39 chapters
14 hour read
Selected Chapters
39 chapters
I
I
The traveller who on his way to Italy passes along the Riviera di Ponente, through Marseilles, Nice, and Mentone to Ventimiglia, or crossing the Alps touches Italian soil, though scarcely Italy indeed, at Turin, on coming to Genoa finds himself really at last in the South, the true South, of which Genoa la Superba is the gate, her narrow streets, the various life of her port, her picturesque colour and dirt, her immense palaces of precious marbles, her oranges and pomegranates and lemons, her ar
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
The history of Genoa, its proud and adventurous story, is almost wholly a tale of the sea, full of mystery, cruelty, and beauty, a legend of sea power, a romance of ships. It is a narrative in which sailors, half merchants, half pirates, adventurers every one, put out from the city and return laden with all sorts of spoil,—gold from Africa, slaves from Tunis or Morocco, the booty of the Crusades; with here the vessel of the Holy Grail bought at a great price, there the stolen dust of a great Sai
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
The gate of Italy, I said in speaking of her, and indeed it is one of the derivations of her name Genoa,—Janua the gate, founded, as the fourteenth-century inscription in the Duomo asserts, by Janus, a Trojan prince skilled in astrology, who, while seeking a healthy and safe place for his dwelling, sailed by chance into this bay, where was a little city founded by Janus, King of Italy, a great-grandson of Noah, and finding the place such as he wished, he gave it his name and his power. Now, whet
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IV
IV
As you stand under those strange arcades that run under the houses facing the port, all that most ancient story of Genoa seems actual, possible; it is as though in some extraordinarily vivid dream you had gone back to less uniform days, when the beauty and the ugliness of the world struggled for mastery, before the overwhelming victory of the machine had enthroned ugliness and threatened the dominion of the soul of man. In that shadowy place, where little shops like caverns open on either side,
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II. ON THE WAY
II. ON THE WAY
It was already summer when, one morning, soon after sunrise, I set out from Genoa for Tuscany. The road to Spezia along the Riviera di Levante, among the orange groves and the olives, between the mountains and the sea, is one of the most beautiful in Europe. Forgotten, or for the most part unused, by the traveller who is the slave of the railway, it has not the reputation of its only rivals, the Corniche road from Nice to Mentone, the lovely highway from Castellamare to Sorrento, or the road bet
24 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III. PORTO VENERE
III. PORTO VENERE
It is perhaps a more joyful day that may be spent at Porto Venere, the little harbour on the northern shores of the gulf. Starting early you come, still before the sea is altogether subject to the sun, to a little bay of blue clear still water flanked by gardens of vines, of agaves and olives. Here, in silence save for the lapping of the water, the early song of the cicale, the far-away notes of a reed blown by a boy in the shadow by the sea, you land, and, following the path by the hillside, co
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IV. SARZANA AND LUNA
IV. SARZANA AND LUNA
It was very early in the morning when I came into Tuscany. Leaving Spezia overnight, I had slept at Lerici, and, waking in the earliest still dawn, I had set out over the hills, hoping to cross the Macra before breakfast. In this tremulous and joyful hour, full of the profound gravity of youth hesitating on the threshold of life, the day rose out of the sea; so, a lily opening in a garden while we sleep transfigures it with its joy. As I climbed the winding hill among the olives, while still a c
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
V. CARRARA, MASSA DUCALE, PIETRA-SANTA, VIAREGGIO
V. CARRARA, MASSA DUCALE, PIETRA-SANTA, VIAREGGIO
And truly it is into a city of marble that you come, when, following the dusty road full of the ruts of the bullock-wagons, past Avenza, that little city with a great castle of Castruccio Castracani, after climbing into the gorge where the bullocks, a dozen of them it may be, yoked to a single dray, take all the way, you enter the cold streets of Carrara, that are always full of the sound of falling water. And strangely enough, as one may think, in this far-away place, so close to the mountains
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
To enter Pisa by the Porta Nuova, coming at once into the Piazza del Duomo, is as though at midday, on the highway, one had turned aside into a secret meadow full of a strange silence and dazzling light, where have been abandoned among the wild flowers the statues of the gods. For the Piazza is just that—a meadow scattered with daisies, among which, as though forgotten, stand unbroken a Cathedral, a Baptistery, a Tower, and a Cemetery, all of marble, separate and yet one in the consummate beauty
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
"Varie sono le opinioni degli Scrittori circa l'edificazione di Pisa," says Tronci in his Annali Pisani , published at Livorno in the seventeenth century. "Various are the opinions of writers as to the building of Pisa, but all agree that it was founded by the Greeks. Cato in his Fragment , and Dionysius Halicarnassus in the first book of his History , affirm that the founders were the Pisi Alfei Pelasgi, who had for their captain the King Pelops, as Pliny says in his Natural History (lib. 5), a
46 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
It is with a peculiar charm and sweetness that Pisa offers herself to the stranger, who maybe between two trains has not much time to give her. And indeed to him she knows she has not much to offer, just a few things passing strange or beautiful, that are spread out for him as at a fair, on the grass of a meadow in the dust and the sun. But to such an one Pisa can never be more than a vision, vanished as soon as seen, in the heat of midday or the shadow of evening. But for me, of all the cities
59 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VII. LIVORNO [81]
VII. LIVORNO [81]
It was only after many days spent in the Pineta, those pinewoods that go down to the sea at Gombo, where the silent, deserted shore, strewn with sea-shells and whispering with grass, stretches far away to the Carrara hills, that very early one morning I set out for Livorno, that port which has taken the place of the old Porto Pisano, [82] so famous through the world of old. Leaving Pisa by the Porta a Mare, I soon came to S. Pietro a Grado, a lonely church among the marshes, that once, as I supp
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VIII. TO SAN MINIATO AL TEDESCO
VIII. TO SAN MINIATO AL TEDESCO
The road from Pisa to Florence, out of the Porta Fiorentina, to-day the greatest gate of the city, passes at first across the Pisan plain, beside Arno though not following it in its wayward and winding course, to Cascina at the foot of those hills behind which Lucca is hidden away: Monti Pisani "Perche i Pisani veder Lucca non ponno." And unlike the way through the Pineta to the sea, the road, so often trodden by the victorious armies of Florence, is desolate and sombre, while beside the way to-
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IX. EMPOLI, MONTELUPO, LASTRA, SIGNA
IX. EMPOLI, MONTELUPO, LASTRA, SIGNA
It is but four miles down the hillside and through the valley along Via Pisana to Empoli in the plain. And in truth that way, difficult truly at midday—for the dusty road is full of wagons and oxen—is free enough at dawn, though every step thereon takes you farther from the hills of S. Miniato. Empoli, which you come to not without preparation, is like a deserted market-place, a deserted market-place that has been found, and put once more to its old use. Set as it is in the midst of the plain be
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
X. FLORENCE
X. FLORENCE
Florence is like a lily in the midst of a garden gay with wild-flowers; a broken lily that we have tied up and watered and nursed into a semblance of life, an image of ancient beauty—as it were the memento mori of that Latin spirit which contrived the Renaissance of mankind. As of old, so to-day, she stands in the plain at the foot of the Apennines, that in their sweetness and strength lend her still something of their nobility. Around her are the hills covered with olive gardens where the corn
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA AND PALAZZO VECCHIO
PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA AND PALAZZO VECCHIO
In every ancient city of the world, cities that in themselves for the most part have been nations, one may find some spot holy or splendid that instantly evokes an image of that of which it is a symbol,—which sums up, as it were, in itself all the sanctity, beauty, and splendour of her fame, in whose name there lives even yet something of the glory that is dead. It is so no longer; in what confused street or shapeless square shall I find hidden the soul of London, or in what name then shall I su
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE BAPTISTERY—THE DUOMO—THE CAMPANILE—THE OPERA DEL DUOMO
THE BAPTISTERY—THE DUOMO—THE CAMPANILE—THE OPERA DEL DUOMO
On coming into the Piazza del Duomo, perhaps from the light and space of the Lung' Arno or from the largeness of the Piazza della Signoria, one is apt to think of it as too small for the buildings which it holds, as wanting in a certain spaciousness such as the Piazza of St. Peter at Rome certainly possesses, or in the light of the meadow of Pisa; and yet this very smallness, only smallness when we consider the great buildings set there so precisely, gives it an element of beauty lacking in the
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
OR SAN MICHELE
OR SAN MICHELE
Or San Michele, S. Michele in Orto, was till the middle of the thirteenth century a little church belonging, as it is said, to the Cistercians, who certainly claimed the patronage of it. About 1260, however, the Commune of Florence began to dispute this right with the Order, and at last pulled down the church, building there, thirty years later, a loggia of brick, after a design by Arnolfo di Cambio, according to Vasari, who tells us that it was covered with a simple roof and that the piers were
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
PALAZZO RICCARDI, AND THE RISE OF THE MEDICI
PALAZZO RICCARDI, AND THE RISE OF THE MEDICI
It is in the Ciompi rising of 1278, that social revolution in which all Florence seems for once to have been interested, that we catch really for the first time the name of Medici. In 1352, Salvestro de' Medici— non già Salvestro ma Salvator mundi , Franco Sacchetti calls him—had led the Florentines against the Archbishop of Milan, and in 1370 he had been chosen Gonfaloniere of Justice. He was filling this office against the wishes of the Parte Guelfa, when, not without his connivance, the Ciomp
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
SAN MARCO AND SAVONAROLA
SAN MARCO AND SAVONAROLA
For there was another spirit, too, moving secretly through the ways of the city, among the crowds that gathered round the Cantastoria of the Mercato Vecchio, or mingled with the wild procession of the carnival, a spirit not of life, but of denial, a little forgetful as yet that the days of the Middle Age were over: and even as one day that joy in the earth and the beauty of world was to pass almost into Paganism, so this mysticism, that was at first like some marvellous fore-taste of heaven, fel
25 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
S. MARIA NOVELLA
S. MARIA NOVELLA
If Florence built the Baptistery, the Duomo, and the Campanile for the glory of the whole city, that there might be one place, in spite of all the factions, where without difference all might enter the kingdom of heaven, one temple in which all the city might wait till Jesus passed by, one tower which should announce the universal Angelus, she built other churches too, more particular in their usefulness, less splendid in their beauty, but not less necessary in their hold on the life of the city
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
S. CROCE
S. CROCE
The Piazza di S. Croce, in which stands the great Franciscan church of Florence, is still almost as it was in the sixteenth century when the Palazzo del Borgo on the southern side was painted in fresco by the facile brush of Passignano; but whatever charm so old and storied a place might have had for us, for here Giuliano de' Medici fought in a tournament under the eyes of La Bella Simonetta, and here, too, the Giuoco del Calcio was played, it is altogether spoiled and ruined, not only by the di
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
S. LORENZO
S. LORENZO
Something of the eager, restless desire for beauty, for antique beauty, so characteristic of the fifteenth century—for the security and strength of just that, may be found in S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, those two churches which we owe to the genius of Brunellesco, and in them we seem to find the negation, as it were, of the puritan spirit, of all that the Convent of S. Marco had come to mean: as though when, one day at dawn, the peasants ploughing in some little valley in the hills, had come upon
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHURCHES NORTH OF ARNO: OGNISSANTI—S. TRINITÀ—SS. APOSTOLI—S. STEFANO—BADIA—S. PIERO—S. AMBROGIO—S. MARIA MADDALENA DE' PAZZI—ANNUNZIATA—OSPEDALE DEGLI INNOCENTI—LO SCALZO—S. APOLLONIA—S. ONOFRIO—S. SALVI
CHURCHES NORTH OF ARNO: OGNISSANTI—S. TRINITÀ—SS. APOSTOLI—S. STEFANO—BADIA—S. PIERO—S. AMBROGIO—S. MARIA MADDALENA DE' PAZZI—ANNUNZIATA—OSPEDALE DEGLI INNOCENTI—LO SCALZO—S. APOLLONIA—S. ONOFRIO—S. SALVI
To pass through Florence for the most part by the old ways, from church to church, is too often like visiting forgotten shrines in a museum. Something seems to have been lost in these quiet places; it is but rarely after all that they retain anything of the simplicity which once made them holy. To their undoing, they have been found in possession of some beautiful thing which may be shown for money, and so some of them have ceased altogether to exist as churches or chapels or convents; you find
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
OLTR'ARNO
OLTR'ARNO
The Sesto Oltr'arno, the Quartiere di S. Spirito as it was called later, was never really part of the city proper, but rather a suburb surrounded, as Florence itself was, by wall and river. The home for the most part of the poor, though by no means without the towers and palaces of the nobles, it seems always to have lent itself readily enough to the hatching of any plot against the Government of the day. Here in 1343 the nobles made their last stand, here the signal was given for the Ciompi ris
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE BARGELLO
THE BARGELLO
If Arnolfo di Cambio is the architect not only of the Duomo but of the Palazzo Vecchio, and if Orcagna conceived the delicate beauty of the Loggia de' Lanzi, it is, if we may believe Vasari, partly to Arnolfo and partly to Agnolo Gaddi that we owe Bargello, that palace so like a fortress, at the corner of Via del Proconsolo and Via Ghibellina. Begun in the middle of the thirteenth century for the Capitano del Popolo, it later became the Palace of the Podestà, passing at last, under the Grand Duk
42 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
ACCADEMIA
ACCADEMIA
Florentine art, that had expressed itself so charmingly, and at last so passionately and profoundly, in sculpture, where design, drawing, that integrity of the plastic artist, is everything, and colour almost nothing at all, shows itself in painting, where it is most characteristic, either as the work of those who were sculptors themselves, or had at least learned from them—Giotto, Orcagna, Masaccio, the Pollaiuoli, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo—or in such work as that of Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE UFFIZI
THE UFFIZI
If it is difficult to speak with justice and a sense of proportion of the Accademia delle Belle Arti, how may I hope to succeed with the Uffizi Gallery, where the pictures are infinitely more varied and numerous. It might seem impossible to do more than to give a catalogue of the various works here gathered from royal and ducal collections, from many churches, convents, and monasteries, forming, certainly, with the gallery of the Pitti Palace, the finest collection of the Italian schools of pain
42 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE PITTI GALLERY
THE PITTI GALLERY
During the last years of Cosimo de' Medici, Luca Pitti, that rare old knight, sometime Gonfaloniere of Justice, thought to possess himself of the state of Florence, and to this end, besides creating a new Balia against the wishes of Cosimo, distributed, as it is said, some 20,000 ducats in one day, so that the whole city came after him in flocks, and not Cosimo, but he, was looked upon as the governor of Florence. "So foolish was he in his own conceit, that he began two stately and magnificent h
25 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XXV. TO FIESOLE AND SETTIGNANO
XXV. TO FIESOLE AND SETTIGNANO
How weary one grows of the ways of a city,—yes, even in Florence, where every street runs into the country and one may always see the hills and the sky! But even in Athens, when they built the Parthenon, often, I think, I should have found my way into the olive gardens and vineyards about Kephisos: so to-day, leaving the dead beauty littered in the churches, the palaces, the museums, the streets of Florence, very often I seek the living beauty of the country, the whisper of the poplars beside Ar
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I. VALLOMBROSA
I. VALLOMBROSA
There are many ways that lead from Florence to Vallombrosa—by the hills, by the valley, and by rail—and the best of these is by the valley, but the shortest is by rail, for by that way you may leave Florence at noon and be in your inn by three; but if you go by road you must set out at dawn, so that when evening falls you may hear the whispering woods of the rainy valley Vallis Imbrosa at your journey's end. That is a pleasant way that takes you first to Settignano out of the dust of Via Aretina
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II. OF THE WAY TO THE CASENTINO
II. OF THE WAY TO THE CASENTINO
And the path lies through the woods. You make your way under the mountain towards S. Miniato in Alpe, leaving it at Villa del Lago for a mule-track, which leads you at last to Consuma and the road from Pontassieve. The way is beautiful, and not too hard to find, the world about you a continual joy. If you start early, you may breakfast at Consuma (though it were better, perhaps, to carry provisions), for it is but two and a half hours from Vallombrosa. Once at Consuma, the way is easy and good.
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III. STIA AND MONTE FALTERONA
III. STIA AND MONTE FALTERONA
Stia is a picturesque little city with a curious arcaded Piazza, a church that within is almost beautiful; yet it is certainly not for anything to be found there that one comes to so ancient and yet so disappointing a place, but because from thence one may go most easily to Falterona to see the sun rise or to find out the springs of Arno, or to visit Porciano, S. Maria delle Grazie, Papiano, and the rest in the hills that shut in this little town at the head of the long valley. Through the great
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IV. BIBBIENA, LA VERNA
IV. BIBBIENA, LA VERNA
Some eight miles away down the valley, enclosed above a coil of Arno, stands Bibbiena, just a little Tuscan hill city with a windy towered Piazza in which a great fountain plays, and all about the tall cypresses tower in the sun among the vineyards and the corn. Here Cardinal Bibbiena, the greatest ornament of the court of Urbino, was born, of no famous family, but of the Divizi. It is not, however, any memory of so famous and splendid a person that haunts you in these stony streets, but the rem
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
V. A RIVEDERLA
V. A RIVEDERLA
Slowly, as the summer waned, I made my way up through the Casentino, once more past the strongholds and the little towns. Now and then on my way I met the herds, already setting out for the winter pastures of Maremma. The grapes were plucking or gathered in, and everywhere there were songs. So I came once more over Falterona, down to Castagno, that mountain village where Andrea del Castagno, the follower of Masaccio, was born, to S. Godenzo, between two streams, where Dante knew the castle of th
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XXVII. PRATO
XXVII. PRATO
Prato is like a flower that has fallen by the wayside that has faded in the dust of the way. She is a little rosy city, scarcely more than a castello, full of ruined churches; and in the churches are ruined frescoes, ruined statues, broken pillars, spoiled altars. You pass from one church to another—from S. Francesco, with its façade of green and white, its pleasant cloister and old frescoes, to La Madonna delle Carceri, to S. Niccolò da Tolentino, to S. Domenico—and you ask yourself, as you pas
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XXVIII. PISTOJA
XXVIII. PISTOJA
If St. Francis of Assisi dreamed his whole life long of the resurrection of love among men, and in the valleys of Umbria went about like a second Jesus doing good, with an immense love in his heart singing his Laudes Creaturarum by the wayside; Dante Alighieri, the greatest poet of his country, might almost seem to have been overwhelmed with hatred, a hatred which is perhaps but the terrible reverse of an intolerable love, but which is an impeachment, nevertheless, not only of his own time, of t
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
But to-day Lucca is like a shadowy pool hidden behind the Pisan hills, like a forgotten oasis in the great plain at the foot of the mountains, a pallid autumn rose, smiling subtly among the gardens that girdle her round about with a sad garland of green, a cincture of silver, a tossing sea of olives. However you come to her, you must pass through those delicate ways, where always the olives whisper together, and their million leaves, that do not mark the seasons, flutter one by one to the ground
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
XXX. OVER THE GARFAGNANA
XXX. OVER THE GARFAGNANA
So in the long August days, that are so fierce in the city, I sought once more the hills, the hills that are full of songs, those songs which in Italy have grown with the flowers and are full of just their wistful beauty, their expectancy and sweetness. There in the Garfagnana, as I wandered up past Castelnuovo to the little village of Piazza al Serchio, and then through the hills to Fivizanno, that wonderful old town in a cup of the mountains, I heard the whole drama of love sung by the "vaghe
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter