Real-Life ‘Narnia’ Inspired C.S. Lewis

An Umbrian hill-town now has reason to celebrate something that they have long suspected: that C.S. Lewis took the name of the town known as Narnia to use for the name of the fictional world in the Chronicles.

They have received proof by way of C.S. Lewis’s former personal secretary and biographer, Walter Hooper, who has given Giuseppe Fortunati a copy of a Latin atlas of Italy that belonged to Lewis. In it, he had underlined Narnia.

The town’s name has changed since Roman times, when it was called Narnia, to become Narni. It is located 50 miles noth of Rome.

However, as far as anyone knows, the connection between the town of Narni and Narnia probably stops at the name, as Lewis may never have actually went to Narni.

Fortunati said Hooper told him it was also possible Lewis had been inspired by Blessed Lucia of Narni, a 16th-century visionary who received signs of the stigmata, for Lucy, one of the leading child characters in the Chronicles.

”But in this case Hooper explained that this was just his hypothesis because Lewis never told him anything,” Fortunati said.

Hooper, a Catholic, was in Narni to pick up a relic of Blessed Lucia from a town church that will go on show in Oxford’s Oratory church.

Read more at ANSA.it