Old Continental TownsGallichan, Walter M. (Walter Matthew)
History
Old Continental Towns
Gallichan, Walter M. (Walter Matthew)
Cities and towns -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel
Besides the pictures in the churches, there is a collection of paintings
in the picture gallery of the Palazzo Pompei. Here will be found
examples of Paolo Veronese and other notable artists of his day. One of
the Veronese School here represented is Girolomo dai Libri, who was a
follower of Mantegna. His work is of a deeply religious character, and
merits careful study.
The Church of San Fermo Maggiore should be seen for its handsome Gothic
architecture, both in the exterior and interior.
There are one or two relics of the Roman period in the history of
Verona, besides the splendid amphitheatre. The most noteworthy are the
two gateways, the Arco dei Leoni, and the Porta dei Borsari.
A. E. Freeman, the historian, has admirably described the variety of
interest in this old town: "There is the classic Verona, the Verona of
Catullus and Pliny; there is the Verona of the Nibelungen, the Bern of
Theodoric; there is the mediæval Verona, the Verona of commonwealths and
tyrants; the Verona of Eccelius and Can Grande; and there is the Verona
of later times, under Venetian, French, and Austrian bondage, the Verona
of congresses and fortifications."
SEVILLE
A house in Seville is the reward of those beloved by the gods. In Toledo
you are made reflective, perchance a little melancholy, while in Granada
you are infected by the spirit of a past long dead. But in fair, sunlit
Seville you live in the present as well as in the past; and your heart
is made light by the pervasive gaiety of the people and the cheerfulness
of the streets and plazas.
Climb the beautiful Giralda--the brown tower of the Moors that rises
above the cathedral dome--and look around upon the vegas, and away to
the blue mountains of the horizon, and you will know why Borrow was
moved to shed "tears of rapture," when he gazed upon this delightful
land of the Blessed Virgin and the happy city, with its minarets, its
palm-shaded squares, its luxuriant gardens, and broad stream, winding
between green banks to the distant marshes, where rice and cotton grow,
and the flamingo and heron fly over sparkling lagoons amid a tropical
jungle.
Seville in spring is gay to hilarity. The great fair and the Easter
ceremonials and _fêtes_ attract thousands to the capital of Andalusia at
the season when the banks of the Guadalquivir are white with the bloom
of the orange-trees, and hundreds of nightingales make the evening
breezes melodious; when the heat is bearable, the sky a deep azure, and
the whole town festive, and bright with the costumes of many provinces.
No blight of east wind depresses in early spring, and rarely indeed is
the promise of roses and fruit threatened by frost in this region of
perennial mildness and sunlight. "Only once have I seen ice in Seville,"
said to me a middle-aged native of the place. It is only the winter
floods, those great _avenidas_, that are dreaded in Seville; for now and
then the river swells out of normal bounds, and spreads into the streets
and alleys.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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