An Architect in Umbria

A view of Todi

The bus from Rome dropped me at a place called Pian di Porto.  

It was June of 2019 and it was hot.  Pian di Porto is a nondescript place at the foot of  a very large and descript hill.  On top of that hill and cascading down the sides is an  ancient town - Todi.  The origins of Todi were well underway when sheep were still grazing along the Tiber River 130 km to the south in a place that would one day be called Rome. 

I returned to Todi after a 38 year absence hoping to find a bit of magic . . . hoping to  revitalize my soul.  It didn’t take long.

A charming woman named Adele was waiting for me in Pian di Porto, where the bus  dropped me off.  She drove me up the steep roads until we crested the hill.  She  maneuvered through the ancient narrow streets until we arrived.  “This is it.  This is  where you’re staying.”  She opened the door, handed me the key, gave me a  perfunctory tour and, in her graceful Italo-English said, “Just call or text me if you  need anything at all.”

I was in Todi! If you have the great good fortune to know Adele Peri, chances are good you will soon meet her father, Claudio Peri.  

Claudio is a retired professor of Food Science, born, raised, and returned to Todi.   Like most retired professors, Claudio needed a focus in his retirement.  He found it in Todi’s most famous son, Jacopone da Todi, the medieval poet who walked the same streets 750 years earlier.  Chronologically positioned between St. Francis (up the valley in Assisi) and Dante Alighieri (in Florence), Jacopone’s poetry is regarded  as among the most spiritually penetrating of the medieval period. 

It turns out Jacopone’s biography got twisted and tangled over the centuries by forces invested in fictionalizing his life.  In the late 13th century, Jacopone was a devoted Franciscan friar who wrote critically about the Pope’s alliance with those Franciscans advocating a more comfortable lifestyle than the simple life Francis himself had exemplified almost a century earlier.  

Publicly criticizing the Pope doesn’t usually go well, and it didn’t go well for  Jacopone.  He soon found himself imprisoned and excommunicated.  In the centuries that followed, stories were fabricated of a deranged Jacopone walking the streets and piazzas of Todi.  These stories achieved their goal of excluding Jacopone from the canon of great souls and poets of medieval Italy.

There’s another side to the story.  We want to tell it.

Claudio Peri is that rare combination of spiritual and worldly.  Jacopone’s poems, or laudi, touch Claudio deeply.  And his desire for Todi - and the world - to know the truth about Jacopone compels him to action.

I left Todi that summer of 2019 with a seed planted: Jacopone, vis-à-vis Claudio, was going to be a fixture in my life.  Just as his biography had been distorted, so had the 14th century church where his remains are interred. 

San Fortunato sits at the highest point of Todi with a soaring campanile that towers over the town.  San  Fortunato is not well maintained.  The piazza of stairs (the Scalinata) ascending to the church’s portal, lacks grace.  Just as modern people are deterred from knowing Jacopone’s true life and works, they are also deterred from a graceful visit to the church of his remembrance.  

I’m an architect.  I’m just crazy enough to think an Italian piazza fronting a Gothic church can be modified to make it more graceful. 

That fall I redesigned San Fortunato’s Scalinata, and returned to Todi twice to present it to the City Architect and to the Mayor.  In the interim, back home in North Carolina, a mere three weeks after returning from my summer visit to Todi, I met my love, Julie Caro, an art historian and Italophile.  Julie joined Claudio, me, and two  other Todi design professionals in presenting the Scalinata design to the Mayor.

Watercolor rendering of a proposed redesign of the San Fortunato Scalinata by Ken Gaylord, AIA (American Institute of Architects), 2019.

Claudio was a coach searching for a team.  The outline of that team was taking shape  in, of all places, Ireland.  Andy and Louise Halpin from Dublin had been coming to  Todi for years, and like Julie and me, they quickly became friends with Claudio.  As a recently retired archaeologist and web designer (respectively) they possess invaluable skills that can help propel Claudio’s vision for Jacopone forward. 

And so, we embark on a journey - a thriving ancient Umbrian hill town . . . a  medieval Franciscan mystic poet . . . a distorted biography in need of veracity . . . a Gothic church in need of care - this is where we begin.  Claudio, Louise, Andy, Julie,  and Ken bring you the Jacopone da Todi Newsletter and Website.

We would love to hear from you and hope you find inspiration in what’s to come.

Ken Gaylord

Asheville, North Carolina

Todi, Italy