The internal structure of both hall and chapel is unexpectedly beautiful, for the outside of this frowning fortress gives no indication whatever of the delicate refinement of the roof vaulting, the clustered pillars, the carved capitals and corbels that it contains. The Audience Hall, or lower chamber, is divided into two naves by five clustered pillars, from which the elegant ribs of the vaulted roof outspread themselves.
This Hall, which was for half a century the chief tribunal of Christendom, is about 150 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 34 feet high, and is lit by eleven tall ogival windows, in graceful harmony with the airy vaulting of the roof. At the top of the great staircase that ascends from the entrance of the Audience Chamber there was recently “unearthed,” or unwalled, the main doorway to the chapel above. This had been built over so completely by the military that its presence was for years unsuspected. It has suffered much damage, but what remains gives indication of the rich beauty it once possessed. The Chapel has no pillars, being one great nave, its vault springing from engaged clustered columns, that run up the walls between the windows. The capitals of these columns are the only carving in this vast airy hall.
The original builders, in the flights of their imagination after spaciousness, gave so little heed to the constructional problems involved in its achievement, that less inspired but more practical successors found it imperative to prop the outside wall with a great flying buttress which arches over a street running past the south side of the building, and seems to form a portion of the main building.
On the vaults of the upper bay of the Audience Hall there are fragmentary remains of the frescoes that were executed by some artist or artists of the Sienese school. The records of a hundred years ago show that the subjects which could be seen on the walls at that time were a “Last Judgment,” “The Prophets,” and a “Crucifixion.”
The military gentlemen of the last century are again the culprits: they could not see the merit or use of preserving such works, preferring to see the dormitories of their men whitewashed, clean, and bare, as befitted their occupation.
These few traces of early Italian artists, who were employed by the wealthy court of the Papacy, are all that now remain of what was one of the chief glories in the fourteenth century.
As one wanders through the courts, chambers, passages, prisons, and chapels of the fortress palace, the historical associations they possess fill the mind more than their present state. Page after page of history is opened up at every turn, and the Past rises before us, with its romance and war, cruelty and beauty, voluptuousness and spirituality, joys and sorrows, ambitions and disappointments, all mixed together like colours in a kaleidoscope.
The inscription that was found on the porch of the
