The Classic and Connoisseur in Italy and Sicily, with an Appendix Containing an Abridged Tr. of Lanzi's Storia Pittorica (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835. Excerpt: ... LUCCA. L'uliva, in qualche dolce piaggia aprica, Secondo il vento, par or verdc, or bianca: Natura in qnesta till scrba, e nutrica, Quel verde, che nell' altre frondi manca. Lorenzo De' Medici. About four miles north of Pisa, the Lucca road approaches the mountains whose marble quarries furnished the former city with the materials for its splendid edifices. At their foot stand the Baths of San Giuliano, once in considerable repute, but now less attractive than those of Lucca. After skirting the base of these mountains for a few miles, you come to the pretty village of Ripa Fratta--the Tuscan boundary--whose name "indicates how little the proudest embankments can resist the Serchio, when its floods are repelled by a south wind." Lucca is seated in a rich and highly cultivated valley, watered by the above-mentioned river, and surrounded by a belt of lofty Apennines, which gradually sink down into "vine-clad hills, where the celebrated villas rise on such sites as court admiration from the city." In its broad ramparts, its stately palaces with their massive walls and barred windows, its historical statues, and monumental memorials of departed patriots, we may still trace the vestiges of its former prosperity, when, elate with the advantages of liberty and commerce, it had, like so many other petty Italian states, "a public soul too expansive for the body." The ramparts, useless as a defence, are now converted into a promenade planted with forest trees: hence it has been observed, not unaptly, that, to a spectator without the walls, the city wears the appearance of a fortified wood, with a watch-tower in the middle--that watch-tower being the cathedral itself. This structure is of the same date, and the same material, as that of Pisa. Its chief peculiarities ...