The ceramics museum, Deruta

Our nature walk took place this morning as did our dip in the hotel pool. The afternoon saw four of us piling into the hotel minibus for a trip to Deruta, which is the centre of the majolica ceramics industry in Umbria. The museum of ceramics is relatively new and as we walked down the metal gangway I was wowed by the whole environment. (The right hand side was a mirror image of cases and pots.) it reminded me of the Victorian collectors museum in Sitka with its glass cases of unusual and idiosyncratic objects - a collectors heaven. Except that this museum is newly reburbished and the cases all contain ceramics, all be it that they date from prehistory, through Roman to very modern. We also called in at the. Art Gallery which had some interesting religious paintings from local churches and there were the remains of some beautiful medieval frescoes on the walls of the church of San Francesco. We ended our visit in the square with a small beer. Another walled hill town that was relatively quiet today, but we were pleased we'd gone. I guess it must be the stoping off place for lots of tour buses though, given the number of shops selling the local ceramics.