Museo Atelier Giuditta Brozzetti, Perugia

This was a great find. Again, we were the only foreign tourists there.

St. Francis of Assisi lived in this very place. When the order of Franciscan monks grew up around St. Francis, the young monks built this church in the shape of a Greek orthodox cross. Later, the church was sold to the Benedictine nuns, who enlarged the church by adding a nave, turning the church into the shape of a Latin cross. The Greek orthodox cross has its vertical axis and the horizontal axis of equal lengths. The vertical axis of a Latin cross is longer than its horizontal axis.

We were here to visit a textile workshop.

The region of Umbria is stunning, but less well-known than Tuscany. If visitors take time to mosey about, you can find gems like the Giuditta Brozzetti Textile workshop which still makes fabric using techniques from the 16th century.

Martha, the great grand daughter of Giuditta Brozzetti, runs the workshop. She gave us an in-depth tour to explain warp, weft, silk weft, gold thread weft, linen weft. She explained the binary codes that determine the patterns woven into the fabric. She even gave us demonstrations on the 400 year old looms. Apparently, in one of the oldest looms, the pattern has not changed in 400 years. That, my dear, is tradition. To change the pattern, a few thousand threads need to be threaded into the loom, ONE BY ONE. If you change the pattern, you might not know how to get back to the original pattern!

My family was entranced by the tour. The Daughter and I were fascinated by the rich fabrics. The Husband and The Son were captivated by the machines and the pattern codes. It was an entertaining morning, indeed!