In the upper part of the town is the interesting little chapel of the Sicurata or Transfigurata, its façade on a tiny piazza, almost a courtyard. To reach it one passes under an old archway with a fig-tree growing out of it. It contains one or two curious paintings. San Niccolò in Prijeki, at the end of the street of that name, has a Renaissance doorway with Ionic columns and a classical pediment, the adornments being very pure and sober; the rosette window is of a wheel pattern common at Ragusa. The belfry is adorned with excellent mouldings and a twisted stringcourse. The date 1607 over the door refers to the restoration, the building being at least eighty or a hundred years older, while the little figure over the door is still more ancient.
Outside the walls, a few minutes from the Porta Pile, is the tiny Chiesa alle Dance, on a rocky beach by the sea, commenced in 1457 as a chapel for the cemetery of the poor, as is attested by the following inscription:—
DIVÆ MARIÆ VIRGINI
S.C. DECRETO AD PAUPERIEM SEPUL.
EX ÆR. PUB. DOTIBUS
VIII IDUS. DECEMRIS. M.CCCCLVII
D.
The west door is a handsome piece of Venetian Gothic with mouldings and a sculptured group of the Virgin and Child in the tympanum. To the right is another group on a font. In the front of the church a platform spreads out, where a portico must formerly have been, as there are the bases of six large piers.
Of the lay buildings in Ragusa besides the Rector’s Palace we may mention the clock-tower in the Piazza, and the fountain at the Porta Pile. The latter was built by Onofrio of La Cava on the completion of his great aqueduct, and bears the following inscription:—
P. ONOFRIO I. F. ONOSIPHORO
PARTHENOPEO EGREGIO N. I.
ARCHTITECTO
MUNICIPES.
The story of this aqueduct is rather curious. In previous times the city was supplied with water from cisterns, but in 1437 the Government decided to seek for springs in the Gionchetto hills, and invited Onofrio, who was as excellent a hydraulic engineer as he was an architect, to construct it. The sum of 8000 ducats was devoted to the purpose, but before its completion 12,000 were spent. The people began to say that the enterprise such as Onofrio had designed it was impossible, and he was summoned before the magistrates as an impostor. But the evidence of the experts proved favourable to him, and he succeeded in completing the work in the prescribed time. Nothing remained now to be done but to erect a fountain, and the funds were provided by public subscription. Of this monument only the polygonal basin and a few columns and heads remain. The twelve bas-reliefs of the constellations were destroyed by the earthquake, and so with one exception were the figures of animals round the cornice. Another fountain, also by Onofrio, is the very handsome one in the Piazza, decorated with putti and shells.
There are a few private houses at Ragusa of architectural pretensions. Those of the Stradone were, as I have said, destroyed by the earthquake; but in the Prijeki, a street parallel to the Stradone, on the slope of the Monte Sergio, there are several picturesque old palaces. This thoroughfare is very narrow, and the houses are of great height; many of them are adorned with charming Venetian balconies and fragments of sculpture. The general prospect of this dark, narrow street, lit up here and there by patches of brilliant sunlight, showing some vine pergola clinging on to a broad balcony, or a many-light window in the purest Venetian style, is most striking. One might imagine oneself in Venice, until a side street leading up a steep hillside tells us that we are not in the city of the lagoons. The most remarkable of these houses is the one numbered 170, which has a fine doorway, with a rectangular entablature enclosing a pointed arch. In the corners thus formed are two centaurs, very spirited and full of movement, though not quite perfect in drawing. The balcony above, which is exceptionally wide in proportion to its length, is supported by three carved brackets. The beautiful little balcony with marble colonnade on the palace numbered 316 is a veritable gem of Venetian work. On several other houses there are similar fragments, and others are to be found elsewhere in the town, especially in the streets near the Duomo. The Stradone itself is an attractive thoroughfare, broad, airy, and full of sun. The houses are plain and unadorned, but the rich yellow hue of the Curzola stone of which they are built give them a harmonious appearance. The shops to this day are mostly of a very Eastern appearance, the door and window being formed of a single round arch partly divided by a stone counter which cuts half-way across the opening.
A conspicuous architectural feature of the city is its defences. The town walls form a most perfect circuit, of a beauty and completeness rarely surpassed, even in Italy. From whichever side we approach Ragusa, whether from the sea or by the land gates, we are confronted by an imposing mass of battlemented towers, solid bastions, thick walls and escarpments, which conceal the whole town save the steeples and one or two churches. Few cities present such a perfect picture of a mediæval fortress, and few form so fair a picture—this cluster of fine buildings on steep precipitous rocks rising sheer up out of the azure sea, with the exquisite purple hues of the Dalmatian mountains in the background, and the bright patches of rich vegetation all around. Rarely does one see so admirable a combination of strength and beauty. The walls are pierced by three gates—the Porta Pile, the Porta Ploce, and the sea gate. At the Porta Pile there is a double circuit of walls; the outer gate is a round arch in a semicircular outwork, with gun embrasures on either side. To the right the walls extend seawards to a massive round bastion, and then up the rocky ridge; to the left they ascend the steep hillside to the graceful Torre Menze or Minćeta. On entering this gate the road descends, making a sharp curve, passes under a second arch, and opens out into the Stradone. This leads straight to the Piazza, where the chief public buildings stand. We pass under another arch below the clock tower, and reach the Porta Ploce. This too is approached by a winding road passing over two bridges, one of which was formerly a drawbridge, and under several more arches. The solid mass of the Dominican church and monastery formed part of the defence works. From the road between the Piazza and the Porta Ploce the gate opens out on to the quays of the harbour. The latter is small, and incapable of sheltering large modern steamers, which now always put in at the ample port of Gravosa; but it was quite sufficient for the famous “argosies” which visited every known sea during the heyday of the Republic. It is protected by the huge mass of the Forte Molo and other towers, while the pier built by Pasquale di Michele juts out into the sea. Large walled-up arches led to the shelters for the galleys—“arsenatus galearum domus, in qua triremes pulchræ et biremes resident, quibus armatis, cum opus fuerit, utuntur Ragusini.”[516]
