The “journey”, this strange long journey, through a physical space and a place of the soul, through the evergreen Umbria, starts from the shores of Lake Trasimeno, that “half sea” resting at the foot of pleasant hills where numerous, placid olive trees – like the weird vegetable “sculpture”, perhaps six hundred perhaps a thousand years old – of Villastrada in the Municipality of Castiglione – watched for centuries on the tranquility of medieval castles, towers, fortresses, walls, monasteries, abbeys, churches, scattered around.
On the slopes of the hills of the eastern shore of the lake we find the small church of San Vito flanked by something truly unique. An atypical bell tower, atypical because completely detached from the main complex and with an important record: it is probably the oldest medieval building in the region. It appears almost hidden by the surrounding olive trees. From their fruit we get a treasure: the extra virgin olive oil of Trasimeno, made more delicate by the mitigated climate and by a special cultivar such as sweet agogia. Immediately the gaze is lost and the heart rejoices in front of this unique spectacle, which seems miraculously out of the paintings of the “divine painter” Pietro Vannucci for all the Perugino, the Renaissance genius of “his” lake and the beautiful surrounding landscape, always present in his eyes, he was able to give a superb and suggestive interpretation.
The journey continues by boat or ferry, leaving behind the lush coast where, as rare flowers, Tuoro “theater” stands out, blameless for the historic battle that decreed the shame of the Romans by Hannibal the Carthaginian, we have Passignano with its fifteenth-century houses , San Feliciano (in the municipality of Magione) with the Festa del Giacchio, a special fishing net that is now disused but still “celebrated”, because, in addition to the care of centuries-old olive trees and the cultivation of the land, it is fishing that represents the most ancient and authentic face of Trasimeno.
Nowadays, also Sant’Arcangelo and the amazing silhouette of Castiglione that lazily plunges in the water, as well as the almost unreal Panicale stage that looks overbearing and exclusive on the lake below, appear. And at the top of a hill, not far from the shining water of the Trasimeno, the small medieval village of Piegaro seems to be unattainable. While pale – distant “light years” now from the dream that rises in the middle of the lake – Magione, dominated by the majestic castle of the Knights of Malta, the medieval village of Corciano and even more Perugia, the capital, “narrow” between lake and river . Trasimeno and Tiber: from water to water.
Closer and closer are the three islands, splendid “pearls” that, like Venus, seem to be born as if by magic from this small sea: the Minor, privately owned, reflects only in its own light in the silence of the beautiful weather wich was; the Major, fervent in life and activity; the Polvese “navel of the lake”. Symbols of a past, a present and a future, floating on the iridescent water of one of the most beautiful and cleanest lakes in Italy.