Trasimeno is a land where everything speaks of welcome and warmth and where, over the centuries, emblematic figures have left indelible traces, examples of a deep feeling of love, peace and spirituality. According to legend, it all begins with Prince Trasimeno, son of the Tyrrhenian King, madly in love with the nymph Agilla who lived in the lake. They crowned their dream of love and Trasimeno did not hesitate to throw himself into the waters to stay with her forever. Even today, on some nights, you can hear the cry of the nymph who seeks her love for her and, the older fishermen say, that every now and then a tidal wave rises right in the center of the lake, where Agilla waited for Trasimeno.
It is another romantic and tragic love, the one at the turn of the twentieth century between the poetess Vittoria Aganoor and the local deputy Guido Pompilj. Vittoria Aganoor arrived at Monte del Lago and in her verses brought back the beauty of that lake and its shocking sunsets. It was a passionate love, but Vittoria fell seriously ill and died.Pompilj took care of her funeral ceremony, before killing himself leaving written that he wanted to be buried next to her.
From the theater of great loves to the land of saints and spirituality. The Trasimeno can ideally be considered as the geographical center of an itinerary that connects the many “places of San Francesco”. Starting from Assisi (Basilica, San Damiano, Eremo, Santa Chiara), then going to Santa Maria degli Angeli (Porziuncola) and Rivotorto (Sanctuary). But without forgetting in moving towards Tuscany, the Sanctuary of La Verna (Arezzo) where Francesco received the stigmata and the Convent of the Celle (Cortona). During his wanderings, in 1211 San Francesco arrived in Isola Maggiore in search of solitude for Lent: in memory, a church and a convent were built and on a rock, still visible, it is said that there are his footsteps.
Not far from Castel Rigone, on the other hand, it is a place of worship, a large natural stone that tradition has it as the Saint’s bed for one night. And again in Castel Rigone, speaking of spirituality and connected places, there is the Sanctuary of the Madonna dei Miracoli, the scene of an apparition of the Madonna.
Considered one of the masterpieces of Umbrian Renaissance art, it seems to have been designed by Bramante given the similarities with the external façade of the Sanctuary of Mongiovino (Panicale). Considered the site of numerous miracles following the apparition of the Madonna, the Sanctuary of Mongiovino is considered the greatest example of fresco decoration of the second half of the sixteenth century in Umbria. Costing two hundred years of work, it is “an immense work of art, in the shape of a Greek cross. An architecture, designed by Bramante in 1513, frescoed in every corner “(quoted by E. Garbi) and” among the wonderful places in Italy “(quoted by V. Garbi).
Perhaps due to the beauty and sacredness of the places, the Franciscan movement had a large following in Trasimeno and here it made proselytes. Among these, one of the first was the explorer and missionary Friar Giovanni da Pian del Carpine born in Magione in 1200. He goes down in history for the long and dangerous journey he faced in 1245 – a few years ahead of Marco Polo – from France to Mongolia to deliver a message of peace from Pope Innocent IV to the Great Khan.
A few years and a few kilometers away, Trasimeno was the birthplace of Santa Margherita, a courageous woman of incomparable inner strength, so much so that she was considered a true spiritual daughter of St. Francis. She was born in 1247 in Laviano (Castiglione del Lago) and after sad vicissitudes, she settled in Cortona becoming a Franciscan Tertiary. Her conversion is the result of a repentance, like a “Novella Magdalena” (quoted by Benedict XVI), which took place near an oak called “del Pentimento”, in the locality of I Giorgi (Castiglione del Lago).
On the subject of peace, an unforgettable figure in terms of depth and example, was Franco Rasetti, physicist, paleontologist and botanist, born in 1901 in Pozzuolo Umbro (Castiglione del Lago) where the Association dedicated to him is based and a bronze bust in honor of him . He was one of the “boys of via Panisperna”, the physicists led by Enrico Fermi, but he abandoned physics when his studies were oriented in war research and dedicated his commitment to naturalistic studies.
In this regard, a place of great charm and charm is Campo del Sole in Tuoro sul Trasimeno: a breath of peace in the scenario of the Battle of Trasimeno, where the theme of the column makes this work something like a Stonehenge of our time. A garden-museum, by the lake, with free admission, built in the 1980s, where you can admire 27 sculptures in typical local stone. The work, designed by Pietro Cascella (among the contemporary Italian and foreign artists present, also Giò Pomodoro), was conceived as a place of meditation that summarizes in itself the desire of man for dialogue with the sky in strained as Eternal.
