleto we scored a hat trick: Halloween, a three-day weekend for All Saints’ Day, so there were lots of Italian visitors in town, and a three-day dessert festival, captured below.

Festival of the Two Worlds

Spoleto is known primarily as the host to the Festival dei Due Mondi, a two-week summer festival of performing and visual arts plus discussions on science. Giancarlo Menotti began it in 1958. The Spoleto Festival USA is held in Spoleto’s sister city Charleston, South Carolina. Menotti’s intent was to highlight the talents of up and coming artists from both sides of the Atlantic. The two festivals have splintered, although there are talks about reuniting.

Spoleto’s festival brings in loads of visitors and has prompted other events in the city that now include jazz and opera. Menotti chose Spoleto partly because of its proximity to Rome and easy access by train and because it had several suitable theaters. In 1962, they also staged an ambitious international outdoor sculpture exhibition with 53 artists. Some of their work is still in place today. including Calder’s monumental piece in front of the train station.

The Town

We enjoyed Spoleto. This fairly untouristy city of 38,000 is located in the Province of Perugia, in Umbria. Like most medieval towns (you remember them, don’t you?) it is on a hill and still has fragments of its ancient Roman and medieval walls. A large fort with walls intact dominates part of its skyline.

Like other towns in the area, Spoleto dates back to at least the 5th century BC when it was settled by a local tribe. And its history is much like other towns nearby. It was attacked by Hannibal, allied with Rome, taken over by Rome, invaded by Lombards, recognized as an independent state, made part of the Holy Roman Empire and then the Papal States, was conquered by Napoleon, and ultimately surrendered to Italy’s unification. Hard to keep up? Yep!

A retail street winds down steeply from the higher points in the city to the lower levels of the town. A clever series of inconspicuous elevators and moving sidewalks make the climb back up easier. There are three routes, with two leading to large parking structures at the edge of town. We left our car in one of them.

The weather has been getting chilly and rainy, so tourist season has ended. That means plenty of lovely apartments are available, some at astonishingly low prices. Bonnie splurged a tad on VRBO and we found ourselves in an elegant two-bedroom, three-bath apartment, clearly decorated by a professional, with a stunning view, fireplace, and elaborate kitchen. A nice surprise.

It would be fun to come back to Spoleto for the festival.