Perugia, more than just chocolate.

Our next stop was Perugia, located in the region of Umbria. The only thing I knew about Perugia was that it’s where the Baci chocolate comes from. Well I was pleasantly surprised to find that Perugia has so much more to offer. It is a city with a University attracting many young Italians from around Italy and also has Universita per Stranieri di Perugia, (University for foreigners), where you can study the Italian language, art and culture.

The young population creates a great vibe in the city. Every day there are groups of school excursions, presumably from neighbouring towns, adding to the young energy the town oozes.

Perugia has lots of history, art and culture to share and the landscape is breathtaking. The neighbouring towns of Gubbio, Spello, Trevi, Assisi and Spoleto where equally enchanting.

There where a few highlights in Perugia for me, the main one being the Studio Moretti Caselli which is where Francesco Moretti in 1858 founded his studio of Glass Painting. It started as stained glass windows but over the years became glass painting which is a different technique, producing works of art that are hard to believe are glass. The techniques have been handed down to 5 generations of family and is currently still going. You can visit the studio which was originally used by Francesco with the kilns and lots of other tools.

The masterpiece of this technique is one of Queen Margherita de Savoy completed in 1881. The techniques used by Moretti is to paint on glass as though he were painting on canvas using the oil painting techniques he learned, using small brushstrokes to distribute colours and render the figures three dimensional. His actual glass-cutting technique was even more innovative in that he gave tremendously difficult cuts that had never before been attempted, either in terms of shape or size. The artwork is life size and unbelievably beautiful. You can not believe it is a glass painting.

We will include Perugia in our next tour for those interested as it seems to me a hidden gem, perhaps intentionally.