PAGE
AREZZO 1
CORTONA 12
PERUGIA 23
THE VOLUMNIAN TOMB 34
PRÆ-FRANCISCAN ASSISI 46
SPELLO 58
VEII 67
FIDENÆ 77
ANTEMNÆ 86
OSTIA 96
THE ALBAN MOUNT 108
CORI 123
NORBA 131
SEGNI 150
ITER AD BRUNDISIUM
I. ANAGNI 165
II. FERENTINO 185
III. ALATRI 206
IV. FROM ALATRI TO CAPUA 221
V. A CHURCH BY THE CAMP OF HANNIBAL 234
VI. A GLIMPSE OF SAMNIUM 251
VII. BENEVENTO 264
VIII. NORMAN BUILDINGS IN APULIA 281
IX. BARI 295
Arezzo.
The city of Mæcenas, and of a whole crowd of famous men of later times,
shows no outward signs of being much frequented by travellers. There
is some difficulty there in getting so much as an Italian newspaper,
and, though excellent photographs have been taken of some of the chief
buildings, they must be sought for at Florence; they are not to be
bought at Arezzo. Yet the old Etruscan city has many attractions, among
them surely the singular cleanness of its streets, and, above all, that
clear and pure air which is thought to have had something to do with
nourishing the genius of so many of its citizens in so many different
ways. Perhaps, on the whole, Arezzo does not suffer from not having
yet put on the cosmopolitan character of some of its neighbours. And if
the city does not, either as Arretium or as Arezzo, stand forth in the
first rank of Italian cities, still it has a long history under both
forms of its name. If, again, its buildings do not rank with those of
Pisa or Lucca, still there is quite enough both in the general aspect
of the city, and in some particular objects within its walls, to claim
a day or two's sojourn from any one who is not eager to rush from
Florence to Rome as fast as the so-called express train can carry him.
Arezzo, as to its physical site, holds a middle position between cities
which sit perched on a high hill-top like Fiesole, and cities which,
like Florence, lie flat or nearly so on the banks of a great river.
It has its river, if we may give that name to the mere brook which
presently loses itself in the Chiana, as the Chiana soon loses itself
in the Arno. The river too has a bridge, but both river and bridge have
to be sought for; they form no important points in the general aspect
of the city. The bridge at Arezzo is not one of those to which we
instinctively go the first thing to take a general view of the city as
a whole. The hill is a more real thing, as any one will say who climbs
some of its steeper streets. Still it is one of those hills which seem
to borrow height and steepness from the fact of being built upon. If it
were covered with green grass, it would simply pass as one of several
small hills which break the flat of the rich plain, girded in on all
sides by higher mountains, which rise, in February at least, into vast
snowy heights in the further distance. Still Arezzo has distinctly the
character of a hill city, not of a river city; the hill counts for a
good deal, while the river counts for nothing. The best points for a
general view from below will be found on the town wall, a little way to
the left of the railway station; while to look down on Arezzo we must
climb to the castle in the eastern corner of the city, whose Medicean
fortifications look strong enough without, but which, within, has
gardens and fig trees level with the walls, and rabbits running about
at large among them. The castle therefore forms no special object in
the general view; it simply passes as a more marked part of the line
of the city walls. These last remain in their whole circuit, except
where they have been broken down to make the approach to the railway;
surely a new gate would have been a better way of compassing this
object. A town wall standing free, as those of Arezzo stand in nearly
their whole range, is always a striking object, and one whose circuit
it is pleasant and instructive to make. And it has a special interest
in some cities, of which Arezzo is one, which have, so to speak, a show
side. One side lies open to the world; the ancient roads, the modern
railway, approach it; the city dies away into the country by gradually
descending suburbs. On the other side, the wall suddenly parts the
inhabited town, sometimes from actual desolation, at all events from
open fields; the hill rises sheer above whatever lies beyond it. So it
is with the north-eastern side of Arezzo, if we go behind the cathedral
and the castle; we have not fully taken in the lie of the city without
taking this walk to its rear. Still we must not look to the walls of
Arezzo for the special interest of some other walls. They will not give
us either Roman or Etruscan blocks, nor yet the picturesque outline of
mediæval towers and gateways. The walls put on their present aspect
in Medicean times, and over one of the gates we see an inscription
which illustrates one stage of a tyrant's progress. The first avowed
sovereign Cosmo appears as "Duke of Florence and Siena." He had
inherited one enslaved commonwealth; he had himself enslaved another;
meanwhile he was waiting for the fitting reward of such exploits in the
higher rank and more sounding title of a Grand Duke of Tuscany.
In the general view of Arezzo there can be hardly said to be any one
dominant object. If the castle made any show, it and the cathedral
church, standing nearly on the same level on the highest ground in the
town, would stand well side by side. As it is, the body of the _duomo_
is the prominent feature in the view. But it is hardly a dominant
feature. It is the only building whose body shows itself, but it rises
among a crowd of towers, ecclesiastical and municipal, and one of
them, the great campanile of St. Mary _della Pieve_, though the body
of its church does not show itself far below, is a distinct rival to
the cathedral, and utterly dwarfs its small and modern, though not
ungraceful, octagon tower. These two churches form the two greatest
architectural objects in Arezzo. The municipal element does not show
itself so largely as might be looked for. The town-house is there, and
the town-tower, and that hard by the _duomo_; but they do not hold,
even comparatively, anything like the same position as their fellows
in the great Florentine piazza. Perhaps this is not wonderful in a
city which was so largely Ghibelin, and whose most noted historical
character was a fighting bishop. Guy Tarlati, bishop and lord of
Arezzo, keeps--though not on its old site--his splendid tomb in the
_duomo_, on which are graven the names and likenesses of the castles
which he won, and how King Lewis of Bavaria took the Lombard crown
at his hands. But Arezzo has little or nothing to show in the way of
houses or palaces or of street arcades. Its most striking building
besides the churches is the front of that called the _Fraternità dei
Laici_, in the open sloping space which seems to mark the forum of
Arretium. This is a work in the mixed style of the fourteenth century,
but so rich and graceful in its detail as to disarm criticism. Within,
it contains the public library and museum. This last has much to show
in many ways; most striking of all, because thoroughly local, are
the huge tusks and other remains of the fossil elephants and other
vast beasts of bygone days. The valley of the Chiana is full of them.
Naturally enough, in the early days of science, when elephants' bones
were no longer thought to be those of giants, they were set down as
relics of the Gætulian beasts of Hannibal.
Something may be picked up here and there in the other churches of
Arezzo; but it is _Santa Maria della Pieve_ which is the real object
of study. The _duomo_ is absolutely without outline; it is a single
body with nothing to break it, and nothing to finish it at either end.
But its proportions within come somewhat nearer to Northern ideas than
is common in the Italian Gothic, and its apse specially reveals the
German hand to which tradition attributes the building. The church of
_La Pieve_ is of a higher order. It has real shape within and without.
Its four arms should support a cupola, only the cupola has never been
finished; the apse is in the very best form of the Italian Romanesque;
the west front is called a copy of Pisa; but neither its merits nor
its defects seem borrowed from that model. Part of it is sham, which
nothing at Pisa is, while the small arcades stand out free, as at
Lucca, but not at Pisa. The front is a wonderful display of column
capitals of all kinds, from the Corinthian column used up again in its
lowest range to the fantastic devices of the small ranges above them.
The arch and the entablature are both used; so they are in the apse: so
they are within. For the choir has a real triforium, and that triforium
shows this strange falling back on the construction of the Greek. The
arches below are round; those which should support the cupola, as well
as those of the nave, are pointed, the latter rising from columns of
prodigious height. The internal effect is like nothing else; it is
quite un-Italian; it is as little like anything English or French;
the arches, but not the columns, suggest the memory of Aquitaine. The
south side has been rebuilt. Perhaps the work was physically needful:
but it has involved the destruction of the substructure of the ancient
building on the site of which the church stands. The columns in the
west front seem to be the only remains of Arretium as distinguished
from Arezzo. The "Tyrrhena regum progenies" have here left but small
traces behind them.
Cortona.