Woman walking down steps in Gubbio, Umbria, Italy
The town of Gubbio in the Province of Perugia, Umbria, Italy. It is built on the lower slopes of the small mountain Monte Inginio. The mount is mentioned by Dante Alighieri in the 11th canto of Paradise as the ‘Hill Chosen by Blessed Ubaldo.’ The town is also known for its Corsa dei Ceri or Candle Race, a festival that takes place every 15th of May, St Ubaldo’s Day. Teams carrying statues of three saints atop vertical wooden platforms compete to be the first to reach the basilica km above the town. The saints are St Ubaldo the patron saint and protector of the town, St Antonio the protector of farmers and St Giorgio the protector of merchants. The origin of the feast may predate Christianity since elements of the ritual are described in the Iguvine Tablets dating from the 3rd Century BCE. These bronze tablets, inscribed in the ancient Italic language Umbrian, were discovered by a farmer in a field in 1444 CE. Gubbio is the site of the legend of St Francis and the Wolf. The friar came from Assisi, over 50 kms, away and tamed the man-eating wolf that had been terrorising the inhabitants of Gubbio. The town is also associated with the 'Gubbio layer’ discovered by the father and son scientific team of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Walter Alvarez and his geologist son Walter. Near Gubbio they found a layer of iridium deposited 66 million years ago. The same layer with the same age has subsequently been found worldwide. Iridium is a heavy metal that eons ago sank to the centre of the earth. It is extremely rare in the earth’s crust but is plentiful in extraterrestrial material such as asteroids and comets. The Alvarez team proposed that this iridium layer, that marked the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, also known as the K-T boundary, was evidence of a gigantic meteor impact. The impact is believed to have caused the mass extinction event that most famously killed off the dinosaurs.
Size: 5792px × 9600px
Location: Gubbio, Umbria, Italy
Photo credit: © Frank Nowikowski / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: brunette, city, descending, dress, feeling, gubbio, italia, italian, italy, life, living, medieval, outdoors, road, steps, street, summer, sun, town, trip, umbria, umbrian, view, village, walk, walking, wearing, woman, women
