Discovering Perugia’s Secrets
It was an overcast Sunday in Perugia, one for museum-going or a latte macchiato in a café, but the mediocre weather did not stop Umbra students from coming to the Perugia “Nooks and Crannies Tour.” StudentServices Assistant Zach Nowak lead the group around the city, concentrating not on chapels and frescoes (well covered by Umbra’s art history teachers), but rather the “nooks, crannies, photo ops, and weird history” of Perugia.
The tour included explanations of the Salt War (the reason Perugia had papal rule and still has awful, saltless bread), stories about market-cleaning pigs and fascist meteorological stations, and even the medieval aqueduct that brought (as one medieval city councilman grumbled) “more debts than water.”
Nowak started doing his tours because Italian guidebooks, “…often bury the most interesting stories that a city has to offer under a ton of frescoes and pope’s names.” Nowak is also the editor of the Umbra Students Guide to Perugia, a comprehensive guide with practical, historical, and cultural information about living in Perugia and Italy. The tour will be offered again next Sunday for students unable to attend this weekend.