Coming back. Returning. To a place. But without the people you saw there every day it was not the same.
So you cut short your stay. You left.
Surely, though, I want to tell you, you can return to a place without the people. A place can be seen for itself alone. You can experience a place. See it for itself alone.
Must you have memories of people or what happened while you were there? Must you have people to communicate with? A place can be loved for itself. Divorced from irrelevant contingencies. A place that is only that, seen for itself alone.
To some then the town they return to is just that. To some it may be its people. But while Orvieto as you knew it was people, it is still Orvieto without its people.
It is the memories of centuries past. And it can also be a sunset or the fog drifting in the valley. It can be the sparrows hopping in the street. It can be the swifts swirling around the spires of the cathedral. One doesn’t need people to make a day memorable.
Erika Bizzarri 
I last lived in the little frame house at 1808 Garland Drive in 1967, the year I graduated from Longview High School. Google Maps will show you its depreciated condition in a part of Longview, Texas decimated by white flight.
And yet, I am drawn to it during my now seldom visits. Most of my extended family has gone and it’s 800 miles from Santa Fe.
Two years ago I traveled to that town and was drawn to that little dilapidated street. I parked the rental car and just leaned against the door, letting my eyes gaze and my mind freely wander.
I would do it again. No one was there who I knew but the place was there.
Yes, you are correct.
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