Near to the railway station is the Church of Santa Maria Novella, a glorious specimen of Gothic architecture, with a fine façade. In this church are paintings by Orcagna, Lippi, Cimabue Ghirlando, and other artists. The frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel, and the Spanish Chapel of this Dominican church are of great interest. Orcagna’s paintings in the Strozzi Chapel are of the fourteenth century. The chapel was dedicated to St Thomas Aquinas, who was greatly honoured by the Dominican order.
Modern Florence is a bright populous city, with wide main streets, squares, and pleasant gardens.
VERONA
AMID surroundings of great beauty, in a northern corner of Italy, with a huge mountain barrier in the rear, and not far from the Lake of Garda, is the old city of Verona. Shakespeare called the place “fair Verona,” and made it the scene of Romeo and Juliet, while the city is again the background of drama in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Shall we not see, leaning from one of the old balconies, the lovely Juliet? Do Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio no longer roam these twisted ancient streets? And where shall we find Julia and Lucetta, and Valentine, and smile at the pleasantries of Launce, with his dog, Crab, on a leash? Shakespeare has peopled these courts and cloisters for us with characters that we knew when we were young. We resent the bare hint that there never were in Verona a fervent youth named Romeo and a gentle maid called Juliet. Verona is the home of Romeo and Juliet, and for this we have known the town since we first turned the magic pages of Shakespeare.