Day 13 Gubbio: Bathing in the crowd

It can certainly be described as a culture shock when, after so many lonely days, you see the columns of cars outside the gates of Gubbio. The ancient archaeological site is hardly worth seeing anymore. Yesterday (April 25) was the day of remembrance in Italy of the liberation by the Americans. The city is overcrowded because of the long weekend. The few free rooms are being offered for several hundred (up to 1200 euros).

Architecture, art, culture and science

Gubbio is worth seeing and impressive. A well-preserved medieval old town with Gothic aristocratic buildings. The Prior's Palace stands high up on a steep slope. Its entire basement consists of just one room. It is considered one of the "boldest architectural undertakings of the Italian Middle Ages". Unfortunately, the square in front of it is cordoned off and long queues wait in front of the palace to enter the museum.

https://www.umbriatourism.it/de/-/priorenpalast

Famous sons and daughters of the city

One of the most famous sons of the city is Federico de Montefeltro, later Duke of Urbino. His alliance is well known, from the side, with the red cap and hooked nose.

Walkiria Terradura is still revered as a partisan today. Gubbio would become the scene of a massacre by German Wehrmacht members after a partisan attack.

Louis Walter Alvarez and his son, Walter Alvarez, cannot be called the sons of Gubbio, but they play an important role for the city. They discovered an iridium anomaly in the region around Gubbio and were thus able to substantiate the theory of a meteorite impact 65 million years ago and the associated extinction of the dinosaurs.

Umbrian

Long before the Roman settlement (the excavation site of a Roman amphitheater can be visited at the large parking lot outside the town), there was an Umbrian community here. Bronze tablets from 300 BC are on display in the Palazzi sei Consoli, important evidence of the Umbrian language.

For me it means saying goodbye without being able to delve deeper into the peculiarities of the city. Tomorrow I will set off for the hermitage Eremo San Pietro Vigneto.