I cannot tell why this city should be termed “beautiful,” as it were by privilege. Beautiful it is, but no more so than Bologna, and little more than Ferrara, while it falls far short of Venice. You may indeed discern from the top of the bell tower innumerable houses, which cover the hills all around for the distance of two or three leagues; and in the plain, some two leagues in extent, on which the city stands, they seem to touch, so closely are they built one to another. The city is paved with flat stones without pattern or regularity. After the dinner the four gentlemen and a guide took the post to go to visit a place belonging to the duke which is called _Castello_.[56] There is nothing of merit in the house, but around it are divers gardens, the entire place being set on the slope of a hill, so that the main walks are on the slope, and the cross alleys straight and level; also many arbours, thickly covered with interwoven twigs of sweet-smelling shrubs, such as cedar, cypress, orange, citron, and olive, the branches being enlaced so closely that the sun at his fiercest could not pierce thereinside. The undergrowth of these cypresses and other trees is so close that only three or four persons can pass together through it. Amongst the ponds there is a large one, in the midst of which stands a rock, imitated from nature, which, by the application of the same material used by the duke in covering his grottoes at Pratellino, looks as if it were glazed over; and above it is a large casting of copper worked into the likeness of a hoary old man seated on his breech with crossed arms. From his beard, his forehead, and his skin, there is a perpetual drip of water representing tears and sweat, and indeed this drip is the sole supply of the basin.