The views from the bridges across the Adige are very striking. The main part of the city is on the right bank, and the river describes nearly a semi-circle round it. The opposite bank is only partially built over, and has a largish suburb, upon rather rapidly rising ground; beyond this the walls of the city are seen with occasional towers, and marked all the way by their serrated battlements climbing the irregular outline of the hills in the boldest fashion. Then crossing over to the other side and turning round, you see the thickly-built city full of towers and churches rising far above the turmoil of the crowd below into the pure sky, and, by their number and size, making Verona one of the most striking old cities I know.
Of course no one goes to Verona without thinking of Romeo and Juliet. I fear, however, that when I was shown the Casa de’ Cappelletti, a small inn in a narrow street, and asked to connect it in any way for the future with the creation of Shakespeare’s brain, my fancy refused to be sufficiently lively to perform the required feat. The simple fact is that, real relics not existing, the good people of Verona have wisely met the demand which Shakespeare has created, and have discovered a tomb for Juliet, and other reminiscences of the fair Veronese, which I dare say satisfy very well the majority of travellers.
At Verona, as in the other towns through which we passed in Italy, we were quite astonished at the number of misshapen dwarfs that we saw; we could not account for this at first, but I suppose it is because children, until they can walk, are tied up in rolls of linen so stiffly as to deprive them of all power of motion. The only wonder is how any of these unfortunate children ever manage to walk at all.
In the courts of the houses at Verona there are generally wells, with ingeniously contrived arrangements for enabling the occupants of the various surrounding houses and balconies to let down their buckets for water without themselves going down to the wells. There are guide-ropes to the well from each angle of the courts round which the houses are usually built, along which the buckets run, suspended by rings and held by ropes from the balconies, until they reach the iron-work over the well, and then fall perpendicularly down to the water.
I have visited Verona many times, and each visit seems to me to give greater pleasure than the last. I fear I have given but a faint idea of the indescribable charm which it has to all who are fond of early art. There is little which one can compare with the situation and surroundings of such cities as Venice and Florence, and yet I suppose most travellers would agree with me in reckoning the interest of these three towns as not far from equal, and greater in very many ways than that of any other Italian cities.
On this first journey we were driven away by bad weather which, when it sets in, generally continues for several days, and we left, inwardly resolving that no long time should elapse before we returned—a resolution which has been abundantly and often fulfilled—and as the waiter at our hotel honestly told us that we should be very likely to find fine weather at Padua, whither we were next to journey, we took his advice, and then, getting into an omnibus contrived to hold thirty persons, and I should say at least twenty feet long, with four horses harnessed with long drawn-out traces to increase the already prodigious length, we were soon at the terminus of the Verona and Venice railway.
CHAPTER VII.
“‘And whither journeying?—‘To the holy shrine
Of Saint Antonio in the city of Padua.’”
Rogers.
Neighbourhood of Verona—Vicenza: Cathedral—San Lorenzo—Santa Corona—Pallazzo della Ragione—Gothic Palaces—Palladio’s works—Teatro Olympico—Padua: Giotto’s Chapel—The Eremitani—Sant’Antonio—The Duomo.