San Francesco _was_ one of the finest churches in the city. It is now so shabby and decayed outside, and so covered with painters’ and decorators’ work inside, that all its good effect is ruined. Its interior was the victim of what was, I daresay, a very well-meant restoration some years ago, and little of it has been left in its original condition. It has a chevet with aisles and chapels, and externally the rare feature (in Italy) of flying buttresses to support the choir vault. They were built by men who had never seen one before, I suppose, and are as crude and misshapen as they well could be. Two campanili close to each other, south of the choir, [Illustration: CLOISTER--SAN STEFANO, BOLOGNA.] group strangely with it in the perspective view. They are unlike in size and design, and illustrate the perfect indifference with which all mediæval architects viewed the gravest departures from laws of symmetry. The larger of the two has rather rich Gothic details, the belfry-stage having traceried windows of three lights with spiral shafts for monials. The gables in this church have large white marble crosses let into them; these are rounded at the ends, and each end has a bright green tile disk inserted. The west front is of the usual description--a great sham front of hideous outline. Most of its windows are lancets, new, but probably copied from old examples, and the doorway under a canopy is of good character. I have left to the last what, I suppose, is in fact the oldest of the Bolognese churches--San Stefano. It is a collection of seven churches, rather than one church, and, in spite of modernization without end, it is still a most curious and interesting jumble of old buildings. The churches are dedicated to--1, San Stefano; 2, San Lorenzo; 3, San Sepolcro (a circular church); 4, The Corte di Pilato (a cloister); 5, Sta. Trinità; 6, SS. Pietro e Paolo (with three Romanesque apses); and 7, San Giovanni. No. 3 has an aisle round the circular portion, and was probably a baptistery, and there is still an old ambon in it. One gets fairly puzzled in this nest of queer little churches or parts of churches, and I found but little of architectural--as distinguished from antiquarian--interest in them. The brickwork in the cloister and in some of the external walls is extremely good. Some of the latter are diapered or reticulated on the face with square yellow tiles with dividing lines of red brick, and the cornices are of the same two colours also. In the cloister the columns and inner order of the arches are of stone, the rest of the walls and cornices being of red and yellow bricks, and in one part there is a course of red, green, and yellow tiles alternated. The effect of this work is extremely pretty.