One of the great art treasures of Italy is the cycle of frescoes by Piero della Francesca in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo. The 15th-century paintings, which show an astonishing mastery of perspective and narrative force, also include one of the earliest depictions of a night scene. But they are in a rather narrow space behind the high altar and, as a result, are slightly awkward to see – especially when lots of visitors try to crowd in at once.
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To avoid this, admissions are carefully policed. On every hour and half hour, a strict quota of 30 people is allowed in to view them for a maximum of 30 minutes. Then they must give way to the next batch. It is a frustrating limit, because you really need longer than that to enjoy the frescoes properly. Normally, you must also be careful to plan and book ahead or you may well arrive in the city and find that all the slots are fully booked.
Not last week, however. On a chilly weekend in February, there were so few tourists that for most of my visit I was alone with the frescoes. And no one seemed to mind me staying there much longer than my allotted half hour. I suppose it is obvious that if you visit popular places off season, you are not going to face the same queues and crowds as you will during the rest of the year. But I didn’t expect quite such a dramatic difference.
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Nor did the lack of visitors affect only the key tourist sights. The whole of Arezzo – which I last visited in the summer – had an entirely different feel, as though it had been reclaimed by its inhabitants from the tide of peak-season visitors. I was the only foreigner sitting having a coffee and a cornetto in the pasticceria, for instance. And wandering around during the evening passeggiata, I saw only Italians.
Eating out on Saturday night, the tables around me were filled only by local families – who came along with babies, young children and even the odd dog. Afterwards, the Piazza San Francesco thronged with the youth of Arezzo. There was not a tourist in sight. It felt as though I was visiting in the 1950s, before the age of mass tourism.
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Of course, I did occasionally bump into fellow visitors. There was a small knot of English art enthusiasts being shown around the cathedral (where there is another Piero painting) and two French women were looking at the frescoes which decorate the house of the 16th-century artist Giorgio Vasari. Overall, however, it felt as though I was in an entirely different city.
The downside? Winter is winter. I was unlucky with the weather. Saturday was OK, but on Sunday – when I moved on to Perugia – it rained and it rained and it rained. Which was good news for the region, because it is suffering a worryingly prolonged drought, but it wasn’t so great for sightseeing. As the water coursed down the gutters, it felt more like visiting Venice than an Umbrian hill town.
However, even that disappointment was erased by two random acts of kindness – the first from the incredibly smiley woman in the museum shop at the National Gallery. In a city which has nowhere for passing visitors to leave their luggage, she took pity on me and stashed my soaking wheelie case behind her desk.
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And then, later, there was the woman on the reception desk at the five-star Brufani Hotel. As the rain hammered down on the empty taxi rank outside, she allowed a drowning rat to come into the lobby and wait in the warm and dry while she called me a cab.
Would they both have indulged me in the frenetic atmosphere of high summer? Perhaps. But they would have been under so much more pressure that I wonder whether the stresses and distractions of dealing with the tourist crowds might have taken a toll on their good nature.
Either way, I am a convert to the charm of winter in small cities.
