Poppi sits on a high table rock, its feet washed by the flowing Arno. The town itself is dead or sleeping; but most of its houses are frankly modern, in that they are well kept and freshly painted or whitewashed.
The only old building in Poppi, not in ruins, is its castle, occupying the highest part of the rock; a place of some strength before the use of heavy guns. It was built by Lapo in 1230, and bears a family resemblance to the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. The court-yard contains some curious architecture, and a staircase celebrated for the skill shown in its construction. It resembles that in the Bargello at Florence, and leads to a chapel containing frescoes which, according to Vasari, are by Spinello Aretino.
Poppi is a good point from which to explore the western slopes of Vallombrosa or Monte Secchieta. The landlord and the local guides will lead one up through the celebrated groves at a fixed price “tutto compreso,” and, if you are liberal with your tip, will open a bottle of “vino santo” for you. Could hospitality and fair dealing go further?
Bibbiena, the native town of Francesco Berni, and of the Cardinal Bibbiena, who was the patron of Raphael, has many of the characteristics of Poppi, in point of site and surroundings. It is the point of departure for the convent of La Verna, built by St. Francis of Assisi in 1215; situated high on a shoulder of rugged rock. The highest point of the mountain, on which it stands, is called La Penna, the “rock” or “divide” between the valleys of the Arno and the Tiber. To the eastward are seen Umbria and the mountains of Perugia; on the west, the valley of the Casentino and the chain of the Prato Magno; to the northward is the source of the Arno, and to the northeast, that of the Tiber.
To the east, just where the Casentino, by means of the cross road connecting with the Via Æmilia, held its line of communication with the Adriatic, is the Romagna, a district where feudal strife and warfare were rampant throughout the middle ages. From its story it would seem as though the region never had a tranquil moment.
The chain of little towns of the Romagna is full of souvenirs of the days when seigneuries were carved out of pontifical lands by the sword of some rebel who flaunted the temporal power of the church. These were strictly personal properties, and their owners owed territorial allegiance to the Pope no more than they did to the descendants of the Emperors.
Rex Romanorum as a doctrine was dead for ever. Guelph and Ghibelline held these little seigneuries, turn by turn, and from the Adriatic to the Gulf of Spezia there was almost constant warfare, sometimes petty, sometimes great. It was warfare, too, between families, between people of the same race, the most bloody, disastrous and sad of all warfare.
CHAPTER IX
THE ROAD TO ROME
SIENA, crowning its precipitous hillside, stands, to-day, unchanged from what it was in the days of the Triumvirate. Church tower and castle wall jut out into a vague mystery of silhouetted outline, whether viewed by daylight or moonlight. The great gates of the ramparts still guard the approach on all sides, and the Porta Camollia of to-day is the same through which the sons of Remus entered when fleeing from their scheming Uncle, Romulus.
Siena’s Piazza Vittorio Emanuele is a landmark. Dante called it “a great square where men live gloriously free,” though then it was simply the Piazza; and the picture is true to-day, in a different sense. In former days it was a bloody “mis-en-scène” for intrigue and jealousy; but, to-day, simply the centre of the life and movement of a prosperous, thriving, though less romantic city of thirty thousand souls.