ACROSS UMBRIA TO THE ADRIATIC
The mountain district of Umbria, a country of clear outlines against
pale blue skies, is one of the most charming in the peninsula though not
the most grandly scenic.
The highway from Rome to Ancona, across Umbria, follows the itinerary of
one of the most ancient of Roman roads, the Via Valeria. The railway,
too, follows almost in the same track, though each leaves the Imperial
City, itself, by the great trunk line via Salaria and the Valley of the
Tiber.
Terni is the great junction from which radiate various other lines of
communication to all parts of the kingdom. Terni is, practically, the
geographical centre of Italy. It is a bustling manufacturing town and,
supposedly, the Interamna where Tacitus was born.
From Terni one reaches Naples, via Avezzano in 257 kilometres; Rome, via
Civita Castellana in 94 kilometres; Florence via Perugia and Arezzo in
256 kilometres and Ancona, on the shores of the Adriatic, via Foligno in
209 kilometres. All of these roads run the gamut from high to low levels
and, though in no sense to be classed as mountain roads, are
sufficiently trying to even a modern automobile to be classed as
difficult.
The Cascades of Terni used to be one of the stock sights of tourists, a
generation ago, but, truth to tell, they are not remarkable natural
beauties, and, indeed, are too apparently artificial to be admired.
Moreover one is too much "exploited" in the neighbourhood to enjoy his
visit. It costs half a lira to enter by this gate, and to leave by that
road; to cross this bridge, or descend into that cavern; and troops of
children beg soldi of you at every turn. The thing is not worth doing.
Spoleto, twenty-six kilometres away, is somewhat more interesting. It is
famous for the fine relics, which still exist, of its more magnificent
days, when, 242 B. C., it was named Spoletium.
The towers of Spoleto, like those of San Gimignano and Volterra, are its
chief glory; civic, secular and churchly towers, all blending into one
hazy mass of grim, militant power. The Franciscan convent, on the
uppermost height, seems to guard all the towers below, as a shepherd
guards his flock, or a mother hen her chickens.
In 1499 the equivocal, enigmatic Lucrezia Borgia came to inhabit the
castle of Spoleto. The fair but unholy Lucrezia was a wandering,
restless being who liked apparently to be continually on the move.
Here, in the fortress of Spoleto, Lucrezia Borgia, coming straight from
the Vatican, held for a brief year the seals of the state in her frail
hands, her father at the time being governor.
The aspect of this grim fortress-château, grim but livable, as one knows
from the historical accounts, is to-day, so far as outlines are
concerned, just as it was five centuries ago. It is grandiose, severe
and majestic, and is dominant in all the landscape round about, not even
its mountain background dwarfing its proportions. The military defence
was that portion lying lowest down in the valley, while the residence of
the governor was in the upper portion. One reads the history of three
distinct epochs in its architecture, the Gothic of the fifteenth
century, that of the sixteenth, and the later interpolated Renaissance
decorations.
Through Foligno and Assisi runs the road to Perugia. Assisi is a much
visited shrine, but Foligno is remembered by most of those who have
travelled that way only as a grimy railway junction.
[Illustration: ASSISI]
Assisi, the little Umbrian hill town, is deservedly the popular shrine
that it is. Assisi is a religious shrine, but its skyline silhouette is
more like that which properly belongs to a warlike stronghold. The city
of St. Francis is loved by men of all creeds who recall the story of the
holy man who, with poverty as a garment, trod his long way, singing,
talking to the birds and succouring all who were sore or heavy laden.
Immense antiquity is suggested by everything round about, from the
tombs of the Etruscan Necropolis, dating from 150 B.C., down to the
triple-storied convent church of San Francesco of 1230 and the Basilica
of Santa Maria degli Angeli of 1509.
[Illustration: ASSISI ITS WALLS CASTLE & CHURCH]
The now secularized convent and its triple church have all the
characteristics of a mediæval fortress when viewed from afar.
The town itself owes most, if not all, of its fame to its beloved San
Francesco. His birthplace has disappeared and its site occupied by the
Chiesa Nuova, but a part of it has been built into the church, making it
another shrine of the holy man who did so much good to his fellows
during his life, and to his native town in these late days by bringing
tens, nay, even hundreds, of thousands of tourists thither to spend
their money on local guides, cabmen and inn-keepers. A sordid point of
view some may think. But is it? What would Assisi be without the
tourists? Still wooing the Lady Poverty, there's no doubt about that.
What would Venice be without the tourists? Not what it is to-day. No
indeed. It is dead and dull enough even now at certain seasons. It would
become so for all time without the strangers.
Perugia is the big town of Umbria. To-day it boasts of twenty odd
thousand souls, but in the days when it struggled against papal control
it was even more populous. Its history is one long drawn out tale of
revolt and submission in turn, from the days when it first submitted to
the Romans in 310 B. C. until it threw its fate in with that of the
other states of Victor Emmanuel in 1860.
If ever a city was blood-baptized that honour is Perugia's. It has not a
crooked old street nor gate nor fountain nor piazza or palazzo but what
is gory with bloody memories.
Perugia was a dominant mediæval influence all through the neighbourhood
and levied tribute on all her vassal cities and towns. Foligno's walls
and ramparts had fallen and the people of Perugia came and carted off
the stone for their own needs; Arezzo stripped her churches and
palaces to provide the marbles for Perugia's cathedral.
[Illustration: _Architectural Detail, Perugia_]
Perugia's oxen are famous in literature and art, but they have almost
become a memory, though an occasional one may be seen standing in the
market place or a yoke working in the nearby fields. Electric cars haul
passengers and freight about the city at a death-dealing pace, and the
ox as a beast of burden is out-distanced and out-classed.
The ancient civilization is represented at Perugia by a remarkable
series of old fortification walls, still admirably conserved, a
kilometre or more from the centre of town, a necropolis of ten chambers,
and an antique Roman arch of Augustus.
Perugia's lode star for travellers has ever been the fact that it was
the centre of the school of Umbrian painters. This is not saying that it
has no architecture worth mentioning, for the reverse is the case.
Out from Perugia by the Porta di Elce, on the Cortona road, one passes a
couple of imposing edifices. One, from a distance, looks grandly
romantic and mediæval, but is only a base modern reproduction in cement
and timber--and for all the writer knows, steel beams as well--of an
ancient feudal castle. The other is less grand, less luxurious possibly,
but is the very ideal of an Italian country house, habitable to-day, but
surrounded with all the romantic flavour of mediævalism. It is still
called the Villa of the Cardinal by virtue of the fact that Cardinal
Fulvio della Corgna built it in 1580. Locally, it is also known as the
Villa Umberto, and it belongs to, and is inhabited by, the family of
Commendatore Ferdinando Cesaroni. Architecturally, perhaps, the villa is
not a great work, but it is marvellously satisfying to the eye by reason
of its disposition and its outlook.
Gubbio, thirty-nine kilometres away by road, is not readily accessible
by rail from Perugia, though on the direct line from Arezzo, Ancona and
Foligno.
The automobilist may reach Gubbio from Perugia in less time than the
rail-tied traveller may check his baggage and take his place in the
train.
Not many include Gubbio in their Italian tours. Its Etruscan lore and
relics have been made the subject of volumes, but little has been done
to set forth its charms for the Italian pilgrim who would seek to get
away from the herding crowds of the great cities and towns.
[Illustration: _Palazzo Ducale, Urbino_]
Gubbio's ducal palace is moss grown and weedy, so far as its rooftop and
courtyard are concerned, but it is a very warm and lively old fabric
nevertheless, and those that love historic old shrines will find much
here that they will often not discover in a well restored, highly
furbished monument kept frankly as a show-place for throngs of trippers
who cannot tell old bronze from new copper, or wrought iron from _font_.
The hurly-burly of twentieth century life has not yet reached Gubbio,
and that is why it presents itself to the visitor within its walls in
such agreeable fashion.
Off in the Marches, sixty-five kilometres from Gubbio, is the little
town of Urbino. It has a Palazzo Ducale most remarkable in its
architecture and its emplacement. It was begun in 1648 by Frederigo di
Montefeltro, on the site of a former palace of a century before. The
apartments within are not merely the halls of a museum, but are
remarkably interesting and livable mediæval apartments, and to-day are
much as they were in the days of the gallant dukes, one of whom,
Guidobaldo II, was a poet himself and a patron of letters who gave his
protection to the last Italian poet whose fame was European--Torquato
Tasso.
Urbino, too, was the birthplace of him whom we know familiarly as
Raphael, though curiously enough the local museum contains but a single
example of his work, and that a drawing of "Moses in the Bulrushes."
Urbino's chief "sight," though it is not beautiful in itself, is the
birthplace of Raphael, situated in a little street running off from near
the ducal palace, a street which mounts heavenward so steeply that it
was formerly called the Via del Monte. The authorities, in an effort to
keep up with popular taste, have recently changed the name to Via
Raffaello.
It is a mean, simple and grim looking little house, not at all beautiful
according to palatial standards. On the 6th of April, 1483, its fame
began, but pilgrims have only in recent years come to bow down before
it. Nevertheless popes and prelates and princes came here to sit to the
"painter of Urbino" and have left an added distinction to the house.
Muzio Oddi, the celebrated architect and mathematician, caused to be
graven the following on its façade:--
"Ludet in humanis divina potentia rebus
Et saepe in parvis claudre magna solet."
A tablet marks the house plainly. It will not be possible to miss it.
Urbino sits high above the surrounding valley, twelve or fifteen hundred
feet above sea level. A coach of doubtful antiquity formerly made the
same journey as that covered by the railway and deposited its mixed
freight of travellers and inhabitants in one of the most splendid of the
Renaissance cities of Italy. Now, the automobile brings many more
tourists than ever before came by coach, or railway even, and
accordingly Urbino will undoubtedly become better known.
The court of Urbino in the sixteenth century was one of the most refined
and learned of the courts of Italy, and therefore of the world. Coryat
in his "Crudities," of the seventeenth century, remarks a difference
between English and Italian manners.
"I observed a custom in all those Italian cities and towns through which
I passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my
travels; neither do I think that any other nation of Christendom doth
use it, but only Italy. The Italian, and also most strangers that are
commorant in Italy, do always at their meals use a little fork when they
cut their meat." Is it that the fork came to earth as a seventeenth
century Italian innovation?
Urbino's Albergo Italia merits the sign of the crossed knife and fork,
the Automobile Club's endorsement of good food.
One of the classic figures of mediæval Urbino was Oddantonio, of the
great house of Montefeltro, who, succeeding to the dukedom at the age of
fifteen, fell under the ill control of the brilliant, but corrupt,
Sigismondo Malatesta, of Rimini.
Thirty five kilometres east of Urbino lies the blue Adriatic, perhaps
the most beautiful of all the Italian seas. The descent from four
hundred metres at Urbino to sea level is gradual and easy, but it is a
steady fall that is bound to be remarked by travellers by road, with the
sea in sight for the major part of the way.
One comes to the Adriatic shore at Pesaro, midway on the coast between
Ravenna and Ancona. North and south, from the Venetian boundary to the
rocky, sparse-populated shores of Calabria, flanking upon the Ionian
sea, is a wonderland of little-travelled highroad, all of it a historic
itinerary, though indeed the road is none of the best. To the jaded
traveller, tired of stock sights and scenes, the covering of this coast
road from Venice to Brindisi would be a journey worth the making, but it
should not be done hurriedly.