Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
So at last you will come to the Piazza Acquaverde and the Statue of
Columbus, which is altogether dwarfed by the Railway Station. Not far
away to the left, behind this last, you will find the great Palazzo
Doria. It is almost nothing now, but in John Evelyn's day, when
accompanied by that "most courteous marchand called Tornson," he went to
see "the rarities," it was still full of its old splendour. "One of the
greatest palaces here for circuit," he writes, "is that of the Prince
d'Orias, which reaches from the sea to the summit of the mountaines. The
house is most magnificently built without, nor less gloriously furnished
within, having whole tables and bedsteads of massy silver, many of them
sett with achates, onyxes, cornelians, lazulis, pearls, turquizes, and
other precious stones. The pictures and statues are innumerable. To this
palace belong three gardens, the first whereof is beautified with a
terrace supported by pillars of marble; there is a fountaine of eagles,
and one of Neptune, with other sea-gods, all of the purest white marble:
they stand in a most ample basine of the same stone. At the side of this
garden is such an aviary as S^r. Fra. Bacon describes in his _Sermones
Fidelium_ or Essays, wherein grow trees of more than two foote diameter,
besides cypresse, myrtils, lentiscs, and other rare shrubs, which serve
to nestle and pearch all sorts of birds, who have an ayre and place
enough under their ayrie canopy, supported with huge iron worke
stupendious for its fabrick and the charge. The other two gardens are
full of orange trees, citrons, and pomegranates; fountaines, grotts, and
statues; one of the latter is a colossal Jupiter, under which is a
sepulchre of a beloved dog, for the care of which one of this family
receiv'd of the K. of Spayne 500 crownes a yeare during the life of the
faithful animal. The reservoir of water here is a most admirable piece
of art; and so is the grotto over against it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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