The Near East: Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

by Robert Hichens

Opposite the fountain of Onofrio are the church, monastery, and cloisters of the Franciscans, with a courtyard and an old pharmacy containing some wonderful vases. At the east end of the Stradone, away to the right, are the church of San Biagio, the cathedral, and the Palazzo dei Rettori. On the other side of the street are the military hospital and the church of the Jesuits. Not far away is the Dominican monastery.

Of these the most remarkable is the rector's palace. But the cloisters of the Franciscans are beautiful and hold an extraordinary charm and peace. The rector's palace is a noble Renaissance building, with a courtyard containing a very handsome staircase, and with a really splendid fifteenth-century colonnade fronting the piazza. The carving of the capitals of the columns is wonderfully effective. Three are said to be inferior to the remaining four, which were the work of an architect of Naples, Onofrio. But all are remarkable. The little winged boys have a tenderness and liveliness, a softness and activity, which are quite exquisite. The windows of Venetian Gothic are beautiful; and the whole effect of this façade, with its carved doorway, the round arches, richly dark, with notes of white, the two tiers of stone seats raised one above the other, and the double rows of windows, square and arched, in the shadow of the colonnade, is absolutely noble.

The cathedral is not very interesting, and the "Assumption" over the high altar, though attributed to Titian, cannot be by him. Much more attractive is a copy of the Madonna della Sedia of Raphael. The treasury contains some remarkable jewels and silver and many relics.

In the Dominican church there is a genuine Titian, and there are some very curious and interesting pictures by Nicolo Ragusano, a painter of Ragusa who lived in the fifteenth century. The cloisters contain a white well-head, guarded by graceful columns, orange-trees, and flowers, above which peer the small windows of the monks. But if one had to be a monk in Ragusa, surely it would be wise to cast in your lot with the Franciscans at the other end of the street, whose Romanesque fourteenth-century cloisters with octagonal columns are quite beautiful and in excellent preservation. The capitals of the columns are carved with animals. Palms flourish there, and roses. Above, a terrace, with a wonderful balustrade—a series of tiny arches resting on tiny columns, a sort of stone echo of the arches and columns below,—runs all round the court. The peace is profound, but not sad. As one lingers there one can understand, indeed one can scarcely help understanding, the very peculiar charm which must often attach to the monkish life.

Ragusa contains some nine thousand inhabitants. One of them remarked that eight hundred of these were ecclesiastics. And he was unsympathetic enough to add, "E molto troppo!" Perhaps his statement was untrue. But certainly the ways of Ragusa swarm with religious. Nevertheless,—one thinks of Rome, with its crowds of priests and its crowds of free-thinkers,—the inhabitants of Ragusa seem to be very devout. In almost all of the many churches, at all times of the day, people may be found praying, meditating, telling their beads, worshiping at shrines of the saints.

Around Ragusa there are many beautiful walks, on Lacroma, on Lapad by Gravosa, on Monte Sergio, on Monte Petka. A really superb drive is the expedition to Castelnuovo in the Bocche di Cattaro, along the Dalmatian riviera, which is as fine as almost any part of the French riviera, and which is still wild and natural, not yet turned into a vanity-box. Those who take this glorious drive will cross the frontier into Herzegovina, and, best of all, they will pass by the wonderful vineyards of Canali, which roll in waves of gold to the very feet of a chain of naked and savage mountains.

The voyage from Ragusa to Cattaro is one of the finest in Europe. The entrance into the bocche, the journey through them, and the arrival at Cattaro, hidden away like some precious thing that must not be revealed to the dull gaze of the ordinary world, almost, but mercifully not quite, under the giant shadow of the Black Mountain, make for the voyager what comes to seem at length a deliberately planned, and triumphantly carried out, scenic crescendo, which closes in sheer magic.

The coast of Dalmatia is guarded by chains of islands and is pierced by many long and narrow inlets. During the voyage from Triest or Fiume to the extreme south of the country, the ship, often for many hours, seems to be traveling over a series of lakes. Rarely does she emerge into open water. But between Gravosa and the bocche there is open sea. Nature has not neglected to make her preparations. She gives you the stretch of open sea as a contrast to what is coming. And just when you are beginning to feel its monotony, the prow of the vessel veers to the left, seems to be sensitively searching for some unseen opening in the rugged coast. She finds that opening between Punta d'Ostro and Punta d'Arza, leaving the little isle of Rondoni, with its round, yellow fort, on the right and the open sea behind.

The mountains which guard the bocche are nearly six thousand feet high, bare, cruelly precipitous, in color a peculiar, almost ashy, gray. When you are at a long distance from them they seem to descend sheer into the water; but as you draw nearer over the waveless sea, you find that along their bases runs a strip of beautiful fertile country, green, thickly wooded in many places, with gay little villages set among radiant gardens, with a white highroad, along which peasants are passing. There is Castelnuovo on its hill among leafy groves, with its old, narrow fortress on the rock fought for by Turks and Venetians; near by is Zelenika; and there another large fortress, with the Austrian flag above it. The sensitive prow of the ship veers again, this time to the southeast, where the ash-gray precipices surely hold the sea forever in check. But the ship knows better. The Canale di Kumbur shows itself, leading to the splendid Bay of Teodo surreptitiously observed from afar by the mountains of Montenegro. If you held your breath and listened, might you not hear the boom of guns by the lake of Scutari? All sense of being at sea fades from you as the ship penetrates ever more deeply into the secret recesses of the mountains. This is like superb lake scenery, austere, grand, almost terrible, and yet radiant. Nature is even coquettish on this perfect morning of autumn, for in these remoter regions she has cast a swathe of the lightest and whitest possible mist, like one of those scarfs of Tunis, over the cultivated land which edges the precipices. As the ship draws near, the mist seems to disperse in a sparkle of gold, revealing intimate beauties, full of charming detail: a little Byzantine church with a pale-green cupola, a priest in a sunny garden leaning over a creeper-covered wall, white horses trotting briskly along a curly, white road, soldiers marching through a village with a faint beat of drums, children perhaps going to school through a riot of green. But the mist is ever there in the distance, part of the spirit of autumn.