Studies of Travel: ItalyFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Italy
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Italy -- Description and travel
Tusculum they will, perhaps, have made the object of a separate
pilgrimage; Aricia belongs to the following of Jupiter and the Alban
mount; "Setia's purple vineyards" it may be hard to take into the line
of march; but, with a slight change of order, "Velitræ, Cora, Norba,"
with the later Ninfa thrown in as a substitute for neglected Setia,
will form an admirable group, a day's journey, which those who have
made it will perhaps, at the end of a day or two, feel sorry that
they have not cut into two. Velitræ--hardly changed in the modern
Velletri--has itself but little to show beyond one of the very noblest
bell-towers of the second Italian period, where the pointed arch creeps
in, a visitor which in Italy is better away, but which at least keeps
out the vagaries of a yet later time. The lie of the town is good;
it stands well on its hill, of no great elevation among its brighter
neighbours. Besides the bell-tower, it has little to show in the
ecclesiastical line, save only the eccentricity of having its cathedral
church placed as if we were in Wales instead of in Italy, at the bottom
of the city instead of at the top. One or two ancient houses and modern
palaces may claim some attention, but Velletri, truly barren in Roman
remains, cannot be said to be fruitful in those of mediæval times. The
chief value of the town is as a starting-point--we can hardly call it
centre--for Cora, Norba, and several other of its ancient fellows. The
view from Velletri is beyond words. We look over the fertile plain,
dying away to the right into the Pomptine marshes, and fenced in by the
mighty limestone bulwark of the Volscian mountains. To the right of all
the height of Anxur's temple looms in the distance; Circeii, with its
following of islands, rises nearer and more plainly, almost itself like
a great island, reminding the visitor from the West of England of Brean
Down and the Holms in the Severn Sea. But the mountains draw the eyes
towards them by something more than their bright masses, something more
than a light and shade upon their sides. Several of their strong points
are crowned with castles and whole towns; and one point so crowned
stands out as the centre of all. We see one spur of the mountain, far
lower than the heights beyond it, crowned by a little city coming some
way down its sides, with a tall tower rising well from the midst when
the sunlight catches it. There stands one of the chief objects for
which Velletri is the starting-point; there we have to look for--
... the gigantic watch-towers,
No work of earthly men,
Whence Cora's sentinel's o'erlook
The never-ending fen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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