Studies of Travel: ItalyFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Italy
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Italy -- Description and travel
Landed, then, in Christian Segni, we may, perhaps, remember that one of
the greatest of the Popes was born either in the town itself or in its
satellite of Gavignano. But which was the actual spot? Our one guide
available at the moment seems to doubt between the two. In either case
we see, if we do not tread, the place which gave birth to the third
and greatest of the Innocents. We find, too, that a Papal palace of
Segni was swept away by the Duke of Alva in that strange war which the
Catholic King Philip waged, not, of course, against the Vicar of St.
Peter, but against the temporal Sovereign of the Roman States.
We are thus, even at Segni, plunged among Papal memories; we look over
the valley of the Trerus across to Anagni, and they press upon us with
double force. We hasten to the spot where a lesser Pope than Innocent,
but still a mighty one, died like a dog after his fox-like entrance and
his lion-like reign.
Iter ad Brundisium.
I. Anagni.
He who goes steadily from Rome to Brindisi, seeing what comes in his
way by the easiest manner of going, will not come very much oftener
on the track of Horace and his friends than he to whom Brindisi is
the haven for Egypt or India, and who rushes thither as fast as he
can along the Italian side of the Hadriatic. The three routes will
of necessity coincide at Bari. To Bari the traveller who starts from
Rome must add Benevento, and he may, without much trouble, add Aricia.
But the sites that lie around the Alban mount, the Alban lake, and
its lesser fellow--the relics in short of so many volcanoes, wet and
dry, the possible place of Alba, the more certain relics of its child
Albano, the path by which the chariot of Marcellus climbed to the
temple of which the last Stewart swept away what time had left--all
these seem naturally to form a group and a subject by themselves. So
may the objects for which Velletri supplies the best centre,--the
hill, the walls, the temples of Cori, "Norba's ancient wall," with
neither an inhabitant nor an habitation within it--Ninfa's more modern
wall, equally without an inhabitant, but with ruined habitations,
ruined churches, in abundance--all these may be connected with an
_iter ad Brundisium_, but they hardly form an actual part of it. Let
our traveller design to start in modern fashion by railway--we were
going to say in prosaic modern fashion, only no way of going could
well be more prosaic than that followed by Horace; let him study his
time-tables, and he will find that he can, if so minded, visit Segni
and go back to Rome in a single day; he can hardly do so by Anagni.
Not that we should counsel such a way of dealing with the walks, the
gates, the temple-foundations, that crown the height of Signia. It
would most likely be found possible to sleep at Segni. Gsell-fels,
prince of guidebook-makers, recommends the _locanda_ there as "reinlich
und eidlich," and the second adjective does not mean that the traveller
will be in any danger of being sworn at.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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