Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy

by George Edmund Street

Here we had what seemed likely to be an endless discussion upon the relative merits of a four-oared boat and a carriage as a means of conveyance to Lecco. We inclined to the latter; but, leaving the matter in the hands of an active waiter, we busied ourselves with eating delicious fruit, admiring the tall cypresses growing everywhere about the shores of the lake, and watching the exquisite beauty of the reflections of Bellagio and the opposite mountains on the smooth bosom of the water.

We were soon off again, and well satisfied to find ourselves trotting rapidly along the well kept Stelvio Road, instead of dragging heavily and slowly along as one always does with a Swiss voiturier; soon, however, we were to find that our driver was an exception to the Italian rule, and that he who wishes to travel fast must not expect to do so with vetturini.

The churches which we passed were in no way remarkable; they all had campanili, with the bells hung in the Italian fashion in the belfry windows, with their wheels projecting far beyond the line of the wall; but they all seemed alike uninteresting in their architecture, so that we were in no way sorry to pass them rapidly on our way to Lecco. This eastern arm of the lake, though of course much less travelled than the rest of its course, is very beautiful, and its uninhabited and less cultivated looking shores, with bold cliffs here and there rising precipitously from the water, were seen to great advantage, with the calm unrippled surface of the lake below, and the sky just tinged with the bright light of the sun before it set above.

Lecco contains nothing to interest a traveller; we had an hour to spend there before we could get fresh horses to take us on to Bergamo, and wandered about the quaint-looking streets, which were full of people—some idly enjoying themselves, others selling luscious-looking fruit. We went into a large church not yet quite completed; it was Renaissance in style, almost of course, and on the old plan, with aisles, but very ugly notwithstanding. In the nave was a coffin covered with a pall of black and gold; six large candles stood by it, three on either side, and two larger than the others on each side of a crucifix at the west end. The whole church revelled in compo inside and out and there was external access to a wretched bone-house in a crypt.

Leaving Lecco, we had a long drive in the dark to Bergamo; the night was very dark, but the air was absolutely teeming with life and sounds of life; myriads of cicale seemed to surround us, each giving vent to its pleasure in its own particular note and voice with the greatest possible determination; and had I not heard them, I could scarcely have believed it possible that such sounds could be made by insects, however numerous they might be. We changed horses at a village on the road, and went on rapidly. The old town of Ponte San Pietro was passed, having been taken at first to be Bergamo, and remembered by the sound of a troop of men singing well together as they passed us in the dark in one of its narrow streets, awakening with their voices all the echoes of the place, which till then had seemed to us to be supernaturally silent. It was eleven o’clock before we reached Bergamo, and tired with our long day’s work, we were soon in bed.

A prodigious noise in the streets before five o’clock the next morning gave us the first warning that the great fair of Bergamo was in full swing; sleep was impossible, and so we were soon out, enjoying the busy throng which crowded the streets of the Borgo, in a before-breakfast walk; the crowd of women selling fruit, the bright colours of their dresses, the rich tints of stuff hung out for sale, the display of hair-pins and other ornaments in the innumerable silversmiths’ shops, and the noisy, laughing, talking people who animated the whole scene, made the narrow arcaded streets of the busy place most amusing.

After breakfast we started at once for the Città, as the old city of Bergamo is called. It stands on a lofty hill overlooking the Borgo San Leonardo, within whose precincts we had slept, quite distinct from it and enclosed within its own walls. The ascent was both steep and hot, but the view at the entrance gateway of the Città over the flat Lombard country was very striking, and well repaid the labour of the ascent. This vast plain of bluish-green colour, intersected in all directions by rows of mulberry-trees and poplars, diversified only by the tall white lines of the campanili which mark every village in this part of Lombardy, and stretching away in the same endless level as far as the eye could reach, was grand if only on account of its simplicity, and had for us all the charm of novelty.

Through narrow and rather dirty streets, which do little credit to the cleanly habits of the Bergamask nobility, to whom it seems that the Città is sacred, and whose palaces are, many of them, large and important buildings, we reached at last the Piazza Vecchia, around which is gathered almost all that in my eyes gives interest to Bergamo.

Across the upper end of the Piazza stretches the Broletto, or town-hall, supported on open arches, through which pleasant glimpses are obtained of the cathedral and church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, which last is the great architectural feature of the city.

But we must examine the Broletto before we go farther. And first of all, its very position teaches a lesson. Forming on one side the boundary of a spacious Piazza, on the other it faces, within a few feet only, the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, and abuts at one end upon the west front of the Duomo. It is to this singularly close—even huddled—grouping that much of the exquisite beauty of the whole is owing. No doubt Sta. Maria and the original cathedral were built first, and then the architect of the Broletto, not fearing—as one would fear now—to damage what has been done before, boldly throws his work across in front of them, but upon lofty open arches, through which glimpses just obtained of the beauties in store beyond make the gazer even more delighted with the churches when he reaches them, than he would have been had they been all seen from the first. It is, in fact, a notable example of the difference between ancient grouping and modern, and one instance only out of hundreds that might be adduced from our own country and from the Continent of the principle upon which old architects worked; and yet people, ignorant of real principles in art, talk as though somewhat would be gained if we could pull down S. Margaret’s in order to let Westminster Abbey be seen; whereas, in truth, the certain result would be, in the first place, a great loss of scale in the Abbey seen without another building to compare it with and measure it by; and in the next, the loss of that kind of intricacy and mystery which is one of the chief evidences of the Gothic spirit. Let us learn from such examples as this at Bergamo that buildings do not always require a large open space in front of them, so that they may be all seen and taken in at one view, in order to give them real dignity.