Red Travel - Italia in Ferrari

Assisi

White and pink above the green flatlands of Umbria.

The birthplace of St Francis is a leading place of worship, whose serene calm provides just the right enchanting atmosphere in which to savour its monuments, especially the two-tiered Basilica with its frescoes by Giotto.

Begun two years after St Francis died in 1226, the lower church was completed in 1253. The upper, 14th-century church is renowned for a cycle of 28 frescoes, whose intrinsic beauty is accompanied by such detailed illustrations of the surroundings in which Giotto has set episodes in the saint's life that the visitor feels magically carried back to the mediaeval world.

Assisi is also a maze of perfectly preserved lanes and alleys flanked by small, geranium-bedecked stone houses and little gardens the rambling visitor may glimpse through a half-open front door.