The state of the cathedral is less a subject for thankfulness! The whole building has been completely modernized within and without, with the exception of the west front and the lower. The former was the façade to a nave with two aisles on either side, or perhaps with one aisle and chapels beyond. All the roofs are of the same flat pitch, and stepped regularly so as to give a broken and bad outline to the mass. The work is mainly of brick, with some good detail in the windows of the outer aisles, of which I give an illustration. The west doorway is of the fourteenth century, with a very steep crocketed gable between pinnacles, and a badly sculptured tympanum with a curious assortment of subjects; in the centre the Crucifixion, right and left of this the Resurrection and an Agnus Dei, and above it the Nativity. Three circular windows light the three centre divisions of the front, and the two lower are connected by a broad band of brick arches which crosses the entire front just below the central circular window. There is not a word to be said in favour of such a design. It _is_ old, and that is its only virtue! [Illustration: AISLE WINDOWS--DUOMO, UDINE.] [Illustration: 38. DUOMO. UDINE. p. 250.] The tower is more interesting, though it is only an incomplete fragment. The lower stage is of stone built in dark and light courses, with a large sunk recess on each side. On the west side is a fine doorway built of alternate courses of white marble and serpentine, and there are small circular windows in the cardinal sides just above the lowest stage. Above these the whole is a plain mass of brickwork, of which a very small portion only seems to be original. This tower is no less than fifty-two feet in outside diameter, and its lowest stage is finely groined, with no provision for the passage of bells. It might almost as well have been intended for a baptistery as for a tower! It stands close to the north side of the choir, and by its side is a rather fine doorway leading into the transept, with a good deal of late Gothic sculpture and architectural detail. There are niches and figures in the jambs and round the arch, the Coronation of the Virgin under the latter, and figures of the Annunciation stuck against the wall on either side in a very haphazard fashion. The strange contrast in style between these two doorways will be seen in the illustration which I give. Here we have, side by side, examples of the most pronounced kind of two national styles of Gothic; the door into the tower being as clearly Italian in its beautiful colour and refined simplicity, as that into the church is German in its cleverness, want of repose, and hard angularity of detail.