people’s law—that force which alone kept head above the breakers of foreign wars and civil discord in the past—slumbers, but is not dead, in the halls where it once reigned. A hum of modern life, a host of modern busts and portraits now clash with, now mellow, the sombre walls and passages. At the other end of the Corso there is a grand new Prefettura, where the Prefect of all Umbria manages Umbrian matters, but the pulse of the old city beats on in its old veins. The Priori, with their golden chains and crimson gowns, have vanished, but the men and women of the land are pretty much the same. They wear big collars of foxes’ fur on their long winter cloaks, just as they did in mediæval times, and they bring their claims of business into their first house of business, they swarm and hum within the corridors, and trample up and down the wide stone staircase with dignified determination stamped upon their features. In the rooms to which they go the clerks sit writing steadily amidst their piles of archives and of blue-books. Few probably of all these people know, and fewer care, about the Peruginos and Bonfiglis in the rooms above; for the natural man or woman desires to pray before his saints and not to pay to stare at them.
We hear that the present palace was finished in the middle of the fourteenth century. Long before that date there had been a public hall where the rulers of the city met to discuss and settle its affairs.[51] But this building was comparatively small and cramped, and the new meeting-house was undertaken with superb disregard to expense. A rough calculation from the many bills shows us that upwards of 14,041 libre was spent on the building of it, but it took nearly one hundred and thirty years to build, and the fact that it was finished at different periods—a bit being added at intervals down the Corso—may account for the waving and irregular line of the east front, which is one of its most marked features.
The first architects employed were natives of Perugia: Fra Bevignate and Messers Giacomo di Servadio and Giovanello di Benvenuto. The original plan of the building was probably a perfect square, reaching from its present north front down to where the great door now stands. One should examine the building from the back in order to understand it fully. At one time we hear that Lombard workmen were called in to assist in the “very heavy labour,” which, perhaps, gives a certain Lombard look to parts of the brickwork round the windows.
The citizens took a vast interest in the erection of their public palace, and allowed many private houses and even churches to be pulled down in order to make room for it. As for the decoration of the cathedral, so also for that of the palace, a neighbouring town was ransacked to furnish ornaments, and the unhappy Bettona was stripped of marbles to supply the magnificent Priori with their pillars and their friezes. Different portions of the huge edifice were given to the principal city guilds to decorate, and it was probably a spirit of emulation in these societies which produced the costly beauties of the separate parts. The chapel was decorated by the Merchants’ Guild, and also the principal door, which was dedicated to St Louis of Toulouse. It is a beautiful piece of work, rich and lovely in its smallest detail, and carved in the grey stone called pietra serena, which always looks a little cold and dusty, like the fur on a grey mole’s back, but which lends itself to a certain attractive style of polished carving peculiar to old doorways in Perugia.[52] Through it one passes into an immense hall, from which a staircase leads into the rooms of the palace above. In former times there were no steps, and persons of distinction and of wealth rode up on horseback to the council chambers.
A splendid open-air staircase leads up to the north entrance of the palace, which is, perhaps, the most impressive architectural point in all Perugia. Some years ago this fine outer staircase was pulled down; but it has been rebuilt with extreme care and taste, and probably exactly on the original lines. One can fancy the great procession of the Podestà and the Priori proceeding up and down these steps on days of solemn ceremony. “Four mace-bearers went before them,” we are told, “bearing in their hands a silver staff richly covered with beautifully wrought figures, with the griffin on the top in enamelled relief. Without these mace-bearers it was not lawful for magistrates to go out.” Each of the ten Priori wore round his neck “a heavy golden chain, the emblem of his office; and on solemn occasions the magistrate was preceded by six trumpeters to herald his approach with silver trumpets, which same were about four metres in length, beautifully enamelled, and with streamers of red satin on which the white griffin of the city was depicted.”
The principal door, from which the Priori probably emerged, is guarded by great brazen beasts: a griffin and a lion, emblems of the city and the Guelphs. These creatures are very typical creations from the brain of some Perugian artist, and among the most impressive objects of their sort in Italy. They were originally made for a fountain in the square by a certain Maestro Ugolino, who received the modest sum of ten pounds for making them. In 1308 the fountain was destroyed, and a little later they were hoisted up to their present position. Long chains and keys hung from their claws in early days. “At the feet of these beasts,” says Rossi, “the bars and keys of the doors of Assisi were hung as glorious trophies in 1321; and in 1358 the keys of the Justice Hall of Siena. The undisciplined militia which entered Perugia on the 3rd August 1799 pulled them down secretly, (‘in the silence of the night’ Mariotti says,) and thus took from the citizens of the present day the satisfaction of restoring to their rightful owners these disgraceful mementos of patriarchal warfare with cities, who to-day are their best friends. The fragments which remain have not the slightest historical interest; they are merely the bars from which the above-mentioned articles once hung.”
The door with the brazen beasts above it leads straight into the Sala dei Notari—a splendid vaulted hall, its ceiling covered with frescoes, surrounded by high wooden stalls and steps of walnut. This big hall was given over to the lawyers of Perugia in 1583. They bought it, and their Collegio down below, from the city for the sum of 1000 scudi; and they at once decorated their fine new quarters, and settled comfortably into them, doing all their business there till early in the century. By the code of Napoleon they were, however, deprived of their privileges, and during the imperial French rule the hall was used as a criminal court. The lawyers seem to have been utterly unhinged in their arrangements. They never returned to the pleasant haunts from which the Emperor ousted them, and the big hall is now used for public concerts and lectures.
The room which corresponds with this one on the upper storey is now the Public Library, with a magnificent collection of over 50,000 volumes, some valuable manuscripts and beautiful painted missals.
Leaving the Sala dei Notari one crosses the main staircase of the palace, and passes into the living heart of the building, into a network of separate rooms and offices which it is not necessary to describe at length. The Sala del Consiglio Comunitativo, or d’Udienza, is beautifully decorated with crimson damask, and delicate arabesques, and has a fine open fire-place carved in pietra serena. Adone Doni’s picture of Julius III. ([see page 181]) is hung in this room, and from it one can gain a pretty accurate knowledge of what the Priori and the potentates of Perugia looked like in their gala clothes. In the Sala degli Archivi there is a fresco of Parnassus by Baroccio. The colour is very fresh still, and the nymphs seem hopelessly out of place above the piles of dusty archives.
There is a curious history connected with the Sala del Malconsiglio—that room with the exquisite fresco by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo over its main entrance door.[53] It was here that the celebrated debate took place concerning the English prisoners (Hawkwood’s men) whom the Perugians succeeded in capturing during the great fight down by the Tiber. The prisoners concocted a letter as they lay in their cells, and in the most pathetic terms they appealed to their capturers; “We too are Christians,” they urged, “but we die of thirst. Have mercy upon us, have mercy on your poor captives, your English vassals.” The Perugians, moved, or more probably flattered by the cringing words, in a moment of ill-timed leniency, let their captives free. They lived to regret the action. A short time later Hawkwood and his men attacked them in another battle on the bridge of S. Giovanni. The English gained an easy victory, 1500 of the Perugians fell, and the Podestà and the German captain of their troops were taken prisoners together with a host of other men. Thus it came about that the room in which the council met to decide the release of the English was thenceforth called the Sala del Malconsiglio in memory of the lamentable decision witnessed by its walls.