THE RIVIERA DI LEVANTE
The gorgeous panorama of coast scenery continues east of Genoa as it has
obtained for some three hundred kilometres to the west. In fact the road
through Nervi and Recco is finer, if anything, and more hilly, though
less precipitous, than that portion immediately to the westward of
Genoa.
Between Genoa and Spezia the railway passes through fifty tunnels. The
traveller by the high road has decidedly the best of it, but there are
always those level crossings to take into consideration though fewer of
them.
Nervi is a place of German hotels, much beer and an unaccommodating tram
line. The Grand Hotel gives access to the gardens of the villa of the
Marchese Gropollo, and this of itself is an attraction that Nervi's
other rather tawdry inns lack.
Recco is an attractive and populous town, but has no monuments of note.
The highroad here climbs up the mountain of Portofino where the
promontory joins the mainland, and drops down the other side to Rapallo,
Santa Margherita, Cervara and Portofino. High up on the mountain cape is
the Monastery of San Fruttoso, a picturesque and solitary conventual
establishment in whose chapel are many tombs of the Dorias, all with
good Gothic sculptures. In the convent of Cervara, en route to the
village of Portofino on the east side of the cape, François I, just
after he lost "all save honour" at the battle of Pavia, was imprisoned
previous to his voyage to Spain in the galleys which were to carry him a
captive to the domain of Charles Quint.
The roads along here are quite the best of the whole extent of the
eastern and western Italian Rivieras. They are encumbered with a new
class of traffic not met with further west. Up over the mountain of
Portofino winds the road in genuine mountain fashion though beautifully
graded and kept. At almost any turning one is likely to meet a great
lumbering char-a-banc crowded with tourists, with five, six or eight
horses caparisoned like a circus pageant, with bells around their necks,
pheasants' feathers bobbing in their top-knots, and a lusty Ligurian on
the hindermost seat blowing a coaching horn for all he is worth. This
is the Italian and German pleasure seeker's way of amusing himself. He
likes it, the rest of us don't!
Santa Margherita is now a full-blown resort with great hotels,
bathing-machines and all the usual attributes of a place of its class.
Lace-making and coral-fishing are the occupations of the inhabitants who
do not live off of exploiting the tourists. Both products are made here
(and in Belgium and Birmingham) in the imitation varieties, so one had
best beware.
If one doesn't speak Italian, German will answer in all these resorts of
the Levantine Riviera, quite as well as French or English. The
"Tea-Shop" and "American Bar" signs here give way to those of "Munich"
and "Pilsner."
The village of Portofino itself is delightful; a quaint little fishing
port surrounded by tree-clad hills running to the water's edge. There is
a Hôtel Splendide, once a villa of the accepted Ligurian order, and a
less pretentious, more characteristic, Albergo Delfino lower down on the
quay. The arms of the little port are a spouting dolphin as befits its
seafaring aspect, so the Albergo Delfino certainly ought to have the
preference for this reason if no other.
[Illustration: Rapallo]
On the cliff road running around the promontory from Portofino to
Rapallo are a half a dozen more or less modern villas of questionable
architecture, but of imposing proportions, and one and all delightfully
disposed.
[Illustration: Map Rapallo and its Gulf]
The Villa Pagana is the property of the Marchese Spinola, and the Castel
Paraggi, the property of a gentleman prosaically named Brown, is
theatrically and delightfully disposed, though bizarre in form.
Rapallo, at the head of the bay, is a continuation of what has gone
before. There are great hotels and pensions, and many of them. Its
campaniles and church towers set off the framing of Rapallo
delightfully. The Hôtel de l'Europe has more than once been the abode
of Queen Margherita of Italy, and most of the notables who pass this
way. The hotel curiously enough seems none the worse for it; it is good,
reasonable in price and conveniently situated on the quay, overlooking a
picturesque granite tower built up from a foundation sunk in the waters
of the Mediterranean. The Corsair Dragutte, a buccaneer of romantic
days, came along and plundered these Ligurian towns as often as he felt
like it. Frequently they paid no attention to his visits, save to give
up what blackmail and tribute he demanded; but Rapallo built this tower
as a sort of watch tower or fortress. It is an admirable example of a
sentinel watch tower, and might well be classed as a diminutive
fortress-château.
From Rapallo to Chiavari the coast road winds and rises and falls with
wonderful variety between villa gardens and vineyards. On the slopes
above are dotted tiny dwellings, and church towers point skywards in
most unexpected places.
The chief architectural attributes of Chiavari are its arcaded house
fronts, a queer blend of round and pointed arches, and columns of all
orders. The effect is undeniably good. The town was one of the most
important in the old Genoese Republic, save the capital itself.
The towers scattered here and there through the town and in the
neighbourhood are all feudal relics, albeit they are fragmentary. The
Castle which the native points out with pride is neither very
magnificent nor very elegant, but is indicative of the style of building
of the feudal time in these parts. Decidedly the best things of Chiavari
are its house fronts, and some crazy old streets running back from the
main thoroughfares. There are some slate quarries in the neighbourhood
and a ten foot slab, larger than the top of a billiard table, can be cut
if occasion requires. The church of San Salvatore near Lavagna, where
the quarries are, was founded by Pope Innocent IV in 1243.
Lavagna, near by, has a Palazzo Rosso, in that it is built of a reddish
stone, though that is not its official name. It was an appanage of the
Fieschi family, who owned to Popes, Cardinals and soldiers in the
gallant days of the Genoese Republic. Sestri-Levante, a half a dozen
kilometres beyond Chiavari, is the last of the Riviera resorts. It is a
mere strip of villa and hotel-lined roadway with a delightful water
front and a charming and idyllic background.
Spezia is reached only by climbing a lengthy mountain road up over the
Pass of the Bracco; sixty kilometres in all from Sestri to Spezia. The
highroad now leaves the coast to wind around inland over the lower
slopes of the Apennines. The railway itself follows the shore.
It is a finely graded road with entrancing far-away vistas of the sea,
the distant snow-capped summits of the mountains to the north and, off
southward, the more gently rising Tuscan hills.
After having climbed some twenty-one hundred feet above the sea, the
highroad runs down through the valley of the Vara, until finally at
Spezia, Italy's great marine arsenal, one comes again to the
Mediterranean shore.
Just before Spezia is reached, snuggled close in a little bay, is
Vernazza--where the wine comes from, at least, the wine the praises of
which were sung by Boccaccio "as the paragon of wines." Wine is still a
product of the region, but its quality may not be what it once was.
Spezia is a snug, conservative and exclusive military and naval town.
The gold-lace and blue-cloth individuals of the "service" dominate
everything, even to the waiters in the hotels and cafés. No one else has
a show.
The Hotel Croix de Malte (with a French name be it observed) is the
chic hotel of Spezia, with prices on a corresponding scale, and no
garage. The Albergo Italia, equally well situated, a typical Italian
house of its class, is more modest in its prices and better as to its
food. It has no garage either, but under the circumstances, that of
itself is no drawback. Across the street, in a vacant store, you may
lodge your automobile for two francs a night, or for one franc if you
tell the ambitious and obliging little man who runs it that he demands
too much. He is really the best thing we found in Spezia. We had run out
of gasoline in entering the city, the long run down hill flattened out
into a plain just before the town was reached, but he accommodatingly
sent out a five gallon tin ("original package" goods from Philadelphia)
and would take no increase in price for his trouble. Such a thing in the
automobile line ought to be encouraged. We pay "through the nose," as
the French say, often enough as it is.
Spezia's suburban villas are a natural outcome of its environment, but
they are all modern and have, none of them, the flavour of historic
romanticism about them.
An ancient castle tower on the hills above Spezia is about the only
feudal ruin near by. The viper, the device of the Viscontis, is still
graven above its entrance door to recall the fact that the device of the
Milanese nobles was a viper, and that their natures, too, took after
that of the unlovely thing. The Viper of Milan and the Viscontis is a
worthy cage companion to the hedgehog of François I.
Spezia's gulf is all that Spezia is not; romantic, lovely and varied. It
was described in ancient times by Strabo, the geographer, and by
Persius. Little of its topographical surroundings or climatic attributes
have changed since that day.
The road down the coast from Spezia is marked on the maps as perfectly
flat, but within a dozen kilometres, before Arcola is reached, is as
stiff a couple of hair-pin turns as one will remember ever having come
across suddenly in his travels. They are not formidable hills, perhaps,
but they are surprising, and since one has to drop down again
immediately to sea level they seem entirely unnecessary.
The river Magra which enters the sea just east of Spezia divided the
Genoese territory from that of Tuscany.
"Macra che per cammin corto
Lo Gonovese parta dal Toscano."
--_Dante_, "Paradisio."
Sarzana is not a tourist point, but the traveller by road will not be in
a hurry to pass it by. It has, curiously enough, an Albergo della Nuova
York, built on the fortification walls of feudal days. It is not for
this, though, that one lingers at Sarzana. The Bonapartes were
originally descended from Sarzana ancestry. It was proven by
contemporary documents that a certain Buonaparte, a notary, lived here
in 1264. Supposedly, it was this limb of the law who became the chief of
the Corsican family.
The old feudal castle of Sarzana, with its round tower, its moat and its
later Renaissance gateway is the very ideal of mouldy mediævalism.
From Sarzana, it is, figuratively speaking, but a step to Carrara and
Massa, the centres of the marble industry. Of all the materials the
artist requires, none is so much sought after as the pure white marble
of Carrara. The sculptured marble of Carrara goes out into the world
from thousands of ateliers to thousands of resting places but it all
comes from this great white mountainside in the Apennines which has made
the region famous and rich. This little Tuscan town of Carrara owes its
all to its, seemingly, inexhaustible stores of milk-white, fine-grained
marbles. More especially is the marble of Carrara in demand for
statuary; but in all the finer forms of carven stone it finds its place
supreme.
Men and beasts, oxen, horses and mules, and carts of all shapes and
sizes, make the vicinity of Carrara the centre of an uproar that would
be maddening if one had to live in it; but it is all very interesting to
the stranger, and speaks more loudly than words of the importance of the
great industry of the neighbourhood.
All around are great heaps--mountains almost--of broken, splintered
marble; the débris merely of the great blocks which have, in times past,
been quarried and sent to all quarters of the earth.
The quarries of Carrara have been worked ever since the Roman epoch, and
the tufted hillsides round about have been burrowed to their bowels in
taking out this untold wealth which, without exaggeration, has been as
great as that of many mines of gold.
Quite twenty per cent. of the population work at the industry, and five
hundred men are actually engaged in hewing out and slicing off the great
blocks. Ten thousand, at least, find their livelihood dependent upon the
industry, and two hundred thousand tons is a normal annual output; in
price, valued at from 150 to 1,500 francs the cubic metre.
At Massa one joins the main road again running south by the shore. One
never hears of the conventional tourist stopping at Massa; but we found
the Hotel Massa and its dinner in the garden worth the taking and agreed
that the Château, in base rococo style, (now the public administrative
buildings), a curiosity worth seeing. Massa has a Napoleonic memory
hanging over it, too, in that it was once the residence of the Little
Corporal's sister. Massa's Castello, high above all else in the town, is
grim, lofty and spectacular though to be viewed only from without. Massa
is worth making a note of, even by the hurried traveller.
Since leaving Sarzana the high road has become worse and worse, until in
the vicinity of Carrara and Massa it is almost indescribably bad. There
is no such stretch of bad road in Europe as this awful fifty kilometres,
for it continues all the way to Lucca and Livorno. The vast amount of
traffic drawn by ten head of oxen at a time is what does it of course,
and as there is no way around one has to go through it, though it's a
heart-breaking job to one that cares anything for his automobile.
Pietrasanta, eight kilometres farther on, was, for us, an undiscovered
beauty spot and historic shrine; at least, none of us had ever heard of
it till we passed the portals. Now we know that the walls, through which
we passed, were the same that the blood-thirsty, battling Lorenzo di
Medici besieged in 1482; and that the ancient bronze font in the
Baptistery was the work of Donatello. We were glad that Massa and
Pietrasanta were counted in, as they should be by everyone passing this
way, even though they did take up half a day's time--all on account of
the awful road--part of which time, however, you are eating that
excellent lunch in the garden of the Hotel Massa. That time will not be
lost anyway, one must eat somewhere.
Eight kilometres beyond Massa is Viareggio, an unlovely, incipient
seaside resort for dwellers in the Tuscan towns; but a historic spot
nevertheless, and interesting from that viewpoint at any rate.
Viareggio has no villas or palaces of note, and its chief associations
for the traveller lie in its memories of Shelley and Ouida, the Marquise
de la Ramée. There is a monument, erected to Shelley in 1894,
commemorating the fact that he was drowned here, in the Tyrrhenian Sea,
and his body consumed by fire, on the shore.
It was in the village of Massarosa, near Viareggio, that that
much-abused and very abusive old lady, Ouida, the Marquis de la Ramée,
died in January, 1908. Since 1877 she had made Italy her home, and for
years she had lived here alone, not in poverty or misery, for she had a
"civil pension" which was more than sufficient to keep the wolf from the
door. She died miserable and alone however. Ouida was a more real, more
charitable person than she was given credit for being. She didn't like
the English, and Americans she liked still less, but she loved the
Italians. Whose business was it then if she chose to live among them,
with her unkempt and unwholesome-looking dogs and her slatternly
maid-of-all-work? Ouida, as she herself said, did not hate humanity; she
hated society; and she had more courage than some of the rest of us in
that she would have nothing to do with it.
The vineyards lying back of Viareggio may not be the most luxuriant in
Italy, but they blossom abundantly enough.
Lucca is thirty-five kilometres from Viareggio and the road still
bad--on to Livorno, turning to the right instead of the left at
Viareggio, it is worse.
Lucca has a right to its claim as one of the most ancient cities of
Tuscany, for it is one of the least up-to-date of Italian cities. When
Florence was still sunk in its marsh Lucca was already old, and filled
with a commercial importance which to-day finds its echo in the
distribution of the Lucca olive oil of trade which one may buy at
Vancouver, Johannesburg or Rio. Indeed the label on the bottle of olive
oil is the only reminiscence many have of Lucca.
[Illustration: LUCCA]
The decadence came to Lucca in due time and it degenerated sadly, about
its last magnificent ray being that shot out when Napoleon gave the
city to his sister Eliza Bacciochi, with the title of Princess of Lucca.
She was a real benefactress to the country, but with the fall of
Napoleon all his satellites were snuffed out, too, and then the benign
influences of the Princess Eliza were forgotten and ignored.
Southwest from Lucca, with Pisa lying between, is the great port of
Leghorn, whence are shipped the marbles of Carrara, the oil of Lucca,
the wines of Chianti and the Leghorn hats and braids of all Tuscany.
These four things keep Livorno going.
Leghorn is as modern as Lucca is antiquated and is the most cosmopolitan
of all Italian cities.
When Philip III expelled the Moors from Spain Cosmo II, Duke of Livorno,
invited two thousand of them to come to his Dukedom.
Montesquieu remarked upon this conglomerate population, and approved of
it apparently, as he called the founding and populating of the city the
master work of the Medici dynasty.