The Forest of San Francesco
An untouched piece of Umbrian landscape, a place of harmony and silence at the foot of the magnificent Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi: a journey that also becomes an inner path. Through a gate in the wall surrounding the square in front of the Upper Basilica of Assisi, you take a narrow path that leads to a wide valley, at the foot of the city center.
Not just any hike, but a continuous and serene discovery, a new form of pilgrimage through history, the sacred, and 64 hectares of nature, including wooded areas and cultivated fields, walls of pink stone, clearings, and olive groves. 64 hectares that neglect had turned into a dump and that the FAI (Italian Environment Fund) has fully recovered.
It is a true treasure trove of biodiversity: the environmental mosaic characterized by the alternation of woods, meadows, rows of hedges and trees, watercourses, and olive groves creates a great variety of ecosystems favorable to the presence of numerous plant and animal species.
Walking along its paths, it is not uncommon to observe deer and squirrels and listen to the song of numerous birds.
Climbing to its top, here is the surprise: the opportunity to fully admire the “Third Paradise” by master Michelangelo Pistoletto: 121 olive trees arranged in double rows to form three large circular elements tangential to each other, one of which is larger in the center and with a pole 12 meters high symbolizing the union between heaven and earth. The invitation is to walk the serpentine path among the rows and thus become part of this work that contains a proposal for reflection on the possible peaceful coexistence between humans and nature, here symbolized by the third sphere, the “third paradise,” precisely.
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