Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed.
Some typographical errors have been corrected. A list follows the
text. No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the printed
accentuation or spelling of French and Italian names or words. Some
illustration-markings have been moved from mid-paragraph for ease of
reading. (etext transcriber's note)
Italian Highways and Byways From a Motor Car
_WORKS OF_
_FRANCIS MILTOUN_
_Rambles on the Riviera_ $2.50
_Rambles in Normandy_ 2.50
_Rambles in Brittany_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals of Southern France_ 2.50
_In the Land of Mosques and Minarets_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and
the Loire Country_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and
the Basque Provinces_ 3.00
_Italian Highways and Byways from a
Motor Car_ 3.00
_The Automobilist Abroad_ _net_ 3.00
_Postage Extra_
_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_
_New England Building, Boston, Mass._
[Illustration: In Bologna]
Italian Highways and
Byways from a Motor Car
BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
_O. N. I._
Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Castles and
Chateaux of Old Navarre," "In the Land of Mosques and
Minarets," etc.
_With Pictures_
BY BLANCHE MCMANUS
[Illustration]
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1909
_Copyright, 1909_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, May, 1909
Electrotyped and Printed at
THE COLONIAL PRESS:
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
[Illustration: _Contents_]
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WAY ABOUT ITALY 1
II. OF ITALIAN MEN AND MANNERS 23
III. CHIANTI AND MACARONI 41
IV. ITALIAN ROADS AND ROUTES 60
V. IN LIGURIA 81
VI. THE RIVIERA DI LEVANTE 108
VII. ON TUSCAN ROADS 124
VIII. FLORENTINE BACKGROUNDS 144
IX. THE ROAD TO ROME 164
X. THE CAMPAGNA AND BEYOND 181
XI. LA BELLA NAPOLI 196
XII. THE BEAUTIFUL BAY OF NAPLES 207
XIII. ACROSS UMBRIA TO THE ADRIATIC 225
XIV. BY ADRIATIC'S SHORE 237
XV. ON THE VIA ÆMILIA 260
XVI. I VENETIA 277
XVII. THROUGH ITALIAN LAKELAND 309
XVIII. MILAN AND THE PLAINS OF LOMBARDY 333
XIX. TURIN AND THE ALPINE GATEWAYS 346
XX. FROM THE ITALIAN LAKES TO THE RIVIERA 360
INDEX 371
[Illustration: _List of_ Illustrations]
PAGE
IN BOLOGNA (_See page_ 266) _Frontispiece_
MAP OF ITALY _facing_ 2
ITALY IN THE XVIII CENTURY (map) 24
BARBERINO DI MUGELLO _facing_ 26
A CHIANTI SELLER _facing_ 32
A WAYSIDE TRATTORIA _facing_ 42
ROAD MAP OF NORTH ITALY _facing_ 72
ITALIAN ROAD SIGNS 77
PROFILE ROAD MAP, BOLOGNA--FLORENCE 79
PALAZZO DORIA, GENOA _facing_ 100
GENOA (map) 101
SUN DIAL, GENOA 106
RAPALLO _facing_ 110
RAPALLO AND ITS GULF (map) 111
LUCCA (arms) 122
ON A TUSCAN HIGHWAY _facing_ 124
FLORENCE AND ITS PALACES (map) 134
TORCH-HOLDERS, PALAZZO STROZZI, FLORENCE 136
PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE _facing_ 136
A LANTERN, PALAZZO STROZZI, FLORENCE 137
SAN GIMIGNANO _facing_ 138
VOLTERRA (map) 140
VILLA PALMIERI (diagram) 148
FIESOLE 150
PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA, SIENA _facing_ 164
ORVIETO _facing_ 168
ARMS OF VARIOUS PAPAL FAMILIES 172
CASTLE OF SANT'ANGELO, ROME _facing_ 174
PALAZZO VATICANO (diagram) 175
THE BORGIA WINDOW, ROME _facing_ 176
PAPAL ARMS OF CAESAR BORGIA 177
ARMS OF A MEDICIS PRELATE 178
VILLA MEDICI, ROME _facing_ 178
SUBIACO _facing_ 190
VILLA D'ESTE, TIVOLI _facing_ 192
HADRIAN'S VILLA (diagram) 194
NAPLES (diagram) 196
CASTELLO DELL'OVO, NAPLES _facing_ 202
THE BAY OF NAPLES (map) 208
ISCHIA _facing_ 212
LAVA BEDS OF VESUVIAS (map) 213
THE EXCAVATIONS OF POMPEII (diagram) 216
THE ENVIRONS OF POMPEII _facing_ 218
ASSISI (arms) 228
ASSISI: ITS WALLS, CASTLE, AND CHURCH (diagram) 229
ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL, PERUGIA _facing_ 230
PALAZZO DUCALE, URBINO _facing_ 232
BRINDISI; THE TERMINAL COLUMN OF THE APPIAN WAY 240
TRAJAN'S ARCH, ANCONA _facing_ 242
CASTEL MALATESTA, RIMINI _facing_ 244
PALAZZO DI TEODORICO, RAVENNA _facing_ 248
COLUMN TO GASTON DE FOIX, RAVENNA 249
THE MADONNA OF CHIOGGIA 252
BORGIA ARMS 254
FERRARA _facing_ 254
CASA DEL PETRARCA, ARQUA 259
BOLOGNA (diagram) 267
THE LEANING TOWERS OF BOLOGNA _facing_ 268
PARMA (arms) 272
PIACENZA (diagram) 275
PADUA (arms) 278
IN PADUA _facing_ 280
PALACES OF THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE (diagram) 289
THE SO-CALLED "HOUSE OF DESDEMONA," VENICE _facing_ 290
ASOLO 296
VICENZA (diagram) 300
VICENZA _facing_ 302
SEAL OF VERONA 304
PALLAZZO DUCAL, MANTUA 311
ON THE LAGO DI GARDA _facing_ 314
CASTLE OF BRESCIA _facing_ 316
BERGAMO _facing_ 318
THE ITALIAN LAKES (map) 319
ON THE LAGO DI COMO _facing_ 322
CADENABBIA 324
ON THE LAGO DI MAGGIORE _facing_ 326
ORTA _facing_ 330
A LOMBARD FÊTE _facing_ 334
THE ANCIENT CASTLE OF MILAN _facing_ 338
THE IRON CROWN OF LOMBARDY 345
PALAZZO MADONNA, TURIN _facing_ 346
ON THE STRADA, MONCENISIO _facing_ 350
CASTLE OF FÉNIS _facing_ 358
Italian Highways and Byways
From a Motor Car
CHAPTER I
THE WAY ABOUT ITALY
One travels in Italy chiefly in search of the picturesque, but in
Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice or Milan, and in the larger towns lying
between, there is, in spite of the romantic association of great names,
little that appeals to one in a personal sense. One admires what Ruskin,
Hare or Symonds tells one to admire, gets a smattering of the romantic
history of the great families of the palaces and villas of Rome and
Florence, but absorbs little or nothing of the genuine feudal traditions
of the background regions away from the well-worn roads.
Along the highways and byways runs the itinerary of the author and
illustrator of this book, and they have thus been able to view many of
the beauties and charms of the countryside which have been unknown to
most travellers in Italy in these days of the modern railway.
_Alla Campagna_ was our watchword as we set out to pass as many of our
Italian days and nights as possible in places little celebrated in
popular annals, a better way of knowing Italy than one will ever know it
when viewed simply from the Vatican steps or Frascati's gardens.
The palaces and villas of Rome, Florence and Venice are known to most
European travellers--as they know Capri, Vesuvius or Amalfi; but of the
grim castles of Ancona, of Rimini and Ravenna, and of the classic charms
of Taormina or of Sarazza they know considerably less; and still less of
Monte Cristo's Island, of Elba, of Otranto, and of the little
hidden-away mountain towns of the Alps of Piedmont and the Val d'Aoste.
The automobile, as a means of getting about, has opened up many old and
half-used byways, and the automobile traveller of to-day may confidently
assert that he has come to know the countryside of a beloved land as it
was not even possible for his grandfathers to know it.
The Italian tour may be made as a conducted tour, as an educative tour,
as a mere butterfly tour (as it often has been), or as a honeymoon
trip, but the reason for its making is always the same; the fact that
Italy is a soft, fair, romantic land where many things have existed, and
still exist, that may be found nowhere else on earth.
The romance of travel and the process of gathering legends and tales of
local manners and customs is in no way spoiled because of modern means
of travel. Many a hitherto unexploited locality, with as worthy a
monumental shrine as many more celebrated, will now become accessible,
perhaps even well known.
The pilgrim goes to Italy because of his devotion to religion, or to art
or architecture, and, since this is the reason for his going, it is this
reason, too, which has caused the making of more travel books on Italy
than on all other continental countries combined. There are some who
affect only "old masters" or literary shrines, others who crave palaces
or villas, and yet others who haunt the roulette tables of Monte Carlo,
Biarritz, or some exclusive Club in the "Eternal City." European travel
is all things to all men.
The pilgrims that come to Italy in increasing numbers each year are not
all born and bred of artistic tastes, but the expedition soon brings a
glimmer of it to the most sordid soul that ever took his amusements
apart from his edification, and therein lies the secret of pleasurable
travel for all classes. The automobilist should bear this in mind and
not eat up the roadway through Æmilia at sixty miles an hour simply
because it is possible. There are things to see en route, though none of
your speeding friends have ever mentioned them. Get acquainted with them
yourself and pass the information on to the next. That is what the
automobile is doing for modern travel--more than the stage or the
railway ever did, and more than the aeroplane ever will!
One does not forget the American who went home to the "Far West" and
recalled Rome as the city where he bought an alleged panama hat (made
probably at Leghorn). He is no myth. One sees his like every day. He who
hurried his daughter away from the dim outlined aisles of Milan's Gothic
wonder to see the new electric light works and the model tramway station
was one of these, but he was the better for having done a round of the
cathedrals of Italy, even if he did get a hazy idea of them mixed up
with his practical observations on street-lighting and transportation.
Superficial Italian itineraries have been made often, and their
chronicles set down. They are still being made, and chronicled, but the
makers of guide books have, as yet, catered but little to the class of
leisurely travellers, a class who would like to know where some of these
unexploited monuments exist; where these unfamiliar histories and
legends may be heard, and how they may all be arrived at, absorbed and
digested. The people of the countryside, too, are usually more
interesting than those of the towns. One has only to compare the Italian
peasant and his picturesque life with the top-hatted and frock-coated
Roman of to-day to arrive quickly to a conclusion as to which is typical
of his surroundings. The Medicis, the Borgias, and the Colonnas have
gone, and to find the real romantic Italian and his manner of life one
has to hunt him in the small towns.
The modern traveller in Italy by road will do well to recall the
conditions which met the traveller of past days. The mere recollection
of a few names and dates will enable the automobilist to classify his
impressions on the road in a more definite and satisfying manner than if
he took no cognizance of the pilgrims who have gone before.
Chaucer set out ostensibly for Genoa in 1373 and incidentally met
Petrarch at Padua and talked shop. A monk named Felix, from Ulm on the
banks of the Danube, en route for Jerusalem, stopped off at Venice and
wrote things down about it in his diary, which he called a "faithful
description." Albrecht Durer visited Venice in 1505 and made friends
with many there, and from Venice went to Bologna and Ferrara. An English
crusading knight in the same century "took in" Italy en route to the
Holy Land, entering the country via Chambéry and Aiguebelle--the most
delightful gateway even to-day. Automobilists should work this itinerary
out on some diagrammatic road map. Martin Luther, "with some business to
transact with the Pope's Vicar," passed through Milan, Pavia, Bologna
and Florence on his way to Rome, and Rabelais in 1532 followed in the
train of Cardinal du Bellay, and his account of how he "saw the Pope" is
interesting reading in these days when even personally-conducted
tourists look forward to the same thing. Joachim du Bellay's "visions of
Rome" are good poetry, but as he was partisan to his own beloved _Loire
gaulois_, to the disparagement of the _Tiber latin_, their topographical
worth is somewhat discounted.
Sir Philip Sidney was in Padua and Venice in 1573, and he brought back a
portrait of himself painted in the latter city by Paul Veronese, as
tourists to-day carry away wine glasses with their initials embossed on
them. The sentiment is the same, but taste was better in the old days.
Rubens was at Venice in 1600, and there are those who say that
Shakespeare got his local colour "on the spot." Mr. Sidney Lee says no!
Back to the land, as Dante, Petrarch, even Horace and Virgil, have said.
Dante the wayfarer was a mighty traveller, and so was Petrach. Horace
and Virgil took their viewpoints from the Roman capital, but they penned
faithful pictures which in setting and colouring have, in but few
instances, changed unto this day.
Dante is believed to have been in Rome when the first sentence was
passed upon him, and from the Eternal City one can follow his
journeyings northward by easy stages to Siena and Arezzo, to the Alps,
to Padua, on the Aemilian Way, his wandering on Roman roads, his flight
by sea to Marseilles, again at Verona and finally at Ravenna, the last
refuge.
This was an Italian itinerary worth the doing. Why should we modern
travellers not take some historical personage and follow his (or her)
footsteps from the cradle to the grave? To follow in the footsteps of
Jeanne d'Arc, of Dante Alighieri, or of Petrarch and his Laura--though
their ways were widely divergent--or of Henri IV, François I, or Charles
V, would add a zest and reason for being to an automobile tour of Europe
which no twenty-four hour record from London to Monte Carlo, or eighteen
hours from Naples to Geneva could possibly have.
There is another class of travellers who will prefer to wax solemn over
the notorious journey to Italy of Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand. It
was a most romantic trip, as the world knows. De Musset even had to ask
his mother's consent to make it. The past mistress of eloquence appeared
at once on the maternal threshold and promised to look after the young
man--like a mother.
De Musset's brother saw the pair off "on a misty melancholy evening,"
and noted amongst other dark omens, that "the coach in which the
travellers took their seats was the thirteenth to leave the yard," but
for the life of us we cannot share his solemnity. The travellers met
Stendhal at Lyons. After supper "he was very merry, got rather drunk and
danced round the table in his big topboots." In Florence they could not
make up their minds whether to go to Rome or to Venice, and settled the
matter by the toss of a coin. Is it possible to care much for the
fortunes of two such heedless cynics?
It is such itineraries as have here been outlined, the picking up of
more or less indistinct trails and following them a while, that gives
that peculiar charm to Italian travel. Not the dreamy, idling mood that
the sentimentalists would have us adopt, but a burning feverishness that
hardly allows one to linger before any individual shrine. Rather one is
pushed from behind and drawn from in front to an ever unreachable goal.
One never finishes his Italian travels. Once the habit is formed, it
becomes a disease. We care not that Cimabue is no longer considered to
be throned the painter of the celebrated Madonna in Santa Maria Novella,
or that Andrea del Sarto and his wife are no longer Andrea del Sarto and
his wife, so long as we can weave together a fabric which pleases us,
regardless of the new criticism,--or the old, for that matter.
We used to go to the places marked on our railway tickets, and "stopped
off" only as the regulations allowed. Now we go where fancy wills and
stop off where the vagaries of our automobile force us to. And we get
more notions of Italy into our heads in six weeks than could otherwise
be acquired in six months.
One need not go so very far afield to get away from the conventional in
Italy. Even that strip of coastline running from Menton in France to
Reggio in Calabria is replete with unknown, or at least unexploited,
little corners, which have a wealth of picturesque and romantic charm,
and as noble and impressive architectural monuments as one may find in
the peninsula.
_Com è bella_, say the French honeymoon couples as they enter Italy via
the Milan Express over the Simplon; _com è bella_, say one and all who
have trod or ridden the highways and byways up and down and across
Italy; _com è bella_ is the pæan of every one who has made the Italian
round, whether they have been frequenters of the great cities and towns,
or have struck out across country for themselves and found some
creeper-clad ruin, or a villa in some ideally romantic situation which
the makers of guide-books never heard of, or have failed to mention. All
this is possible to the traveller by road in Italy, and one's only
unpleasant memories are of the _buona mano_ of the brigands of hotel
servants which infest the large cities and towns--about the only
brigands one meets in Italy to-day.
The real Italy, the old Italy, still exists, though half hidden by the
wall of progress built up by young liberty-loving Italy since the days
of Garibaldi; but one has to step aside and look for the old régime. It
cannot always be discovered from the window of a railway carriage or a
hotel omnibus, though it is often brought into much plainer view from
the cushions of an automobile. "Motor Cars and the Genus Loci" was a
very good title indeed for an article which recently appeared in a
quarterly review. The writer ingeniously discovered--as some of the rest
of us have also--the real mission of the automobile. It takes us into
the heart of the life of a country instead of forcing us to travel in a
prison van on iron rails.
Let the tourist in Italy "do"--and "do" as thoroughly as he likes--the
galleries of Rome, Florence, Siena, and Venice, but let him not neglect
the more appealing and far more natural uncontaminated beauties of the
countryside and the smaller towns, such as Caserta, Arezzo, Lucca,
Montepulciana, Barberino in Mugello and Ancona, and as many others as
fit well into his itinerary from the Alps to Ætna or from Reggio to
Ragusa. They lack much of the popular renown that the great centres
possess, but they still have an aspect of the reality of the life of
mediævalism which is difficult to trace when surrounded by all the
up-to-date and supposedly necessitous things which are burying Rome's
ruins deeper than they have ever yet been buried. It is difficult indeed
to imagine what old Rome was like, with Frascati given over to "hunt
parties" and the hotel drawing rooms replete with Hungarian orchestras.
It is difficult, indeed!
Italy is a vast kinetoscope of heterogeneous sights and scenes and
memories and traditions such as exist on no other part of the earth's
surface. Of this there is no doubt, and yet each for himself may find
something new, whether it is a supposed "secret of the Vatican" or an
unheard of or forgotten romance of an Italian villa. This is the _genus
loci_ of Italy, the charm of Italy, the unresistible lodestone which
draws tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands thither each
year, from England and America. Italy is the most romantic touring
ground in all the world, and, though its highways and byways are not the
equal in surface of the "good roads" of France, they are, _in good
weather_, considerably better than the automobilist from overseas is
used to at home. At one place we found fifty kilometres of the worst
road we had ever seen in Italy immediately followed by a like stretch
of the best. The writer does not profess to be able to explain the
anomaly. In general the roads in the mountains are better than those at
low level, so one should plan his itineraries accordingly.
The towns and cities of Italy are very well known to all well-read
persons, but of the countryside and its manners and customs this is not
so true. Modern painters have limned the outlines of San Marco at Venice
and the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, on countless canvases, and
pictures of the "Grand Canal" and of "Vesuvius in Eruption" are familiar
enough; but paintings of the little hill towns, the wayside shrines, the
olive and orange groves, and vineyards, or a sketch of some quaint
roadside albergo made whilst the automobile was temporarily held up by a
tire blow out, is quite as interesting and not so common. There is many
a pine-clad slope, convent-crowned hill-top and castled crag in Italy as
interesting as the more famous, historic sites.
To appreciate Italy one must know it from all sides and in all its
moods. The hurried itinerary which comprises getting off the ship at
Naples, doing the satellite resorts and "sights" which fringe Naples
Bay, and so on to Rome, Florence and Venice, and thence across
Switzerland, France and home is too frequently a reality. The
automobilist may have a better time of it if he will but be rational;
but, for the hurried flight above outlined, he should leave his
automobile at home and make the trip by "train de luxe." It would be
less costly and he would see quite as much of Italy--perhaps more. The
leisurely automobile traveller who rolls gently in and out of hitherto
unheard of little towns and villages is in another class and learns
something of a beloved land and the life of the people that the hurried
tourist will never suspect.
The genuine vagabond traveller, even though he may be a lover of art and
architecture, and knows just how bad Canova's lions really are, is quite
as much concerned with the question as to why Italians drink wine red
instead of white, or why the sunny Sicilian will do more quarrelling and
less shovelling of dirt on a railroad or a canal job than his northern
brother. It is interesting, too, to learn something--by stumbling upon
it as we did--about Carrara marble, Leghorn hats and macaroni, which
used to form the bulk of the cargoes of ships sailing from Italian ports
to those of the United States. The Canovas, like the Botticellis, are
always there--it is forbidden to export art treasures from Italy, so
one can always return to confirm his suspicions--but the marble has
found its competitor elsewhere, Leghorn hats are now made in far larger
quantities in Philadelphia, and the macaroni sent out from Brooklyn in a
month would keep all Italy from starvation for a year.
The Italian picture and its framing is like no other, whether one
commences with the snow-crested Alps of Piedmont and finishes with Bella
Napoli and its dazzling blue, or whether he finishes with the Queen of
the Adriatic and begins with Capri. It is always Italy. The same is not
true of France. Provence might, at times, and in parts, be taken for
Spain, Algeria or Corsica; Brittany for Ireland and Lorraine for
Germany. On the contrary Piedmont, in Italy, is nothing at all like
neighbouring Dauphiné or Savoie, nor is Liguria like Nice.
As for the disadvantages of Italian travel, they do undoubtedly exist,
as well for the automobilist as for him who travels by rail. In the
first place, in spite of the picturesque charm of the Italian
countryside, the roads are, as a whole, not by any means the equal of
those of the rest of Europe--always, of course, excepting Spain. They
are far better indeed in Algeria and Tunisia. Hotel expenses are double
what they are in France for the same sort of accommodation--for the
automobilist at any rate. Garage accommodation is seldom, if ever, to be
found in the hotel, at least not of a satisfactory kind, and when found
costs anywhere from two to three, or even five, francs a night. Gasoline
and oil are held at inflated figures, though no one seems to know who
gets all the profit that comes from the fourteen to eighteen francs
which the Italian garage keeper or grocer or druggist takes for the
usual five gallons.
With this information as a forewarning the stranger automobilist in
Italy will meet with no undue surprises except that bad weather, if he
happens to strike a spell, will considerably affect a journey that would
otherwise have proved enjoyable.
The climate of Italy is far from being uniform. It is not all orange
groves and palm trees. Throughout Piedmont and Lombardy snow and frost
are the frequent accompaniments of winter. On the other hand the summers
are hot and prolific in thunder storms. In Venetia, thanks to the
influence of the Adriatic, the climate is more equable. In the centre,
Tuscany has a more nearly regular climate. From Naples south, one
encounters almost a North African temperature, and the south wind of the
desert, the _sirocco_, here blows as it does in Algeria and Tunisia,
though tempered somewhat by having crossed the Mediterranean.
There are a hundred and twenty-five varieties of mosquitoes in Italy,
but with most of them their singing is worse than their stinging. The
Pontine Marches have long been the worst breeding places for mosquitoes
known to a suffering world. The mosquitoes of this region were supposed
to have been transmitters of malaria, so one day some Italian physicians
caught a good round batch of them and sent them up into a little village
in the Apennines whose inhabitants had never known malaria. Straightway
the whole population began to shake with the ague. That settled it, the
mosquito was a breeder of disease.
The topography of Italy is of an extraordinary variety. The plains and
wastes of Calabria are the very antitheses of that semi-circular
mountain rampart of the Alps which defines the northern frontier or of
the great solid mass of the Apennines in Central Italy. Italy by no
means covers the vast extent of territory that the stranger at first
presupposes. From the northern frontier of Lombardy to the toe of the
Calabrian boot is considerable of a stretch to be sure, but for all that
the actual area is quite restricted, when compared with that of other
great continental powers. This is all the more reason for the
automobilist to go comfortably along and not speed up at every town and
village he comes to.
The automobilist in Italy should make three vows before crossing the
frontier. The first not to attempt to see everything; the second to
review some of the things he has already seen or heard of; and the third
to leave the beaten track at least once and launch out for himself and
try to discover something that none of his friends have ever seen.
The beaten track in Italy is not by any means an uninteresting
itinerary, and there is no really unbeaten track any more. What one can
do, and does, if he is imbued with the proper spirit of travel, is to
cover as much little-travelled ground as his instincts prompt him.
Between Florence and Rome and between Rome and Naples there is quite as
much to interest even the conventional traveller as in those cities
themselves, if he only knows where to look for it and knows the purport
of all the remarkable and frequent historical monuments continually
springing into view. Obscure villages, with good country inns where the
arrival of foreigners is an event, are quite as likely to offer
pleasurable sensations as those to be had at the six, eight or ten franc
a day pension of the cities.
The landscape motives for the artist, to be found in Italy, are the most
varied of any country on earth. It is a wide range indeed from the
vineyard covered hillsides of Vicenza to the more grandiose country
around Bologna, to the dead-water lagoons before Venice is reached, to
the rocky coasts of Calabria, or to the chestnut groves of Ætna and the
Roman Campagna.
The travelling American or Englishman is himself responsible for many of
the inconveniences to which he is subjected in Italy. The Italian may
know how to read his own class distinctions, but all Americans are alike
to him. Englishmen, as a rule, know the language better and they get on
better--very little. The Frenchman and the German have very little
trouble. They have less false pride than we.
The American who comes to Italy in an automobile represents untold
wealth to the simple Italian; those who drive in two horse carriages and
stop at big hotels are classed in the same category. One may scarcely
buy anything in a decent shop, or enter an ambitious looking café, but
that the hangers-on outside mark him for a millionaire, while, if he is
so foolish as to fling handfuls of _soldi_ to an indiscriminate crowd of
ragamuffins from the balcony of his hotel, he will be pestered half to
death as long as he stays in the neighbourhood. And he deserves what he
gets! There is a way to counteract all this but each must learn it for
himself. There is no set formula.
Beggars are importunate in certain places in Italy be-ridden of
tourists, but after all no more so than elsewhere, and the travelling
public, as much as anything else, conduces to the continued existence of
the plague. If Italy had to choose between suppressing beggars or
foregoing the privilege of having strangers from overseas coming to view
her monuments she would very soon choose the former. If the beggars
could not make a living at their little game they too would stop of
their own accord. The question resolves itself into a strictly personal
one. If it pleases you to throw pennies from your balcony, your carriage
or your automobile to a gathered assembly of curious, do so! It is the
chief means of proving, to many, that they are superior to "foreigners!"
The little-travelled person does this everywhere,--on the terrace of
Shepheard's at Cairo, on the boulevard café terraces at Algiers, from
the deck of his ship at Port Said, from the tables even of the Café de
la Paix;--so why should he not do it at Naples, at Venice, at Rome? For
no reason in the world, except that it's a nuisance to other travellers,
decidedly an objectionable practice to hotel, restaurant and shop
keepers, and a cause of great annoyance and trouble to police and civic
authorities. The following pages have been written and illustrated as a
truthful record of what two indefatigable automobile travellers have
seen and felt.
We were dutifully ravished by the splendours of the Venetian palaces,
and duly impressed by the massiveness of Sant'Angelo; but we were more
pleased by far in coming unexpectedly upon the Castle of Fénis in the
Valle d'Aoste, one of the finest of all feudal fortresses; or the Castle
of Rimini sitting grim and sad in the Adriatic plain; or the Villa
Cesarini outside of Perugia, which no one has ever reckoned as a
wonder-work of architecture, but which all the same shows all of the
best of Italian villa elements.
Our taste has been catholic, and the impressions set forth herein are
our own. Others might have preferred to admire some splendid church
whilst we were speculating as to some great barbican gateway or watch
tower. A saintly shrine might have for some more appeal than a hillside
fortified _Rocca_; and again some convent nunnery might have a
fascination that a rare old Renaissance house, now turned into a
macaroni factory, or a wine press, might not.