The free towns of Italy required civic buildings almost to the same extent as the contemporary cities in Belgium, though not quite of the same class. Their commerce, for instance, did not require trade halls, but no town was without its town-hall, or _palazzo pubblico_, and belfry. The intrinsic difficulty of the designing of buildings of this class, as compared with churches, has already been pointed out. It cannot therefore be expected that the Italians, who failed in the easier task, should have succeeded in the harder. The town-hall at Siena is perhaps the best existing example, most of the others having been so altered that it is difficult to judge of their original effect. This must be pronounced to be a very poor architectural performance, flat and unmeaning, and without any lines or style of ornament to group the windows together into one composition, so that they are mere scattered openings in the wall. That at Perugia seems originally to have been better, though now greatly disfigured. At Florence the Palazzo Vecchio is more of a feudal fortalice (required, it must be confessed, to keep the turbulent citizens in order) than the municipal palace of a peaceful community. In Ferrara and other cities the _palazzo pubblico_ is really and virtually a fortress and nothing else. At Piacenza it consists of a range of bold pointed stone arches, supporting an upper storey of brick, adorned with a range of circular-headed windows, richly ornamented, and a pleasing specimen of the mode in which the Italians avoided the difficulty of filling the upper parts of their windows with tracery (which they never liked) and at the same time rendered them ornamental externally. At Padua and Vicenza are two great halls supported on arcades, in intention like that of Piacenza, but far from possessing its beauty. That at Padua remains in all its pristine ugliness, as hideous an erection as any perpetrated in the Middle Ages. The hall is one of the largest in Europe, measuring 240 ft. in length by 84 in width (Westminster Hall is 238×67), but wholly without ornament or beauty of proportion. Externally the arcades that are stuck to its sides do not relieve its mass, and are not beautiful in themselves. That at Vicenza, though originally very similar, has been fortunate in having its outside clothed in one of Palladio’s most successful designs,—perhaps the only instance in which an addition of that age and style has improved a building of the Gothic period. Comparing this hall as it stands with that at Padua, it must be admitted that the Italians were perfectly correct in abandoning _their_ Gothic for the revived classical style, the improvement being apparent on the most cursory inspection. [Illustration: 521. Palace of the Jurisconsults at Cremona. (From Street.)]