To Brescia from the foot of the Lake of Garda is a matter of twenty odd kilometres, through a greatly varied nearby landscape, set off here and there by vistas of the azure of the distant lake, the Alps of Tyrol and the nearer Bergamese mountains.
“Bologna la Grassa” and “Brescia Armata” are two nick-names by which the respective cities are known up and down Italy. Brescia, like most Italian towns, is built on a hill top and is castle-crowned as becomes a mediæval burg. Brescia’s castle is an exceptionally strongly fortified feudal monument. Brescia Armata took its name from the fact that it was ever armed against its enemies, which in the good old days every Italian city was or it was of no account whatever. Brescia’s enemies could never have made much headway when attacking this hill-top fortress, and must have contented themselves with sacking the cities of the surrounding plain. To-day firearms in great quantities are made here, and thus the city is still entitled to be called Brescia Armata.
Brescia’s market place is more thickly covered with great, squat, mushroom umbrellas than that of any other city of its size in Italy.
Brescia is dear to the French because of its wraith of a mediæval castle, once so vigorously defended by the Chevalier Bayard, that famous knight sans peur et sans reproche.
A bastioned wall surrounds the gay little Lombard city in the genuine romance fashion, albeit there is to-day very little romance in Brescia, which lives mostly by the exploitation of its textile and metal industries.
Brescia housefronts are as gaily decorated as those of Nuremberg, many of them at least. It is a remarkable feature of Brescia’s domestic architecture.
The castle or citadel itself was built by the Viscontis in the fourteenth century on the summit of a hill overlooking the town. The Venetians strengthened it and again the Austrians. General Haynau bombarded the low-lying city round about in barbarous fashion, so much so that the memory of it caused him to be chased from London some years later, when he was sent there as Ambassador.
