There are three great doors to the baptistery. On the northern is sculptured the Tree of Life, and over this twelve prophets carrying medallions with half figures of the Apostles. Below are subjects from the lives of Our Lord and S. John Baptist. The western door has a sculpture of the Last Judgment, and the southern a not very intelligible, though no doubt symbolical, figure of a man seated in a tree and gathering honey. Inside there are various sculptures, and among them a series of illustrations of the labours of the months. My day in Parma was pleasantly concluded with a visit to the Gallery, and then, finding no more mediæval remains, I pushed on to Piacenza. This is a city of no small interest, and remarkable above everything else in the possession of a Palazzo Publico of unusual and striking design--a building of special value and interest to me, since it is a capital example of the use of brick and marble together. Before looking at any of the churches I devoted myself to this building with the more satisfaction when I found that it was really, in some respects, one of the very best works of the sort that I had ever seen. An inscription carved under a banner on a square stone, in the front, records the commencement of the work in 1281, and I think we may assume that no part of it is of much later date than this. It consists, as do most of these buildings, of a lofty open ground story, and a principal story [Illustration: 57. PALAZZO PUBLICO. PIACENZA. p. 308.] above this. The façade is very dignified in effect. On the ground level are five lofty arches, very slightly moulded, and resting on square piers just rounded at the corners. The material of this stage is marble, mainly white, but with just a line of red and another of grey near the string-course which divides this from the next stage. From this point up almost the whole work is executed in brickwork of very elaborate and delicate detail. The two stages have no kind of uniformity or connection with each other, six windows being arranged above the five arches. In the centre of the first floor is the old doorway to the Ringhiera (which was altered in the seventeenth century); the windows on each side are of three lights, inclosed under a round arch with a deep archivolt very slightly recessed--all the enrichments being on very nearly the same face as the wall. These windows agree in size, but vary very much in all their details. Some of the subordinate arches are pointed, some round, and the tympana are everywhere filled with fine brick diapers. Above this stage the walls finish with a good marble cornice of intersecting arches, and then with a forked battlement. At the four angles of this are raised turrets, and the ends are finished with battlemented gables, very quaint and picturesque, as will be seen by the illustration which I give. The niches between the two arches in the principal story seem to have been intended for paintings. The marbles used here are red and white.