Letters of an Architect, From France, Italy, and Greece. Volume 2 [of 2]

by Joseph Woods

I could not leave Syracuse without visiting the Fountain Cyane, which is a little pool, somewhat larger than the New River head near Ware, but less regular in its form, and furnishing a more copious supply of water. The banks of the stream issuing from it are covered with the Arundo Donax, and with the Papyrus. It is deep, but so choaked with vegetation that the boat could hardly get along. On an eminence, at a small distance, are parts of the shafts of two Doric columns, of considerable size, but without capitals: they are standing erect in their places, and are believed to be the remains of a temple of Jupiter Olympus. Wilkins supposes them columns of the interior rather than of the outer peristyle, because they have only sixteen flutes. These flutes terminate abruptly at about one foot from the bottom.

There is in most of the Italian cities a coffee-house called the Casino, which is a place of resort for the nobles. At Syracuse they have a constitutional coffee-house, which will admit also respectable persons engaged in commerce, and others who cannot prove their membership of any noble family. These were established under English influence in several Sicilian cities, and I spent some pleasant evenings in this at Syracuse. The favourite game is draughts, in which, without any increase of the number of squares, the king has the power which we give to him at Polish draughts. The usual game in Italy does not permit a private in any case to take an adverse king, but in other respects the game is played as with us. In Greece sixteen men are used on each side, and they move either forward or laterally, never diagonally or backward, and take by passing over any unsupported man, just as we do, but in the direction in which they move.

Syracuse contains more of interest to the antiquary than to the architect, yet, since leaving it, I have regretted that I did not make a longer stay, and visit Noto and Ispica. At the latter place the chambers cut out of the rock on each side of a narrow valley are so numerous, as to merit the name of a subterraneous city.

I left Syracuse on the morning of the 24th of July, having engaged two horses, at two dollars each, to convey myself and my luggage to Catania. My landlord told me that it was an excellent road, perfectly carozzabile, but I suppose by a carriage, he must have meant a lettica, which is a sedan-chair, carried by mules, for certainly a wheel-carriage could not get along; yet the prince of Biscari praises it as an excellent road. We had hardly proceeded two miles when the baggage-horse, with the muleteer upon him, slipt and fell, and after two or three miles more, mine came down suddenly. After a little while my horse fell a second time, and I was bruised by the fall. This made the rest of my ride very painful: I obliged the guide to change horses, and to say the truth, felt it rather as an insult to my horsemanship, that he arrived at Catania without any farther accident. Between Syracuse and Agusta are the remains of a monument, supposed to have been a pyramid, or an acute cone, but it appears to me to have been a column: the purpose of its erection is unknown. At about eighteen miles from Syracuse we left the limestone beds, and came to a country probably volcanic. At twenty-four miles, we stopt at a little house near the sea-shore, where nothing was to be had but bad wine. However, I had taken the precaution to carry with me some bread, and a cold roast duck. The remaining eighteen miles are along a sandy district near the shore, the road probably never being a mile from the sea; for the whole forty-two miles we pass neither town nor village, and a great portion of the land is uncultivated. It wants water perhaps, but that seems to be attainable. The first part of the ride was the most beautiful, but the whole wanted an ornament it would have had in clearer weather. Ætna would, in that case, have been a conspicuous object. As it was I only obscurely traced his base, and the summit was always hid in the clouds.

Catania has lately suffered from an earthquake, which did not absolutely throw down many houses, but it injured them so much that numbers are incapable of being repaired; others less damaged, are propped up till the owners can restore them, and the principal street exhibits almost a continued range of these temporary supports. Nothing can look more forlorn, and even the width of the street contributes to its desolate appearance. Half the houses seem to have been in an unfinished state before the earthquake, but not uninhabited; a roof has been applied to the ground-floor or first story, and in that condition they remain, and are likely to remain, unless a fresh catastrophe should level them with the ground. In a town so subject to earthquakes, the usual Italian style of architecture, consisting of many lofty stories one over the other, should be abandoned, and low houses of one principal story, little or not at all elevated, and at most of only one small story above, ought to be adopted. A city so built may be very beautiful, especially if intermixed with groves and gardens, though its character of beauty will be perfectly distinct from that produced by narrow streets and lofty palaces. Here the principal streets are too wide, and the want of shade is a sensible inconvenience.

On the 25th I visited the museum of the prince of Biscari, which, if not like those of Rome, is very interesting from the number of Sicilian antiquities it contains. The department of natural history is poor, and the whole is neglected, as the present prince does not partake of the taste of his illustrious ancestor. I afterwards went to the baths, to two theatres, and an amphitheatre, which are all under the care of an old servant of the prince. He seems a good sort of man, but the waiter of the inn demands half of all that he receives from travellers; a truth which I suspected from the first, but which I ascertained afterwards on visiting the principal theatre a second time without him. This waiter, who is called Don Mario, is the most impudent and shameless knave I ever met with, and the landlord of the house being lately dead, the widow commits everything to his care, which makes the residence at the Leon d’oro very disagreeable.

The Baths are in the neighbourhood of the cathedral, and I believe partly under it; what remains is altogether subterraneous, they consist of a very irregular collection of vaulted rooms, none of them very large, but we distinguish the place of the hypocaust, and some other of the little arrangements which must have been necessary in such an establishment. There are also other baths which we know from inscriptions were termed Achillei, and that is just all we know about them. Of the Theatres one is small. It was probably covered, and is supposed to have been an odeum, or musical theatre. The taste of the Sicilians must have been different then from what it is now, since in modern times they would probably have built a large theatre for music, and a small one for theatrical representations. The other is large, and was uncovered, and the descent into the present ruins by a large flight of steps, is picturesque. They are both clogged up with modern houses, and also, particularly the larger one, with the earth and rubbish which has filled up the lower part. They are therefore understood with difficulty, and did not present to me features sufficiently interesting to make me wish to enter minutely into the details. They are both of Roman, not of Greek architecture. The remains of the amphitheatre are still less considerable, but the construction of these edifices is so simple and uniform, that a very small portion enables us to comprehend the arrangement of the whole. Some of the arches have been filled with lava, which must have entered in a fluid state, since it fits closely to all the parts of the artificial structure. I was also conducted to a place where some remains of the ancient walls have been surmounted by the lava. They are on the lower side of the town, and not, as might be expected, in the part opposed to the mountain. As the lava gets cool, it probably accumulates more rapidly. Besides these there is a circular domed room of Roman times, which is perhaps the most perfect antiquity remaining here. It is remarkable that a town, so repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes and torrents of lava, should exhibit so many remains of antiquity; and I think we may derive from them this important lesson, that circular forms offer the best resistance to these causes of destruction.

In spite of the many calamities the place has suffered, a portion of the ancient cathedral, built by Roger, the first Norman king of Sicily, still remains. The chief part of the present edifice is modern, and the interior is a fine room. The piers consist of double pilasters, and between the arches there is much ornament; but as the architecture is not interrupted by it, the exuberance does not displease. The choir exhibits the pointed arch. I will not undertake to say that this was of the time of Roger, but it is not improbable. He did not die till 1154, and there are other pointed arches of as early a date.

On the 26th I visited the noble collection of the Cavalier Gioeni, consisting chiefly of products of the volcano, whose overwhelming interest seems to have prevented naturalists from attending to any other part of the island. Although I had no introduction, the cavalier received me with the greatest politeness, and attended me himself: he thinks the ancient serpentine (which is a green porphyry, though not the stone known in Italy under that name,) to be a Sicilian stone. It is found in rounded masses on the shore, and at the back of Ætna, but not in sitû. Amber he considers a hardened bitumen which issues from the rocks as a clear fluid, but though found on the shores and rivers of Sicily in its complete state, the intermediate progress has never been detected.

There are two other fine museums in Catania, one belonging to the Benedictine convent, and the other to the baron Ricupero. At the latter also, the master was so obliging as to exhibit everything himself, and he showed himself to be thoroughly versed in coins and in Etruscan vases. The large glass cases of the Benedictines are dark and dirty. I was rather after the appointed time, of which the librarian did not fail to remind me, and when I began to apologize, begged me not to mention it, as it was his duty to wait for me. I have met with a similar answer where I was persuaded it was rather meant as a compliment than an incivility, and perhaps that was the case in this instance, but I confess it considerably shortened my examination.