Between the Porta Romana and Porta San Frediano some tracts of the city wall remain, but the whole is painfully prosaic. The Porta San Frediano itself is a massive structure, erected between 1324 and 1327, possibly by Andrea Pisano; it need hardly be repeated that we cannot judge of the original mediæval appearance of the gates of Florence, with their towers and ante-portals, even from the least mutilated of their present remnants. It was through this gate that the Florentine army passed in triumph in 1363 with their long trains of captured Pisans; and here, after Pisa had shaken off for a while the yoke, Charles of France rode in as a conqueror on November 17, 1494, Savonarola's new Cyrus, and was solemnly received at the gate by the Signoria. Within the gate a strip of wall runs down to the river, with two later towers built by Medicean grand dukes. At the end is a chapel built in 1856, and containing a Pietà from the walls of a demolished convent--ascribed without warrant to Domenico Ghirlandaio. It was somewhere near here that S. Frediano, coming from Lucca to pay his annual visit to the shrine of San Miniato, miraculously crossed the Arno in flood. Outside the gate, a little off the Leghorn road to the left, is the suppressed abbey of Monte Oliveto, and beyond it, to the south, the hill of Bellosguardo--both points from which splendid views of Florence and its surroundings are obtained. These dream-like glimpses of the City of Flowers, which every coign of vantage seems to give us round Florence--might we not, sometimes, imagine that we had stumbled unawares upon the Platonic City of the Perfect? There are two lines from one of Dante's canzoni in praise of his mystical lady that rise to our mind at every turn:-- "Io non la vidi tante volte ancora, ch'io non trovassi in lei nuova bellezza," CHAPTER XIII _Conclusion_ The setting of Florence is in every way worthy of the gem which it encloses. On each side of the city and throughout its province beautiful walks and drives lead to churches, villas and villages full of historical interest or enriched with artistic treasures. I can here merely indicate a very few such places.