Yet at the foot of the hill on which La Turbie stands is Monte Carlo, the most modern of modern abodes of men. A town without walls, lying scattered in all directions like a great drop of bright paint that has fallen on a rock and spattered it. Here are the hubbub of Vanity Fair, the frou-frou of silks, the flash of bold pigments, the scent-tainted air.
LA TURBIE: THE OLD BAKEHOUSE.
Let such as are tired of this Vanity Fair and of its make-believe palaces, climb up to the hill town. As they pass through the old gateway they enter into a world that was, into a town where the streets are silent and the houses homely and venerable. The blaze of clashing colours is forgotten, for all here is grey. The bold, imperious purple of the sea is changed for the tender forget-me-not blue of a strip of sky above the roofs. The dazzle of the sun is beyond the gate, but within are shadows as comforting as “the shadow of a rock in a weary land.” Such light as enters falls upon an old lichen-covered wall, upon the arch of a Gothic window and upon simple things on balconies—a garment hanging to dry, a bird-cage, a pot of lavender. To those who are surfeited with riot and unreality La Turbie is a cloister, a place of peace.
Outside the town, on the east, is the Cours St. Bernard, so named after an ancient chapel to St. Bernard which stood here. The town is entered by the gate called the Roman Gate, for it was by this way that the Roman road passed into La Turbie. The gate, which dates from the Middle Ages, has a plain, pointed arch and over it the remains of a tower. The old road passed through the town from east to west along the line of the present Rue Droite and left it by the Nice Gate which has also a pointed arch and a tower and which belongs to the same period as the Portail Romain. There are some fine old houses, strangely mutilated, in the Rue Droite and one elegant window of three arches supported by dainty columns. This pertains to a house at the corner of the Rue du Four.
The Rue du Four, or Bakehouse Street, enters the town from the Corniche Road by a modern gate passing under the houses. In this street is the ancient public bakehouse, a queer, little building, low and square, with a tiled roof and on the roof a very solid cross cut out of a block of stone. Within the building the ovens are still to be seen. M. Philippe Casimir, the learned mayor of La Turbie, in his very interesting monograph[[44]] states that in old days the inhabitants paid to the Lord of La Turbie un droit de fournage for the privilege of using the bakehouse. The impost took the form of one loaf out of every eighty. This mediæval four became in time the property of the town, but its use has now been long abandoned.
The Rue du Four leads to the Place Saint-Jean, the centre of the town. It is a very tiny place—little more than a courtyard—which derives its name from the chapel of St. Jean which stands here. The chapel has been recently rebuilt (1844) and is of no interest. In the place is a large and still imposing house which was the old Hôtel de Ville. Passing beneath it is a vaulted passage of some solemnity which leads to the gate known as the Portail du Recinto. The arch at the entrance of this vaulted way has a curious history. It was composed of blocks of marble taken from the monument and from that frieze of the trophy which bore the inscription. The great bulk of the inscribed stones had been removed to the museum at St.-Germain-en-Laye, but it was found that the wording was incomplete. Some letters from the list of the conquered tribes were missing. An archæologist chancing to visit La Turbie in 1867 noticed on the voussoirs of this arch the very letters that were wanting.
The pieces of marble were therefore removed to complete the inscription in the museum and their place was taken by common stones. To compensate La Turbie for this loss the Emperor, Napoleon III, presented to the church of St. Michael a copy of Raphael’s “St. Michael” from the Louvre in Paris. This picture now hangs on the left wall of the church near to the entrance.