Through the wardrobe to Narnia

I joined a virtual tour this afternoon of an ancient commune in the centre of Italy called Narni (Narnia in Latin).  It inspired the writer, C S Lewis to use the name, Narnia, for his Chronicles.  He found the name on an old map when he was at school during World War I.

In 1979, a group of young cave explorers discovered a 12th century underground church which had lain hidden and forgotten for centuries.  The church was a Dominican church called St Michael's.  On further exploration, they found a cell containing masonic symbols.  It turned out to be a room where heretics were tortured by the Inquisition, and one of those was a captain in the army  who was also a freemason.  The underground church is now a tourist attraction run by volunteers who maintain the site.

There are two other tenuous connections to C S  Lewis and that is San Lucia who may have inspired Lucy, one of the children in the Narnia Chronicles, and a stone lion, which may have inspired Aslan.

Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on Narni.

I joined this virtual tour of the world-famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence this evening.  It is the oldest collection of artworks in the world and was founded in 1581 from a collection from the powerful Medici banking family.  This virtual tour only had time in the hour or so allotted to it to look at the key works by the renaissance masters such as Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Caravaggio and Raphael and includes classical myths and depictions of the Christian story.  Below are just a few photographs that I took of the paintings, plus some of the building itself and of Florence seen from the gallery windows.

For more information, go to these two links:

Wikipedia article on the Uffizi Gallery

Uffizi Gallery website

Montefalco

I joined this virtual tour of Montefalco, in the Umbria region of Italy this afternoon.  Montefalco means Mountain of the Falcons and the falcon is the symbol of this quaint medieval village.  

I've not been on here for a while as HeyGo Tours went out of business, but recently a number of Facebook groups doing similar virtual tours have sprung up in its place.  This tour has been recorded and is available to watch by clicking on this link.  I have also included an information link on the town.

And here are some photos I took during the tour.