The large brick church of San Francesco is of the fourteenth century; it is very simple, but not striking in effect. The east end has been planned irregularly—to suit the site, no doubt—with an apse and aisle round it, and irregularly shaped chapels beyond the apse. The effect is bad, owing to the unskilful way in which the work has been done. The west front has the favourite sham gable adorned with circular windows, some of which are absolutely above the roofs of the aisles! San Giovanni in Canale is another church which has nothing of interest, save a few remnants of old brickwork.
Sant’Antonino is a remarkable church, hopelessly modernized with plaster enrichments. Like the cathedral, it has a lantern in the centre crossing, carried on eight columns from the ground, which produce internally a very new and really striking effect. The lantern is finished above the roof with three stages, each of which is lighted with a two-light window in each face. There is a fine early marble doorway to the north transept, with men and monsters supporting the shafts, and some delicate carving. In front of this, at the end of the fourteenth century, was built a lofty porch with a great open archway to the north. It is finished with brick pinnacles and cornices, and is higher than the transept. The hinges on the west door here are very good, and the windows in the aisles—lancets with seven cusps in the head—are quite worth notice. Piacenza struck me, both in its churches and Palazzo Publico, as a town which had possessed a very distinctly developed school of architecture of its own. The churches are peculiar, not to say eccentric, in their planning, and the Palazzo Publico is quite unique in its design and general treatment.
The only other old work I noticed here was a house in the Strada San Marco. This is all of brick, and has arches of slightly horse-shoe shape. The bricks are all axed on the face, and are of large size—11¼ inches long by about 2¾ inches high.
Not very far to the east of Piacenza is Asti, a dull city, distinguished, however, by some remarkable features in its churches. The most important of these are the Cathedral and San Secondo. They are extremely similar in general design: they have naves with short choirs, transepts, low octagonal vaulted lanterns over the crossing, and apsidal chapels in front of the transept gables, and at San Secondo to the several bays of the aisle. Their towers are on the east side of the transepts. The peculiar feature of their detail is the very elaborate way in which brick and stone are counterchanged in the jambs and arches of windows and doorways. The moulded members of a jamb are alternately of brick and stone, and in each course stone comes above the brick of the courses below. San Secondo cannot, I think, be earlier than circa 1400, but at first sight looks like a building of 1200. The cathedral is probably somewhat though not very much earlier. Its plan was evidently derived from that of the cathedral at Piacenza. Its proportions are bad, and it is only redeemed by the picturesqueness of some of its details. Another church has an octagonal campanile; and another, one of sixteen sides. This is of brick, except the upper stage, which is coursed in brick and stone. Its sixteen sides have alternately a window and a shaft running up to the cornice, and in the stage below it there are eight windows below the shafted sides of the belfry. The composition of this tower is certainly very good. Another fine lofty tower with bold cornice and Ghibelline parapet recalls the Veronese towers to mind, and there are besides not a few remains of mediæval domestic work, so that a day may be well spent at Asti by an architect.