Arezzo (Day 2)

Arezzo ... It's a hard town to sum up. It was very modern, but it also had an old Medici castle, a very old Franciscan chapel, and (they think) the house where Petrarch was born. For any English majors out there, Petrarch developed the Petrarchan sonnet, one of the three main types. The house was damaged by bombing in 1943, but it has been restored since.

Pictures:

The duomo in Orvieto in the morning

A chapel in Arezzo

Outside of Petrarch's house - we couldn't take pictures inside.

Inside of the first chapel we went into - not Franciscan. It was absolutely stunning.

I almost bought one of these. 

Statue of Francis

Outside of the Franciscan chapel in Arezzo. Notice the difference between it and the chapel in Orvieto!

Here's the inside - very different from the earlier chapel.

The next pictures are from the fresco cycle inside the Franciscan chapel. Fresco cycles were used to illustrate stories and legends for illiterate worshipers. This fresco cycle tells the legend of the true cross. According to the legend, the cross Jesus was crucified on was made from a tree from a seed of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After the Great Flood, it continued to grow, until it was cut down and made into a bridge. The Queen of Sheba crossed that bridge and had a vision that the wood would destroy the Jewish kingdom. Solomon had it buried, but it was dug up and made into the cross. Three hundred years later, after Constantine's victory over Maxentius at Milvian Bridge, his mother Helena went looking for the cross and found it in Jerusalem. Later it was stolen by a Persian emperor and retaken by the Byzantine emperor. 

This is Constantine's tent where he dreams that God shows him a cross and promises, "In this sign, you will conquer." I believe the sign Constantine actually claimed to see was a chi ro, the first two Greek letters of the word cristos, meaning Christ.

Helena proving the wood they found really is the true cross.

There was also an old, out-of-repair Roman amphitheater in the town.