Gubbio ranks among the most ancient of Italian hill-towns. With its back
set firm against the spine of central Apennines, and piled, house over
house, upon the rising slope, it commands a rich tract of upland
champaign, bounded southward toward Perugia and Foligno by peaked and
rolling ridges. This amphitheatre, which forms its source of wealth and
independence, is admirably protected by a chain of natural defences; and
Gubbio wears a singularly old-world aspect of antiquity and isolation.
Houses climb right to the crests of gaunt bare peaks; and the brown
mediaeval walls with square towers which protected them upon the mountain
side, following the inequalities of the ground, are still a marked
feature in the landscape. It is a town of steep streets and staircases,
with quaintly framed prospects, and solemn vistas opening at every turn
across the lowland. One of these views might be selected for especial
notice. In front, irregular buildings losing themselves in country as
they straggle by the roadside; then the open post-road with a cypress to
the right; afterwards, the rich green fields, and on a bit of rising
ground an ancient farmhouse with its brown dependencies; lastly, the
blue hills above Fossato, and far away a wrack of tumbling clouds. All
this enclosed by the heavy archway of the Porta Romana, where sunlight
and shadow chequer the mellow tones of a dim fresco, indistinct with
age, but beautiful.
Gubbio has not greatly altered since the middle ages. But poor people
are now living in the palaces of noblemen and merchants. These new
inhabitants have walled up the fair arched windows and slender portals
of the ancient dwellers, spoiling the beauty of the streets without
materially changing the architectural masses. In that witching hour when
the Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the glowing
tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dreaming by
oneself alone, to picture the old noble life--the ladies moving along
those open loggias, the young men in plumed caps and curling hair with
one foot on those doorsteps, the knights in armour and the sumpter mules
and red-robed Cardinals defiling through those gates into the courts
within. The modern bricks and mortar with which that picturesque scene
has been overlaid, the ugly oblong windows and bright green shutters
which now interrupt the flowing lines of arch and gallery; these
disappear beneath the fine remembered touch of a sonnet sung by
Folgore, when still the Parties had their day, and this deserted city
was the centre of great aims and throbbing aspirations.
The names of the chief buildings in Gubbio are strongly suggestive of
the middle ages. They abut upon a Piazza de' Signori. One of them, the
Palazzo del Municipio, is a shapeless unfinished block of masonry. It is
here that the Eugubine tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and Roman
incised characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has higher
architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian palaces for
the combination of massiveness with lightness in a situation of
unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous substructures morticed into
the solid hill-side, it rears its vast rectangular bulk to a giddy
height above the town; airy loggias imposed on great forbidding masses
of brown stone, shooting aloft into a light aerial tower. The empty
halls inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views
from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate. But the final
impression made by the building is one of square, tranquil, massive
strength--perpetuity embodied in masonry--force suggesting facility by
daring and successful addition of elegance to hugeness. Vast as it is,
this pile is not forbidding, as a similarly weighty structure in the
North would be. The fine quality of the stone and the delicate though
simple mouldings of the windows give it an Italian grace.
These public palaces belong to the age of the Communes, when Gubbio was
a free town, with a policy of its own, and an important part to play in
the internecine struggles of Pope and Empire, Guelf and Ghibelline. The
ruined, deserted, degraded Palazzo Ducale reminds us of the advent of
the despots. It has been stripped of all its tarsia-work and sculpture.
Only here and there a Fe. D., with the cupping-glass of Federigo di
Montefeltro, remains to show that Gubbio once became the fairest fief of
the Urbino duchy. S. Ubaldo, who gave his name to this duke's son, was
the patron of Gubbio, and to him the cathedral is dedicated--one low
enormous vault, like a cellar or feudal banqueting hall, roofed with a
succession of solid Gothic arches. This strange old church, and the
House of Canons, buttressed on the hill beside it, have suffered less
from modernisation than most buildings in Gubbio. The latter, in
particular, helps one to understand what this city of grave palazzi must
have been, and how the mere opening of old doors and windows would
restore it to its primitive appearance. The House of the Canons has, in
fact, not yet been given over to the use of middle-class and
proletariate.
At the end of a day in Gubbio, it is pleasant to take our ease in the
primitive hostelry, at the back of which foams a mountain-torrent,
rushing downward from the Apennines. The Gubbio wine is very fragrant,
and of a rich ruby colour. Those to whom the tints of wine and jewels
give a pleasure not entirely childish, will take delight in its specific
blending of tawny hues with rose. They serve the table still, at Gubbio,
after the antique Italian fashion, covering it with a cream-coloured
linen cloth bordered with coarse lace--the creases of the press, the
scent of old herbs from the wardrobe, are still upon it--and the board
is set with shallow dishes of warm, white earthenware, basket-worked in
open lattice at the edge, which contain little separate messes of meat,
vegetables, cheese, and comfits. The wine stands in strange, slender
phials of smooth glass, with stoppers; and the amber-coloured bread lies
in fair round loaves upon the cloth. Dining thus is like sitting down to
the supper at Emmaus, in some picture of Gian Bellini or of Masolino.
The very bareness of the room--its open rafters, plastered walls,
primitive settees, and red-brick floor, on which a dog sits waiting for
a bone--enhances the impression of artistic delicacy in the table.