character. The brick walls are impressive in height, yet they do not give the impression of being impregnable, and the regal portals betray not a trace of the bellicose. Coats of arms and wall paintings brighten their reveals, and all vestiges of moats and oaken doors have disappeared. A pompous Caribinieri is there to scan one’s luggage for hidden turnips, that is all. For sheer splendor of detail, the slender portal which crowns a steep flight of stairs leading up to Sienna’s striped cathedral has few equals, glistening as it does with the most immaculate of carved ornament hewn from flawless colored marbles. Weeping clouds hovered continually over Sienna during a recent visit, and made sketching this or any of the town gates of Sienna an impossibility. Pondering now of this famed city, I retain the impression of muddy streets, of sidewalk cafes and much Cinzano, of hours spent thumbing portfolios of Alinari photographs and of a ree-fined “pension de famille” with service (and clients), exactly as one finds them in a Russell Square rooming house. Boiled potatoes and
Brussels sprouts “a l’eau’’ supplant the good old spaghetti and oil-fried vegetables in this shrine of the Nordic, and restrained comment on last night’s bridge hands replace the customary raucous and gutteral conversations of Chianti-soaked peasants. It all seems very distressing, but Sienna has become incurably adopted as a retreat for the eminently respectable.
The cultured Perugia has had to shelter its intellectuals behind parapets since time immemorial, as is proved by the century-stained gateway of the Romans which still stands imbedded in the walls, its marble niches ever embellished with headless and powerfully muscled torsos. Perugia is a city of exquisite portals. Its palace doorways of the Renaissance are things of the subtlest refinement, and the catacomb-like arches which spring up at dizzy heights in the midst of its closely spun inner city are well nigh overwhelming, yet they do not dim the silent strength of the city’s Roman gates.
Orvieto, though it is the very essence of a walled
town on a spiny ridge of rock, does not possess
NOLI
LUCCA
Brussels sprouts “a l’eau’’ supplant the good old spaghetti and oil-fried vegetables in this shrine of the Nordic, and restrained comment on last night’s bridge hands replace the customary raucous and gutteral conversations of Chianti-soaked peasants. It all seems very distressing, but Sienna has become incurably adopted as a retreat for the eminently respectable.
The cultured Perugia has had to shelter its intellectuals behind parapets since time immemorial, as is proved by the century-stained gateway of the Romans which still stands imbedded in the walls, its marble niches ever embellished with headless and powerfully muscled torsos. Perugia is a city of exquisite portals. Its palace doorways of the Renaissance are things of the subtlest refinement, and the catacomb-like arches which spring up at dizzy heights in the midst of its closely spun inner city are well nigh overwhelming, yet they do not dim the silent strength of the city’s Roman gates.
Orvieto, though it is the very essence of a walled
town on a spiny ridge of rock, does not possess
NOLI
LUCCA