None should leave Assisi, not even those who only hurry over for the day, without visiting the convent, which recalls an eastern building from the whiteness of its great vaulted rooms, long corridors and arcaded courtyards when seen against the bluest of summer skies.[93] Then from the cool and spacious convent, a place to linger in upon a hot day in August, we step out into the open colonnade which skirts the building to the south, makes a sharp turn west, and then juts out at the end, facing south again. This last portion was added by Cardinal Albornoz in 1368, and goes by the name of the _Calcio_. But two centuries later the foundations were found to be insecure, and Sixtus IV, strengthened it by a bastion, which looks solid enough to resist even the havoc of an earthquake. The Pope was a great benefactor of the convent, and the friars placed his statue in a niche in the bastion, where he sits, his hand raised in benediction, on a papal throne overlooking the valley. From the rounded arches of rough stone, turned by storm and sunshine to russet-red, pink and yellow, we look out upon one of the most beautiful and extensive views in Umbria. To the right is Perugia standing out almost aggressively on the hill top; opposite, on a separate spur which divides the valley of Spoleto from that of the Tiber, Bettona and Montefalco hang upon peaks like the nests of birds in trees, and beyond are Spoleto, Trevi and Narni, nearer again Spello, and the domes of Foligno in the plain, with a host of small villages near. All the Umbrian world lies before us from the convent of San Francesco. [Illustration: SAN FRANCESCO FROM THE PONTE S. VITTORINO]