B y   F r a n c i s   M i l t o u n O. N. I. Author of “Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine,” “Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre,” “In the Land of Mosques and Minarets,” etc. With Pictures B y   B l a n c h e   M c M a n u s colophon Boston L.   C.   P A G E   &   C O M P A N Y 1909 Copyright, 1909 By L. C. Page & Company (INCORPORATED) —— All rights reserved First Impression, May, 1909 Electrotyped and Printed at THE COLONIAL PRESS: C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

O NE travels in Italy chiefly in search of the picturesque, but in Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice or Milan, and in the larger towns lying between, there is, in spite of the romantic association of great names, little that appeals to one in a personal sense. One admires what Ruskin, Hare or Symonds tells one to admire, gets a smattering of the romantic history of the great families of the palaces and villas of Rome and Florence, but absorbs little or nothing of the genuine feudal traditions of th

I TALIAN politics have ever been a game of intrigue, and of the exploiting of personal ambition. It was so in the days of the Popes; it is so in these days of premiers. The pilots of the ships of state have never had a more perilous passage to navigate than when manœuvring in the waters of Italian politics. There is great and jealous rivalry between the cities of Italy. The Roman hates the Piedmontese and the Neapolitan and the Bolognese, and they all hate the Roman,—capital though Rome is of Ch

T HE hotels of Italy are dear or not, according to whether one patronizes a certain class of establishment. At Trouville, at Aix-les-Bains in France, at Cernobbio in the Italian Lake region, or on the Quai Parthenope at Naples, there is little difference in price or quality, and the cuisine is always French. The automobilist who demands garage accommodation as well will not always find it in the big city hotel in Italy. He may patronize the F. I. A. T. Garages in Rome, Naples, Genoa, Milan, Flor

T HE cordiality of the Italian for the stranger within his gates is undeniable, but the automobilist would appreciate this more if the Latin would keep his great highways (a tradition left by the Romans of old, the finest road-builders the world has ever known) in better condition. Italy, next to France, is an ideal touring ground for the automobilist. The Italian population everywhere seems to understand the tourist and his general wants and, above all, his motive for coming thither, and whethe

T HE most ravishingly beautiful entrance into Italy is by the road along the Mediterranean shore. The French Riviera and its gilded pleasures, its great hotels, its chic resorts and its entrancing combination of seascape and landscape are known to all classes of travellers, but at Menton, almost on the frontier, one is within arm’s reach of things Italian, where life is less feverish, in strong contrast to the French atmosphere which envelops everything to the west of the great white triangle pa

T HE gorgeous panorama of coast scenery continues east of Genoa as it has obtained for some three hundred kilometres to the west. In fact the road through Nervi and Recco is finer, if anything, and more hilly, though less precipitous, than that portion immediately to the westward of Genoa. Between Genoa and Spezia the railway passes through fifty tunnels. The traveller by the high road has decidedly the best of it, but there are always those level crossings to take into consideration though fewe

T HE valley of the Arno, as the river flows through the heart of Tuscany from its source high in the hills just south of Monte Falterona, is the most romantic region in all Italy. It is the borderland between the south and the north, and, as it was a battle-ground between Guelph and Ghibellines, so too is it the common ground where the blood of the northerner and southerner mingles to-day. As great rivers go, the Arno is neither grand nor magnificent, but, though its proportions are not great, i

T HE hills and valleys around Florence offer delightful promenades by road to the automobilist as well as to those who have not the means at hand of going so far afield. A commercial enterprise is exploiting them by means of a great char-a-banc , or “sightseeing” automobile, which detracts from the sentiments and emotions which might otherwise be evoked, and at the same time annoys the driver of a private automobile, for the reason that this public conveyance often crowds him on a narrow road an

S IENA , crowning its precipitous hillside, stands, to-day, unchanged from what it was in the days of the Triumvirate. Church tower and castle wall jut out into a vague mystery of silhouetted outline, whether viewed by daylight or moonlight. The great gates of the ramparts still guard the approach on all sides, and the Porta Camollia of to-day is the same through which the sons of Remus entered when fleeing from their scheming Uncle, Romulus. Siena’s Piazza Vittorio Emanuele is a landmark. Dante

T HE environs of Rome—those parts not given over to fox-hunting and horse-racing, importations which have been absorbed by the latter day Roman from the forestieri —still retain most of their characteristics of historic times. The Campagna is still the Campagna; the Alban Hills are still classic ground, and Tivoli and Frascati—in spite of the modernisms which have, here and there, crept in—are still the romantic Tivoli and Frascati of the ages long gone by. The surrounding hills of Rome are, rea

S OUTH from Rome the highroad to Naples, and on down into Calabria, at first follows the old Appian Way, built by Appius Claudius in 312 B. C. It is a historic highway if there ever was one, from its commencement at Rome’s ancient Porta Capuana (now the Porta San Se bastiano) to Capua. As historic ground it has been excavated and the soil turned over many, many times until it would seem as though nothing would be left to discover. Enough has been found and piled up by the roadside to make the th

“S EE Naples and die” is all very well for a sentiment, but when we first saw it, many years ago, it was under a grim, grey sky, and its shore front was washed by a milky-green fury of a sea. Fortunately it is not always thus; indeed it is seldom so. On that occasion Vesuvius was invisible, and Posilippo in dim relief. What a contrast to things as they usually are! Still, Naples and its Bay are no phenomenal wonders. Suppress the point of view, the focus of Virgil, of Horace, of Tiberius and of

T HE 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

T HE Italian shore of the Adriatic is a terra incognita to most travellers in Italy, save those who take ship for the east at Brindisi, and even they arrive from Calais, Paris or Ostende by express train without break of journey en route. The following table gives the kilometric distances of this shore road by the Adriatic, through the coast towns from Otranto in Pouilles to Chioggia in Venetia. The itinerary has, perhaps, never been made in its entirety by any stranger automobilist, but the wri

T HE Via Æmilia of antiquity is a wonder to-day, or would be if it were kept in a little better repair. As it is, it is as good a road as any “good road” in Italy, and straight as an arrow, as it runs boldly from the Adriatic at Rimini to Piacenza, through the ancient States of Bologna, Modena and Parma. No automobilist who ever rolls off its length of 262 kilometres will class it as inferior to any other Italian road of its class. The following categorical mention of the cities and towns on thi

T HE mainland background of Venice, in its most comprehensive sense the region lying north of the Po and south and west of the Austrian frontier, is not a much-travelled region by any class of tourists in Italy. The traveller by rail usually comes up from Bologna and Florence and, with a stop at Padua, makes for Venice forthwith and leaves for the Italian lake region, stopping en route at Verona. The automobilist too often does the thing even more precipitately, by taking Padua and Verona flying

T HE lake region of the north is perhaps the most romantic in all Italy; certainly its memories have much appeal to the sentimentally inclined. Indeed the tourists are so passionately fond of the Italian lakeland that they leave it no “close” season, but are everywhere to be remarked, from Peschiera on the east to Orta on the west. Seemingly they are all honeymoon couples and seek seclusion, and are therefore less offensive than the general run of conducted parties which now “do” the Italian rou

T HE great artichoke of Lombardy, whose petals have fallen one by one before its enemies of Piedmont, is now much circumscribed in area compared with its former estate. From Como to Mantua and from Brescia to Pavia, in short the district of Milan as it is locally known to-day, is the only political entity which has been preserved intact. Tortona, Novara, Alessandria and Asti have become alienated entirely, and for most travellers Milan is Lombardy and Lombardy is Milan. To-day the dividing line

T HE mountains of Piedmont are of the same variety as those of Switzerland and Savoy. They form the highland background to Turin which gives it its magnificent and incomparable framing. Turin, or Torino, was the old capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia, up to 1864, and to-day is the chief city of Piedmont. Turin is laid out in great rectangular blocks, with long straight streets, and it is brilliant and beautiful as modern cities go, but there is not much that is romant

T HERE is one delightful crossing of Italy which is not often made either by the automobilist or the traveller by rail. We found it a delightful itinerary, though in no respect did it leave the beaten track of well worn roads; simply it was a hitherto unthought of combination of highroads and byroads which led from Como, on the shores of its mountain lake, to Nice, the head centre of the Riviera, just across the Italian border in France, entering that land of good cooks and good roads (better co