above this. The façade is very dignified in effect. On the ground level are five lofty arches, very slightly moulded, and resting on square piers just rounded at the corners. The material of this stage is marble, mainly white, but with just a line of red and another of grey near the string-course which divides this from the next stage. From this point up almost the whole work is executed in brickwork of very elaborate and delicate detail. The two stages have no kind of uniformity or connection with each other, six windows being arranged above the five arches. In the centre of the first floor is the old doorway to the Ringhiera (which was altered in the seventeenth century); the windows on each side are of three lights, inclosed under a round arch with a deep archivolt very slightly recessed—all the enrichments being on very nearly the same face as the wall. These windows agree in size, but vary very much in all their details. Some of the subordinate arches are pointed, some round, and the tympana are everywhere filled with fine brick diapers. Above this stage the walls finish with a good marble cornice of intersecting arches, and then with a forked battlement. At the four angles of this are raised turrets, and the ends are finished with battlemented gables, very quaint and picturesque, as will be seen by the illustration which I give. The niches between the two arches in the principal story seem to have been intended for paintings. The marbles used here are red and white. Red is used for the arcades under the cornices, for the middle order of the rose window, and the inner order of the main arches. Elsewhere the marble is white, except the one grey course below the principal string. The whole of the lower stage is open below on all sides and groined—in brick, I think—though it is now plastered; indeed, save the parts already described as being of marble in the principal fronts, the whole of this building is built of red brick. Behind the open ground story there remains a portion of an internal quadrangle, which, incomplete as it is, shews, nevertheless, the same delicate attention to detail which is conspicuous on the façades. I know hardly any detail of Italian brickwork which is so refined and good as that in the arches and some cusped circles between them in this quadrangle.
I have seen this building, full as it is of eccentric departures from ordinary rules and customs—piers being placed over openings, and round and pointed arches used indifferently—quoted for our benefit as a remarkable example of a public building erected in the Middle Ages in the most regular and formal fashion! It is, on the contrary, if the plain truth is to be spoken, an example of a very bold disregard of such fashions indulged in without any detrimental effect.
Piacenza cannot boast of any very fine churches. They have been much ruined internally by modern alterations, and externally they do not seem ever to have been very attractive. The cathedral is a Lombard church of fine size, and with some good points. There are three western porches of two stages in height, according to the usual Lombard fashion. The doors are rudely sculptured; that in the centre with the signs of the Zodiac, and the northern door with the Annunciation, Salutation, and other subjects on its lintel. The columns rest on monsters, griffins, and men. The whole front is now finished with one large low-pitched gable, which has an arcade stepped up to suit its cornice. This is, however, a fourteenth-century alteration of the older church, as is also a rose window in the centre. A brick tower of late date rises at the north-west angle of the church, and is finished with a circular spire built of round-ended bricks. The external walls of the Lombard church were all built of stone or marble with shallow buttresses; the windows were very simple, and the effect was mainly due to the fine open arcade below the eaves, carried now on shafts, now on figures. The north-east view is very picturesque, owing to the number of angles and apsidal terminations which are seen together. These are produced by a plan of most unusual character, the transepts as well as the choir being finished with three apses, and an octagonal brick lantern rising out of the centre. Internally the cathedral, in spite of alterations, is still very interesting. The nave opens with eight arches to the aisles and transepts; but the three arches which open to the latter are much loftier than the five western arches, so as to allow of the transepts opening to the nave to nearly its full height. The groining of the nave is divided into three bays of sexpartite vaults—each bay being equal to two bays of the aisles, and there is a lantern over the two eastern bays. The transepts and aisles have quadripartite vaulting.
Under the choir is a crypt of great interest and beauty, owing to the vast number of delicate columns which carry the vault. It is planned on a cruciform arrangement, with the principal altar in an octagonal central compartment. Here the priest celebrates on the eastern side with his back to the choir stalls in the apse, and his face toward the west. The access to this crypt is by two staircases at its south-west and north-west angles.