Studies of Travel: ItalyFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Italy
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Italy -- Description and travel
If the journey be made on a market or fair day, the space between the
walls and the station at Arezzo may be seen crowded with white oxen,
suggesting the thought of triumphs and triumphal sacrifices. Their
race, it was said, prayed to the gods that Marcus and Julian might not
win victories which would lead to their destruction. And the prayer
seems to have been answered, as the breed specially connected with
Clitumnus has clearly not died out, even by the banks of Clanis. The
journey is not a long one; yet, if we had time to see everything, we
might well wish to break it, as we pass by the hill of Castiglione
Fiorentino, with its walls and towers. That strong and stern
hill-fortress comes in well between Arezzo and Cortona. Arezzo covers
a hill, but it can hardly be said to stand on a hill-top; Castiglione
distinctly does stand on a hill-top; Cortona sits enthroned on a height
which it would hardly be straining language to speak of as a mountain.
We have now come to a site of the oldest class, the stronghold on the
height, like Akrokorinthos and the Larissa of Argos. But at Argos and
Corinth the mountain-fortress became, at a later stage, the citadel of
the younger city which grew up at the mountain's foot. But at Cortona,
as at greater Perugia, the city still abides on the height; it has
never come down into the plain. So it has remained at Laon; so it has
become at Girgenti, where the vast lower space of the later Akragas
is forsaken, and the modern town has shrunk up within the lines of
the ancient acropolis. From the ground below Cortona we look up to a
city like those of old, great and fenced up to heaven; the "diadem
of towers" is there still, though it is now made up of a group of
towers, ecclesiastical, municipal, and military, none of them of any
account in itself, but each of which joins with its fellows to make
up an effective whole. At Cortona indeed, as at Argos and Corinth,
there is an upper and a lower city, and the upper city is pretty well
forsaken. But while at Argos and Corinth the lower city stands in the
plain, and the acropolis soars far above it, at Cortona the lower city
itself stands so high up the hill that it is only when we reach it
that we fully understand that there is a higher city still. The site
itself belongs so thoroughly to the oldest days of our European world
that there is a certain kind of satisfaction in finding that the main
interest of the place belongs to those oldest days. We are well pleased
that everything of later times is of quite a secondary character, and
that the distinctive character of Cortona is to be the city of the
Etruscan walls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account