VRBE . ROMA . INPRISTINAM . FORMA ENASCENTE . LAVR . MANLIVS . RARITAE . ERC . A . PATRI EDIS SV . NOMNE . MAN II AN . AS . PRO PORT AR . MEDIOCRITAE . AD . FOR . IVDEOR SIBI . POSTERISQ . AB . VRB . CON . M. M. CCXXI . L. AN . M. III . D. PRI . CAL. AVG. _A short alley on the left leads to the Piazza Scuole. On the right is_ THE CENCI PALACE, (_Palazzo Cenci_,) the scene of the persecution of Beatrice, which led to her execution through the murder of her father at Petrella. "The story is, that an old man having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children, which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant" (Shelley). "The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture, in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy--'The Cenci.' The palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine, half hidden beneath the profuse undergrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the chapel to S. Thomas) supported by granite columns, and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open work. One of the gates of the palace, formed of immense stones, and leading through a passage dark and lofty, and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly" (Shelley). From an old manuscript recently brought to light, and the reports of the trial which have been recently published, the story of Beatrice Cenci appears divested of the fiction of a historical novel; and these papers prove her to have been anything but the innocent victim she is represented in the romantic stories we have all read. _On the left of the Piazza_ is the Jewish Synagogue, once a Christian church, dedicated to S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and sold to the Jews by Pope Sixtus V. when he was in need of money. The Cenci Palace stands upon the substructions of THE THEATRE OF BALBUS.