The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable RuinsAllen, Grant
History
The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins
Allen, Grant
Europe, Southern -- Description and travel; Mediterranean Region -- Description and travel
Quite apart from the charm with which ancient fable and poetry have
invested this district, the astonishing profusion of ruins makes it
especially interesting to the antiquary. A single morning's walk in the
environs of Baiæ or Cumæ will reveal countless fragmentary monuments of
antiquities quite outside of the stock ruins of the guide-books, which the
utilitarian instincts of the country people only partially conceal, Roman
tombs serving as granaries or receptacles for garden produce, temples
affording stable-room for goats and donkeys, amphitheaters half-concealed
by olive-orchards or orange-groves, walls of ancient villas utilized in
building up the terraced vineyards; and, in short, the trained eye of an
antiquary would, in a day's walk, detect a sufficient quantity of antique
material almost to reconstruct another Pompeii. But though every acre of
this antiquary's paradise teems with relics of the past, and though every
bay and headland is crowded with memories of the greatest names in Roman
history, we must not linger in this supremely interesting district, but
must get on to the other beautiful features of the Gulf of Naples.
Capri, as viewed from Naples, is the most attractive and striking feature
in the Bay. There is a kind of fascination about this rocky island-garden
which is felt equally by the callow tourist making his first visit to
Italy, and by the seasoned traveller who knew Capri when it was the center
of an art colony as well known as is that of Newlyn at the present day. No
doubt Capri is now considered by super-sensitive people to be as
hopelessly vulgarized and hackneyed as the Isle of Man or the Channel
Isles, now that it has become the favorite picknicking ground of shoals of
Neapolitan excursionists; but that is the fate of most of the beautiful
scenery in the South of Europe, if at all easy of access. These fastidious
minds may, however, find consolation in the thought that to the noisy
excursionists, daily carried to and from Naples by puffing little
cockle-shell steamers, the greater part of the island will always remain
an undiscovered country. They may swarm up the famous steps of Anacapri,
and even penetrate into the Blue Grotto, but they do not, as a rule, carry
the spirit of geographical research farther.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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