After visiting San Salvatore-Santa Giulia in Bresia in 2012, I never paid any more attention to Longobards in Italy.

In July 2017 I went to Spoleto to see two productions at the Spoleto Festival, perhaps the most important annual performing arts festival in Italy, and stayed there overnight.

I was pretty impressed with the town of Spoleto itself, complete with a Roman theater, a cathedral, a fortress and even an aqueduct behind the fortress that "almost" looks like Pont du Gard.

Walking from the lower tier to the upper tier of the old town, I was suddenly jolted by a sign that says "Spoleto the World Heritage City." "What??? How low can they (tourist office) go to call their city a World Heritage City when it's not?" was my first reaction, but the rest is history.

As it turns out, the Basilica of San Salvatore is in the core zone and the entire old town is in the buffer zone of this site, one of the 7 components of Longobards in Italy. But the Basilica is outside the old town center.

When I travel these days, I'm almost completely dependent on Google Map with the blue dot of my own location and with its search function. So locating the Basilica of San Salvatore was not a problem. But I noticed that while I saw many signs in the old town touting the Basilica as a WHS, once I tried to get there, I did not see any signs whatsoever from the old town center all the way to the Basilica, where I found a some sort of notice and took a photo.

Not a soul could be seen around the Basilica. The large cemetery also looked abandoned, sadly.

And the Basilica was closed.

OK, I just tried to read the notice at the basilica in my photo. Even though I know little Italian, I believe it says "it's temporarily closed due to the natural events." I see. Well, indeed, before I got to Spoleto, I was wondering if the town of Spoleto was even functioning after that devastating earthquake nearby in last October.