But of course a Comacine could not make any building without his slight columns and arches, and here he disposed of them in his cloister. This, too, was a heritage from classic Rome, recalling the atrium. A Lombard or Romanesque cloister is a delight. Here you have a square court more or less spacious, containing a picturesque well in the centre, surrounded by a colonnade of small columns generally in couples, resting on a low wall and supporting a roof on a row of arches. It was usually on the sunny cloister that the Comacine poured out his imagination; here are fancifully-sculptured capitals, pillars of every variety of form and style, grotesque gargoyles between the arches, and often delicate tracery above them. Hope[52] instances as the more rude and early style of Lombard cloisters, those of San Lorenzo at Rome and Santa Sabina and San Stefano at Bologna, and as models of the more splendid style those of S. John Lateran, which are resplendent with porphyry, serpentine, and gold enamel, inlaid in the marble; and those of S. Zeno of Verona of every tint of marble which the Euganean hills can afford. For the interior arrangements of a Longobardic monastery we will take Padre Ricci's account of the first plan of Monte Cassino which Petronax the Brescian engaged the Comacines to build. "It had on the ground floor a _Sala_ anciently called _caminata_, because the fire-place was there. The upper floor was divided by wooden partitions into cells and other rooms requisite in a cenobitic life. Although at that time houses only had one floor, monasteries generally had two. Monte Cassino boasted of three storeys, the upper one being only used for keeping fodder and stores. As the chief aim was solidity of building, great attention was paid to the proportionate thickness of the outer walls. The laws determined the adequate value of these, which were generally of the thickness of five feet. The inner walls were of planks or _assi_--'si cum axe clauserit.'" This mode of separation by wooden partitions is still usual in convents, though it has gone out of use in houses. The convents of S. Marco and S. Salvi at Florence both show this style of division for the cells. The windows were protected by _abietarii_ or _cancelli_ (gratings) made of wood. A strong point in Lombard building was the fortress, which the _Magistri_ were past masters in erecting. Their castles and forts and city walls stand to this day solid and strong, with towers standing up commandingly in all directions--all the mediæval cities bristled with them; the tower was, in fact, a weapon of war. On these, too, they set their seal--the pillared Lombard window becoming larger and more airy as the tower rises into the air, and the crowning cornice of bracketed or pillared archlets.[53]