Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.”
Taddeo Zucchero and Annibale Caracci are buried on either side of Raphael. Near the high altar is a monument to Cardinal Gonsalvi (1757–1824), the faithful secretary and minister of Pius VII., by Thorwaldsen. This, however, is only a cenotaph, marking the spot where his heart is preserved. His body rests with that of his beloved brother Andrew in the church of S. Marcello.
During the Middle Ages the Pope always officiated here on the day of Pentecost, when, in honour of the descent of the Holy Spirit, showers of white rose-leaves were continually sent down through the aperture during service.
In the Piazza della Rotunda is a small obelisk found in the Campus Martius. Following the Via della Rotunda from hence, in the third street on the left is the small semicircular ruin called, from a fancied resemblance to the favourite cake of the people, Arco di Ciambella. This is the only remaining fragment of the baths of Agrippa, unless the Pantheon itself was connected with them.
Behind the Pantheon is the Piazza della Minerva, where a small obelisk was erected in 1667 by Bernini, on the back of an elephant. It is exactly similar to the obelisk in front of the Pantheon, and they were both found near this site, where they formed part of the decorations of the Campus Martius. The hieroglyphics show that it dates from Hophres, a king of the 25th dynasty.
ST. LAURENCE, NUREMBERG
LINDA VILLARI
Once in the train bound for Nuremberg, every sight on the road seems to bring one nearer to Mediæval Germany, and is a fitting prelude to its charms. The storied prettiness of the Rhine district left behind, ripening vines give way to festoons of hops and plots of tobacco; you pass through forests of fir and larch, and come to fields of gold brocade where the lupines are in bloom. Woodlands merge into pleasant meadows watered by swiftly-running streams; every village is crowned by a ruined castle; and there are storks’ nests on clustered roofs about the red church spires. Flaxen-haired children are driving flocks of fat geese; here and there is a battlemented monastery; then come tracts of moorland flushed pink and purple with heather; you dive into hill-sides; you sight dark masses of pine-trees beyond a winding river crossed by an occasional ferry; you halt at mediæval towns capped by crumbling yellow walls of palace and prison, and before long at the spick and span station of manufacturing Fürth (where most of the toys and wood-carvings are now made). And then you see a confusion of dusky, jagged roofs pierced by lofty spires and high walls; massive towers loom above the greenery of a steep hill-side, and you know that your goal is reached. This is Nuremberg, the “jewel-casket of the German Empire.” Your first impression is that it should rather be named the city of wonderful roofs. Mighty roofs heave their four and five rows of dormers high in air above a forest of lower dwellings, with roofs of every degree of steepness, covered for the most part with small inverted tiles of reddish-brown hue. This arrangement gives them a soft and curious shagginess that greatly adds to their effect. Driving first round the town, before passing its gates, you see that it is almost entirely surrounded by dark-red walls, studded by numerous steeple-crowned watch-towers, and further guarded by a dry moat a hundred feet wide and fifty deep, now draped with vines and planted with vegetables and fruit-trees. The River Pegnitz runs through the city, and issues from it in two arms at either end; its islands and covered bridges, with smaller bridges (hinterbrücke) swung underneath, supply deliciously pictorial incidents of towers and sheds and mills and timber-yards, with fascinating peeps up and down stream into the interior of the town.
ST. LAURENCE, GERMANY.
St. Sebald is the patron saint of the older part of the city near the castle, St. Laurence of the portion across the river, dating from the Thirteenth Century.