By this time the exhilarating, almost heady, mountain air has created a ravenous appetite, and we clamour, above all else, for a taste of the Mercato's tempting products served in appetizing dishes known only to the true Italian chef. Our wishes may be easily gratified at the Albergo Globo e Londra, in Piazza Cino, where cooking is good and native wine excellent. If this luncheon could have been served in a pleasant garden, the only proper banquet-hall for Italy, nothing further could be desired; but it is only fair to warn the traveller who means to sleep in Pistoja that the chambers of the Globo are by no means tidy or attractive. [Illustration: _Alinari_ THE CAMPANILE FROM VIA RIPA DEL SALE, PISTOJA] [Illustration: _Alinari_ THE LOGGIA, OSPEDALE DEL CEPPO, PISTOJA] Now for a stroll through the quaint old streets with curious and suggestive names, and a peep into quiet courtyards of palaces deserted by their noble owners, and given over to modest householders and humble artisans. At the corner of Via Abbi Pazienza and the Via de' Rossi is the great palace of the Rossi family, blazoned with many shields of varied quarterings, and from the corner hangs one of the gruesome black heads of the traitor Filippo Tedici, like that on the façade of the Palazzo Pubblico. Many of the oldest streets of Pistoja lead from the Piazza del Duomo, and their names suggest the life of an earlier day: Via Orafi (jewelers) was once devoted to goldsmiths' shops and studios; the Via Stracceria (rags) was so called because clothing of all sizes, colours, and condition was hung to dry from windows and other "coigns of vantage;" and the Via Can Bianco was named in honour of a faithful white dog, whose barking warned his master of the approach of an enemy. Near the east end of the cathedral we may leave the square by the Via Ripa del Sale, a narrow street over-arched by a gallery connecting the Palazzo Pubblico with the duomo, convenient for the worshipful magistrates when they desired to hear mass. This street leads us, with often a backward glance at the campanile, to the Via Filippo Pacini, a broader thoroughfare following the line of the first city wall, and in two minutes we stand in the little irregular square of the Ospedale del Ceppo and before the famous Della Robbia frieze, an experience which, to one of us at least, seems almost a miracle. So many years Pistoja had been merely a dream city, a name--a curious, unreal name--standing only for this little piazza, this loggia, and the brilliant band of varied colour crossing its façade. Those imperfect guide-books of our youth had merely mentioned as important, this glazed terra-cotta frieze, wrought, it seemed to us, through some magic by the members of one family only, the secret of which vanished from the world forever upon the death, in 1529, of the last true Della Robbia, the author of this frieze. Tradition added that the formula for compounding the Della Robbia glaze was supposed to be hidden behind