Cathedral Cities of Italy

by W. W. Collins

Many traces of the Roman colony of Brescia remain, but it was due to a small boy of the virile race that populate the city that the most interesting was unearthed. When a child, Girolamo Ioli was much exercised in mind about a Corinthian column that stuck out of the ground and around which he was wont to play. In maturer years the curiosity of youth was still the ruling passion, and he made it his business to agitate. Like many another agitator his demands were in time gratified, and excavations were commenced which resulted in the unearthing of a building erected by Vespasian it is supposed in the year 72—the supposition resting on fragmentary inscriptions. Palace of Justice or temple, this building is now the museum, and contains one of the finest bronzes Italy can boast of. Found in 1826, this beautiful winged figure of Victory, which is six feet high, still bears a trace of the silver fillet interwoven with a wreath of laurel-leaves that bound her hair. The last-century additions of a shield, which she was thought to have held, and a helmet under one of her feet, have been removed, and Victory stands in the state in which she was discovered. The head and limbs are finely modelled, and the arrangement of the drapery could not be excelled.

Down the wide street in front of the Museum a Corinthian column and heavy frieze, supported by massive brick pillars, have been excavated. Opposite these relics is the huge Martinengo Palace. In a line due south is the church of Sta Afra built on the site of a temple to Saturn. Most of the houses in the vicinity have Roman masonry in their basements and Roman inscriptions let into their walls. From this one gathers that ancient Brixia occupied this part of the later city. Write it down to the credit of Brescia that her citizens passed a law as early as 1480 that all antiquities found should be preserved and given up to the town.

There are two cathedrals in Brescia, La Rotunda and the Duomo Nuovo. The former is one of the most interesting ecclesiastical buildings in Italy. Constructed of stone, with a red brick dog-tooth cornice and twenty-four brick arches, supported by white marble pilasters forming an arcade into which the exterior is divided, a most pleasing effect is obtained. In the interior a circular colonnade, composed of eight extremely massive four-sided piers bearing round arches, supports the stone dome. It is supposed to be of seventh-century construction, and is evidently on the site of an earlier Roman building, as fragments of a mosaic floor exist beneath the present one. This, which is partly tesselated, is much below the level of the ground outside. Lower still, beneath the presbytery and choir, down twenty steps, is a very ancient crypt, in which forty marble columns support the round arches that carry the weight of the fabric above. None of these columns is more than five feet high. Half a dozen blocked up lights, with bases not more than three feet from the floor, are evidence that outside, the level of the ground was at one time far below where it is at present.

The Duomo Nuovo is a finely proportioned edifice and one of the best seventeenth-century churches in the country. The façade is immense and gains by its simplicity. The fine dome is said to be the third in size in Italy; and the lofty interior of white marble, unspoilt by any colour or decoration, gains in space from the fact that there is but one bay to the nave, producing the effect on the senses that one is everywhere standing under the spacious height of Brescia's greatest landmark. The houses of the piazza outside are chiefly occupied by metal-workers, and those who know the incessant din produced by the tapping of their hammers, will quite understand that it was impossible to make a sketch of these two churches as they stand together.

Adjoining the Duomo Nuovo is the Brotello with its fine Torre del Popolo, an embattled tower. The inner courtyard is partly of red brick with a good corridor of the thirteenth century, formed of pointed and round arches and brick groining. Another fine tower stands in the Piazza Vecchia, the Torre del' Orologio. Its enormous dial marks the hours from I to XXIV, the course of the sun and moon, and has the signs of the Zodiac displayed on its face. Two figures that stand on top of the tower strike the hours in a similar way to those on the Clock Tower of Venice. At the west end of the piazza is La Loggia, the town hall, a good example of an early sixteenth-century building. It was commenced, to be accurate, by Tornasso Formentone in 1492 and continued from his designs as far as the first floor. Sansovino was responsible for the second, and Palladio completed what the other two had begun. The building, however, as a whole, is superb. Magnificent arches support the first floor, to which a grand open staircase leads. The medallions and figures which adorn the exterior are extremely good, and the frieze and cornice are equally so. The rich colour of the marble employed lends a beautiful tone to a beautiful building. Unfortunately the interior was burnt out in January 1575. The fire which consumed it is supposed to have originated at the instigation of those who wished to destroy certain ancient charters granting liberties to the inhabitants.

The Torre della Pallata is in a corner of the square—a good specimen of castellated architecture, which rises from a sloping base of immense stones and terminates with a projecting turret.

Brescia contains many fine palaces, and from the streets into which they open one often gets a glimpse, through the iron grille of their portals, of a charming arcaded court. The splash of a flower embowered fountain is music to ear and the cool shade under the arches a rest for eye.

VERONA

THOSE who enter the Brenner Pass, and with faces set towards Italy, leave Innsbruck behind, may have noticed how, after toilsome puffing and straining uphill, the train suddenly seems to draw breath and glide smoothly onwards with increased pace. At the side of the iron road a little thread of water dances merrily over a pebble bed in its haste to reach the sunny plains that lie to the south of the great mountain barrier. Further on the rail and its sparkling attendant part company to join later, when, from their slender origin, the waters have become a rushing river—the river Adige. The mountains are behind, to the north; the character of the landscape has changed, and within a horseshoe bend of the swift stream, well-nigh enclosed by it, lies Verona.