(_Palazzo Cenci_,)
the scene of the persecution of Beatrice, which led to her execution
through the murder of her father at Petrella.
"The story is, that an old man having spent his life in debauchery and
wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his
children, which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of
an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and
violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from
what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind,
at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their
common tyrant" (Shelley).
"The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized,
there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture, in
the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of
this tragedy--'The Cenci.' The palace is situated in an obscure corner
of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you
see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine, half hidden beneath the
profuse undergrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the
palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the chapel to S. Thomas)
supported by granite columns, and adorned with antique friezes of fine
workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient Italian fashion,
with balcony over balcony of open work. One of the gates of the
palace, formed of immense stones, and leading through a passage dark
and lofty, and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me
particularly" (Shelley).
From an old manuscript recently brought to light, and the reports of
the trial which have been recently published, the story of Beatrice
Cenci appears divested of the fiction of a historical novel; and these
papers prove her to have been anything but the innocent victim she is
represented in the romantic stories we have all read.
_On the left of the Piazza_ is the Jewish Synagogue, once a Christian
church, dedicated to S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and sold to the Jews by
Pope Sixtus V. when he was in need of money.