Angera and Arona
FROM the Hotel Riposo we drove to Angera, on the Lago Maggiore. There
are many interesting things to see on the way. Close to Velate, for
example, there is the magnificent bit of ruin which is so striking a
feature as seen from the Sacro Monte. A little further on, at Luinate,
there is a fine old Lombard _campanile_ and some conventual buildings
which are worth sparing five minutes or so to see. The views hereabouts
over the lake of Varese and towards Monte Rosa are exceedingly fine. The
driver should be told to go a mile or so out of his direct route in order
to pass Oltrona, near Voltrone. Here there was a monastery which must
once have been an important one. Little of old work remains, except a
very beautiful cloister of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, which
should not be missed. It measures about twenty-one paces each way: the
north side has round arches made of brick, the arches are supported by
small columns about six inches through, each of which has a different
capital; the middle is now garden ground. A few miles nearer Angera
there is Brebbia, the church of which is an excellent specimen of early
Lombard work. We thought we saw the traditions of Cyclopean masonry in
the occasional irregularity of the string-courses. The stones near the
bottom of the wall are very massive, and the west wall is not, if I
remember rightly, bonded into the north and south walls, but these walls
are only built up against it as at Giornico. The door on the south side
is simple, but remarkably beautiful. It looks almost as if it might
belong to some early Norman church in England, and the stones have
acquired a most exquisite warm colour with age. At Ispra there is a
_campanile_ which Mr. Ruskin would probably disapprove of, but which we
thought lovely. A few kilometres further on a corner is turned, and the
splendid castle of Angera is caught sight of.
[Picture: Castle of Angera]
Before going up to the castle we stayed at the inn on the left
immediately on entering the town, to dine. They gave us a very good
dinner, and the garden was a delightful place to dine in. There is a
kind of red champagne made hereabouts which is very good; the figs were
ripe, and we could gather them for ourselves and eat _ad libitum_. There
were two tame sparrows hopping continually about us; they pretended to
make a little fuss about allowing themselves to be caught, but they
evidently did not mind it. I dropped a bit of bread and was stooping to
pick it up; one of them on seeing me move made for it and carried it off
at once; the action was exactly that of one who was saying, “I don’t
particularly want it myself, but I’m not going to let you have it.”
Presently some _cacciatori_ came with a poodle-dog. They explained to us
that though the poodle was “a truly hunting dog,” he would not touch the
sparrows, which to do him justice he did not. There was a tame jay also,
like the sparrows going about loose, but, like them, aware when he was
well off.
[Picture: Castle of Angera, from S. Quirico]
After dinner we went up to the castle, which I have now visited off and
on for many years, and like always better and better each time I go
there. I know no place comparable to it in its own way. I know no place
so pathetic, and yet so impressive, in its decay. It is not a ruin—all
ruins are frauds—it is only decayed. It is a kind of Stokesay or Ightham
Mote, better preserved than the first, and less furnished than the
second, but on a grander scale than either, and set in incomparably finer
surroundings. The path towards it passes the church, which has been
spoiled. Outside this there are parts of old Roman columns from some
temple, stuck in the ground; inside are two statues called St. Peter and
St. Paul, but evidently effigies of some magistrates in the Roman times.
If the traveller likes to continue the road past the church for
three-quarters of a mile or so, he will get a fine view of the castle,
and if he goes up to the little chapel of S. Quirico on the top of the
hill on his right hand, he will look down upon it and upon Arona. We
will suppose, however, that he goes straight for the castle itself; every
moment as he approaches it, it will seem finer and finer; presently he
will turn into a vineyard on his left, and at once begin to climb.
[Picture: Terrace at Castle of Angera, No. 1]
Passing under the old gateway—with its portcullis still ready to be
dropped, if need be, and with the iron plates that sheathe it pierced
with bullets—as at S. Michele, the visitor enters at once upon a terrace
from which the two foregoing illustrations were taken. I know nothing
like this terrace. On a summer’s afternoon and evening it is fully
shaded, the sun being behind the castle. The lake and town below are
still in sunlight. This, I think, is about the best time to see the
castle—say from six to eight on a July evening, or at any hour on a gray
day.
[Picture: Terrace at Castle of Angera, No. 2]
Count Borromeo, to whom the castle belongs, allows it to be shown, and
visitors are numerous. There is very little furniture inside the rooms,
and the little there is is decaying; the walls are covered with pictures,
mostly copies, and none of them of any great merit, but the rooms
themselves are lovely. Here is a sketch of the one in which San Carlo
Borromeo was born, but the one on the floor beneath is better still. The
whole of this part was built about the year 1350, and inside, where the
weather has not reached, the stones are as sharp as if they had been cut
yesterday. It was in the great _Sala_ of this castle that the rising
against the Austrians in 1848 was planned; then there is the _Sala di
Giustizia_, a fine room, with the remains of frescoes; the roof and the
tower should also certainly be visited. All is solid and real, yet it is
like an Italian opera in actual life. Lastly, there is the kitchen,
where the wheel still remains in which a turnspit dog used to be put to
turn it and roast the meat; but this room is not shown to strangers.
[Picture: Room in which S. Carlo Borromeo was Born]
The inner court of the castle is as beautiful as the outer one. Through
the open door one catches glimpses of the terrace, and of the lake beyond
it. I know Ightham, Hever, and Stokesay, both inside and out, and I know
the outside of Leeds; these are all of them exquisitely beautiful, but
neither they nor any other such place that I have ever seen please me as
much as the castle of Angera.
We stayed talking to my old friend Signor Signorelli, the _custode_ of
the castle, and his family, and sketching upon the terrace until Tonio
came to tell us that his boat was at the quay waiting for us. Tonio is
now about fourteen years old, but was only four when I first had the
pleasure of making his acquaintance. He is son to Giovanni, or as he is
more commonly called, Giovannino, a boatman of Arona. The boy is
deservedly a great favourite, and is now a _padrone_ with a boat of his
own, from which he can get a good living.
He pulled us across the warm and sleepy lake, so far the most beautiful
of all even the Italian lakes; as we neared Arona, and the wall that runs
along the lake became more plain, I could not help thinking of what
Giovanni had told me about it some years before, when Tonio was lying
curled up, a little mite of an object, in the bottom of the boat. He was
extolling a certain family of peasants who live near the castle of
Angera, as being models of everything a family ought to be. “There,” he
said, “the children do not speak at meal-times, the _polenta_ is put upon
the table, and each takes exactly what is given him, even though one of
the children thinks another has got a larger helping than he has, he will
eat his piece in silence. My children are not like that; if Marietta
thinks Irene has a bigger piece than she has, she will leave the room and
go to the wall.”
“What,” I asked, “does she go to the wall for?”
“Oh! to cry; all the children go to the wall to cry.”
I thought of Hezekiah. The wall is the crying place, playing, lounging
place, and a great deal more, of all the houses in its vicinity. It is
the common drawing-room during the summer months; if the weather is too
sultry, a boatman will leave his bed and finish the night on his back
upon its broad coping; we who live in a colder climate can hardly
understand how great a blank in the existence of these people the
destruction of the wall would be.
We soon reached Arona, and in a few minutes were in that kind and
hospitable house the Hotel d’Italia, than which no better hotel is to be
found in Italy.
Arona is cooler than Angera. The proverb says, “He who would know the
pains of the infernal regions, could go to Angera in the summer and to
Arona in the winter.” The neighbourhood is exquisite. Unless during the
extreme heat of summer, it is the best place to stay at on the Lago
Maggiore. The Monte Motterone is within the compass of a single day’s
excursion; there is Orta, also, and Varallo easily accessible, and any
number of drives and nearer excursions whether by boat or carriage.
One day we made Tonio take us to Castelletto near Sesto Calende, to hear
the bells. They ring the bells very beautifully at Vogogna, but, unless
my recollection of a good many years ago fails me, at Castelletto they
ring them better still.
At Vogogna, while we were getting our breakfast, we heard the bells
strike up as follows, from a _campanile_ on the side of the hill:—
[Picture: Music score]
They did this because a baby had just died, but we were told it was
nothing to what they would have done if it had been a grown-up person.
At Castelletto we were disappointed; the bells did not ring that morning;
we hinted at the possibility of paying a small fee to the ringer and
getting him to ring them, but were told that “la gente” would not at all
approve of this, and so I was unable to take down the chimes at
Castelletto as I had intended to do. I may say that I had a visit from
some Italian friends a few years ago, and found them hardly less
delighted with our English mode of ringing than I had been with theirs.
It would be very nice if we could ring our bells sometimes in the English
and sometimes in the Italian way. When I say the Italian way—I should
say that the custom of ringing, as above described, is not a common one—I
have only heard it at Vogogna and Castelletto, though doubtless it
prevails elsewhere.
We were told that the people take a good deal of pride in their bells,
and that one village will be jealous of another, and consider itself more
or less insulted if the bells of that other can be heard more plainly
than its own can be heard back again. There are two villages in the
Brianza called Balzano and Cremella; the dispute between these grew so
hot that each of them changed their bells three times, so as to try and
be heard the loudest. I believe an honourable compromise was in the end
arrived at.
In other respects Castelletto is a quiet, sleepy little place. The
Ticino flows through it just after leaving the lake. It is very wide
here, and when flooded must carry down an enormous quantity of water.
Barges go down it at all times, but the river is difficult of navigation
and requires skilful pilots. These pilots are well paid, and Tonio
seemed to have a great respect for them. The views of Monte Rosa are
superb.
One of the great advantages of Arona, as of Mendrisio, is that it
commands such a number of other places. There is rail to Milan, and
again to Novara, and each station on the way is a sub-centre; there are
also the steamers on the lake, and there is not a village at which they
stop which will not repay examination, and which is not in its turn a
sub-centre. In England I have found by experience that there is nothing
for it but to examine every village and town within easy railway
distance; no books are of much use: one never knows that something good
is not going to be sprung upon one, and few indeed are the places where
there is no old public-house, or overhanging cottage, or farmhouse and
barn, or bit of De Hooghe-like entry which, if one had two or three
lives, one would not willingly leave unpainted. It is just the same in
North Italy; there is not a village which can be passed over with a light
heart.