A Shock At Chiesa San Niccolo

  This may be an odd thing to write about here, but it was just such a sad scene…

  We had come to Cortona for art supplies, as well as a visit to the charming Church of San Niccolo.   We both wanted to see the dual sided Signorelli painting inside the little church, and just enjoy the loveliness of this special place on a nice day.

  Having hiked up, up, up, to get there, we came across a disastrous scene...

Wow…this was serious.

  We were aware there had been major winds that tore through Central Italy a few weeks ago, but hadn't actually seen any of the damage.

  We saw some here.

  There were several very old, very large Italian Cypress trees down…some just snapped off.

  It was pretty disturbing to see…a real disaster.

  We made certain it was safe, and climbed under the massive trunks to see the sign on the fence. It just gave the normal hours of operation, though…nothing about the destructive scene all around us.

We scooted under these huge trunks...

  There were even more trees down inside the fence, though we couldn't go in. I took some shots through the fence posts. These are such old trees…

The church, from what we could see, was undamaged, thankfully.

More damage from the upper terraced garden.

Looking back to the street from the front gate.
So sad!

  We decided to walk up above, just to see if there was any damage to the church we could see from there.
No, it seems, but we really don't know what all happened here...

Trees just snapped in half.
Can you imagine? We heard there were 80 mile an hour winds…
No thanks.

Just amazing.

  I hope all goes well, and the church can repair the damages and replant the trees, but it will be years, I'm afraid.

  Just goes to show us all…the weather is going through some major changes. And it's not all sunshine and rainbows in Bella Italia...