of this little city. The Palazzo Publico is a building of two stages in height, the lower entirely open with pointed arches resting on columns, and the upper presenting on its principal front a large balconied window, or Ringhiera, in the centre, and smaller windows on each side of it, and at the ends. The cornice and roof are modern, otherwise the whole design is intact, and exactly in the state in which its architect left it. The character of the design is clearly Venetian, and the date about the beginning of the fifteenth century, but still it is not slavishly Venetian as the houses of Vicenza are, but on the face of it the work of a local architect who knew enough of what was being done in Venice to profit by it without absolutely copying.
The lower or ground story is open on three sides, and has ten arches in front, and five at each end. The space inclosed is irregularly divided by a longitudinal line of columns, carrying semicircular arches, which support the walls of the rooms above, the access to which is by a modernized staircase in the rear. The materials of the walls are generally red and white marble. The balustrades between the columns and the staircases leading to them are so good and complete as well to deserve illustration. The upper part of these, including the cusped heads to the openings, is of white marble, whilst the shafts are alternately of the same material and of serpentine. The upper story is modernized within; but one learns to be grateful for small mercies, and it was certainly with every feeling of gratitude to later architects that I sketched this really beautiful building, which they have been good enough to leave so nearly unaltered on the outside.
The state of the cathedral is less a subject for thankfulness! The whole building has been completely modernized within and without, with the exception of the west front and the lower. The former was the façade to a nave with two aisles on either side, or perhaps with one aisle and chapels beyond. All the roofs are of the same flat pitch, and stepped regularly so as to give a broken and bad outline to the mass. The work is mainly of brick, with some good detail in the windows of the outer aisles, of which I give an illustration. The west doorway is of the fourteenth century, with a very steep crocketed gable between pinnacles, and a badly sculptured tympanum with a curious assortment of subjects; in the centre the Crucifixion, right and left of this the Resurrection and an Agnus Dei, and above it the Nativity. Three circular windows light the three centre divisions of the front, and the two lower are connected by a broad band of brick arches which crosses the entire front just below the central circular window. There is not a word to be said in favour of such a design. It is old, and that is its only virtue!
