Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

Pistoja’s old walls and ramparts are not the least of its crumbling glories. They are a relic of the Medicis and the arms and crests of this family are still seen carved over several of the entrance gates. One has only to glance upward as he drives his automobile noisily through some mediæval gateway to have memories of the days when cavalcades of lords and ladies passed over the same road on horseback or in state coaches.

All is primitive and unworldly at Pistoja, but there is no ruinous decay, though here and there a transformed or rebuilt palace has been turned into some institution or even a workshop.

Prato, a near neighbour of Pistoja on the road to Florence, is also a fine relic of an old walled Tuscan town. Aside from this its specialty is churches, which are numerous, curious and beautiful, but except for the opportunity for viewing them the lover of the romantic and picturesque will not want to linger long within the city.

Between Empoli and Florence is seen at a distance the Villa Ambrogiana; a transformation by Ferdinand I of an old castle of the Ardinghelli; its towers and pinnacles still well preserved, but the whole forming a hybrid, uncouth structure.

Further on at Montelupo there is a castle, now in ruins, built and fortified by the Florentines in 1203. It owes its name, Montelupo, to the adoption of the word lupo, wolf, by the Florentines when they sought to destroy a neighbouring clan called the Capraja (capra, goat).

Signa is reached after crossing the Arno for the first time. The city walls, towers and pinnacles, with their battlements and machicolations, are still as they were when the Florentines caused them to be erected to guard the high road leading to their city.

Suburban sights, in the shape of modern villas, market gardens and what not, announce the approach to Florence, which is entered by a broad straight road, the Strada Pisana, running beneath the Porta S. Frediano. Instinctively one asks for the Lung’ Arno that he may get his bearings, and then straightway makes for his hotel or pension.

Hotels for the automobilist in Florence are numerous. The Automobile Club de France vouches for the Palace Hotel, where you pay two francs and a half for garage, and for the Grand Hotel de la Ville with no garage. The writer prefers the Hotel Helvetia, or better yet the Hotel Porta Rossa, a genuine Italian albergo, patronized only by such strangers as come upon it unawares. It is very good, reasonable in price, and you may put your automobile in the remissa, which houses the hotel omnibus, for a franc a night. It is convenient to have your automobile close at hand instead of at the F. I. A. T. garage a mile or more away, and the hotel itself is most central, directly to the rear of the Strozzi Palace.

“What sort of city is this Florence?” asked Boniface VIII, amazed at the splendour of the Florentine procession sent to Rome to honour his jubilee. No one was found ready with an answer, but at last a Cardinal timidly remarked, “Your Holiness, the City of Florence is a good city.” “Nonsense,” replied the Pope, “she is far away the greatest of all cities! She feeds, clothes and governs us all… She and her people are the fifth element of the universe.”

One comes to Florence for pictures and palaces, and, for as long or short a time as fancy suggests, the automobile and the chauffeur, if you have one, take a needed repose. Your automobile safely housed, your chauffeur will most likely be found, when wanted, at the Reininghaus on the Piazza Vittorio-Emanuel drinking German beer and reading “Puck” or “Judge” or “Punch” or “Le Rire.” This is a café with more foreign papers, one thinks, than any other on earth.

Down through the heart of Tuscany, and through the Chianti district, runs the highroad from Florence to Rome, via Siena. It is a delightful itinerary, whether made by road or rail, and, whether one’s motive is the admiration and contemplation of art or architecture, or the sampling of the chianti, en route, the journey through the Tuscan Apennines will ever remain as a most fragrant memory. It is a lovely country of vineyards and wheatfields, intermingled, and, here and there, clumps of mulberry trees, and always great yoked oxen and contadini working, walking or sleeping.

These, indeed, are the general characteristics of all the countryside of central Italy, but here they are superlatively idyllic. The simple life must be very nearly at its best here, for the almost unalterable fare of bread and cheese and wine, which the peasants, by the roadside, seem always to be munching and drinking, is not conducive to grossness of thought or action.

From Florence to Rome there are three principal roads favoured by automobilists: that via Siena and Grosseto, 332 kilometres; via Siena, Orvieto and Viterbo, 325 kilometres; and via Arezzo, Perugia and Terni, 308 kilometres. They are all equally interesting, but the latter two are hilly throughout and the former, in rainy weather, is apt to be bad as to surface.

The towers of Tuscany might well be made the interesting subject of an entire book. Some of them, existing to-day, date from the Etruscans, many centuries before Christ, and Dionysius wrote that the Etruscans were called Tyrrhene or Turreno because they inhabited towers, or strong places —Typeie.

In the twelfth century, local laws, throughout Tuscany, reduced all towers to a height of fifty braccia. Pisa, Siena and Florence in the past had several hundred towers, but Volterra and San Gimignano in the Val d’Elsa are the only remarkable collections still grouped after the original manner. “San Gimignano delle belle Torri” is a classic phrase and has inspired many chapters in books and many magazine articles.

Massimo d’Azeglio, whose opinions most people who write books on Italy exploit as their own, said, with reason, that San Gimignano was as extraordinary a relic of the past as Pompeii. Of all the fifty odd towers of the city, none is more imposing than that of the Palazzo Publico, rising up above the very apartment, where, in the thirteenth century, Dante was received when he was sent from Florence to parley with the Guelphs of San Gimignano.

San Gimignano’s Palazzo del Commune dates from 1298, but its tower was an afterthought, built a century later. This tower of the Palazzo del Commune is, perhaps, the best preserved of all the “belle torri” of the city.

San Gimignano and Volterra are much alike, though the latter’s strong point lies more in its fortification walls. Volterra and its Etruscan lore and pottery have ever been a source of pride among Italian antiquarians. The Etruscans of old must have been passionately fond of pottery, for, so plentifully were the environs of Volterra strewn with broken pitchers, that one suspects that each square yard must have contained a well. Some one called the Etruscans lunatics, who were shut up in Volterra and allowed to pursue their craze for pottery in peace; but they were harmless lunatics, who devoted themselves to the arts of peace, rather than those of war. The alabaster bric-à-brac trade and traffic still exists, and provides a livelihood for a large part of the population of the city; but thousands of Tuscans, many of them from Volterra, doubtless, have deserted their former arts for the pleasure of dragging a hand organ from street to street, in London and New York, and gathering soldi by ministering to the pleasures of the populace. It is easy for the superior person to sneer at the hand organ, as he sneers, by the way, at the phonograph and the pianola, but dull alleys and mean streets are brightened by the music of the itinerant Italian.

“It is a vision of the moyen-age,” wrote Paul Bourget when he first saw Volterra’s Etruscan walls. High up on its rocky plateau sits Volterra, protected by its walls and gorges and ravines, in almost impregnable fashion.

With this incentive no automobilist north or southbound should omit San Gimignano or Volterra from his itinerary. They are but a few kilometres off the main road, from Poggibonzi via Val d’Elsa between Siena and Florence.

On a height overlooking Volterra, just over the Romitorio, and almost within sight of San Gimignano’s towers, Campanello, the celebrated brigand, was captured, a quarter of a century ago. He had quartered himself upon an unsuspecting, though unwilling, peasant, as was the fashion with brigands of the time, and, through a “faux pas,” offended a youth who was in love with one of his host’s daughters. This was his undoing. The youth informed the local authorities; and Campanello led away himself by the blind passion of love, fell precipitately into the trap which the injured youth had helped to set.

Thus ended another brigand’s tale, which in these days are growing fewer and fewer. One has to go to Corsica or Sardinia to experience the sensation of being held up, or to the Paris boulevards where apaches still reign, or to the east end of London.

Going south from Florence by this road the automobilist has simply to ask his way via the “Strada per Siena;” after Siena it is the “Strada per Roma;” and so on from one great town to another. In finding one’s way out of town the plan is simple, easily remembered and efficient; there are no false and confusing directions such as one frequently gets in France. You are either on the Via This or That which ultimately leads to the Strada of the same name, or you are not. Start right and you can’t miss the road in Italy.

Among all the secondary cities of Italy, none equals Siena in romantic appeal. Its site is most picturesque, its climate is salubrious, and it has an entirely mediæval stamp so far as the arrangement of its palaces is concerned. Siena possesses something unique in church architecture, as might be expected of a city which once contained sixty places of worship, a special patois, and women of surpassing beauty. More than by anything else, Siena is brought to mind by the recollection of that Saint Catherine, who, according to Pope Pius II, made all who approached her better for her presence.

The railway and its appurtenances, automobiles and their belongings, the electric light and the telegraph, are almost the only signs of modernity in Siena to-day. The rest is of the middle ages, and the chief characters who stand out to-day are not the political personages of our time; but Bianca Capello and Marie de Medici and Charles V, who of all other aliens is best remembered of Siena, because of the Holbein reproduction of his face and figure which he presented to its citizens.

CHAPTER VIII

FLORENTINE BACKGROUNDS

THE hills and valleys around Florence offer delightful promenades by road to the automobilist as well as to those who have not the means at hand of going so far afield. A commercial enterprise is exploiting them by means of a great char-a-banc, or “sightseeing” automobile, which detracts from the sentiments and emotions which might otherwise be evoked, and at the same time annoys the driver of a private automobile, for the reason that this public conveyance often crowds him on a narrow road and prevents his passing. However, this is better than being obstructed, as in former days, by a string of forty lazy cabs and their drivers.

The round to Fiesole, San Miniato, Vallombrosa, and on through the Casentino of romantic memory is delightful and may be made in a day or a week, as one’s fancy dictates.

The new road from Florence to Fiesole, that is the road made in the mid-nineteenth century, was not a piece of jobbery or graft, but was paid for by patents of nobility given by the municipality of Fiesole to those who furnished the means. This was in the days when a Grand Duke ruled Tuscany and monarchical institutions found favour.

Fiesole had its Libro d’Oro, and inscribed thereon as noble any individual who would pay the required price. From fifteen hundred lire upward was the price for which marquises, counts and barons were created in Florence’s patrician suburb.

Coming out from Florence by another gateway, through the Porta San Gallo, runs the Fiesole highway. A landmark, which can be readily pointed out by anyone, is the villa once possessed by Walter Savage Landor and inhabited by him for nearly thirty years. Here the famous men of letters of the middle years of the last century visited him. Here he revelled amid memories of Boccaccio and wrote the Pentameron. There is talk of buying the place and consecrating it to his memory.

All the way from Florence to Fiesole the roads are lined with typical Florentine villas and country houses. The Villa at Poggio Cajano was built by Lorenzo the Magnificent, who employed Giuliano da San Gallo as his architect. In 1587 Francesco I died within its walls, and the profligate Bianca Capello, whose history had best stay buried, also died here on the following day. Their brother Ferdinand was responsible for their taking off, as they had already prepared to put him out of the way by the administration of a dose of poison. He stood over them, with dagger drawn, and made them eat their own poisoned viands.

The Villa Petraja was a strong-hold of the Brunelleschi family which defended itself ably against the Pisans and the marauders of Sir John Hawkwood in 1364, when that rollicking rascal sold his services to the enemies of Florence. The old tower of the castle, as it then was, still remains, but the major portion of the present structure dates from quite modern times.

The Villa Medici in Careggi was built by Cosimo Pater from the designs of Michelozzi, and though no longer royal it is to-day practically unchanged in general outline. It, too, was one of the favourite residences of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the conclaves of the famous Platonic Academy were held here on the seventh of November, the anniversary of the date of the birth and death of Plato. Here died both Cosimo and Lorenzo, the latter on the eighth of April, 1492, just after his celebrated interview with Savonarola. The Orsi family came into possession of the villa later on, then “an English gentleman” and then a certain Signor Segré.

Between Careggi and Fiesole, and on towards Vallombrosa, the villas and palatial country houses of the Florentines are scattered as thickly as the leaves of the famous vale itself.

The Villa Salviati is a fine sixteenth century work with a blood-red memory of the middle ages, at one time the property of the singer Mario, remembered by a former generation. The Villa Rinuccini has its grounds laid out in the style of an English formal garden, and the Villa Guadagni was once the home of the historian, Bartolommeo della Scala.

Of all the Florentine suburban villas none has a tithe of the popular romantic interest possessed by the Villa Palmieri. The Villa Palmieri is best seen from its approach by the highroad, up hill, from Florence. At the right of the iron gate, the cancello, runs the old road to Fiesole. Upward still the road runs, through the cancello, through a wind-break of trees and around to the north façade by which one enters. The entire south side of the house is in the form of a loggia, with a great wide terrace in front, below which is the sloping garden with its palm trees and azaleas.

The Villa Palmieri and its gardens are somewhat the worse for stress of time; and the wind and the hot sun have burned up the shrubs and trees since the days when Zocchi the draughtsman made that series of formal drawings of Italian gardens, that of the Villa Palmieri among the number, which are so useful to the compilers of books on Italian villas and gardens.

Fiesole sits proudly on its height a thousand feet above the level of the sea. The following anonymous lines – “newspaper verse” they may be contemptuously described by some – make as admirable a pen picture of the little town as it were possible to reproduce.

“A little town on a far off hill —(Fiesole, Fiesole!)Mossy walls that defy Time’s will,Olive groves in the sun a-thrillThickets of roses where thrushes trillWinds that quiver and then are still —Fiesole, Fiesole!”

Fiesole forms an irregular ground plan, rising and falling on the unequal ground upon which it is built. The long and almost unbroken line of Cyclopean walls towards the north is the portion which has suffered least from time or violence. The huge stones of which the Etruscan wall is composed are somewhat irregular in shape and unequal in size, seldom assuming a polygonal form. This Cyclopean construction varies with the geological nature of the rock employed. In all the Etruscan and Pelasgic towns it is found that, when sandstone was used, the form of the stones has been that of the parallelopipedon or nearly so, as at Fiesole and Cortona; whereas, when limestone was the subjacent rock, the polygonal construction alone is found, as at Cosa and Segni. This same observation will be found to apply to every part of the world, and in a marked degree to the Cyclopean constructions of Greece and Asia Minor, and even to the far-distant edifices raised by the Peruvian Incas. Sometimes the pieces of rock are dovetailed into each other; others stand joint above joint; but, however placed, the face, or outward front, is perfectly smooth. No projection, or work advancing beyond the line of the wall, appears in the remains of the original structure.

Fiesole is a built-up fabric in all its parts; its foundation is architecture, and its churches, palaces and villas are mere protuberances extending out from a concrete whole. Fiesole is one of the most remarkably built towns above ground.

Fiesole’s great charm lies in its surrounding and ingredient elements; in the palaces and villas of the hilltops always in plain view, and in its massive construction of walls, rather than in its specific monuments, though indeed its Duomo possesses a crudity and rudeness of constructive and decorative elements which marks it as a distinct, if barbarous, Romanesque style.

The views from Fiesole’s height are peculiarly fine. On the north is the valley of the Mugello, and just below is the Villa of Scipione Ammirato, the Florentine historian. Towards the south, the view commands the central Val d’Arno, from its eastern extremity to the gorge of the Gonfolina, by which it communicates with the Val d’Arno di Sotto, with Florence as the main object in the rich landscape below.

The following is a mediæval point of view as conceived by a Renaissance historian. He wrote it of Lorenzo the Magnificent, but the emotions it describes may as well become the possession of plebeian travellers of to-day.

“Lorenzo ever retained a predilection for his country house just below Fiesole, and the terrace still remains which was his favourite walk. Pleasant gardens and walks bordered by cypresses add to the beauty of the spot, from which a splendid view of Florence encircled by its amphitheatre of mountains is obtained.”

“In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence, on the steep slopes of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.”

This is the twentieth century, but those of mood and mind may experience the same as did Lorenzo di Medici four hundred years ago. The hills and vales, the Arno and the City of the Lily, with its domes and towers, have little changed during the many passing years.

Out from Florence by the Porta alla Croce runs the road to Vallombrosa, which may be reached also from Fiesole without entering Florence by taking the road leading over the Ponte a Mensola. Just beyond Pontassieve, some twenty kilometres distant, the road to Vallombrosa leaves the Arezzo highway and plunges boldly into the heart of the Apennines.

Of Vallombrosa Lamartine said: “Abbey monumental, the Grande Chartreuse of Italy built on the summit of the Apennines behind a rocky rampart, protected by precipices at every turn, by torrents of rushing water and by dark, dank forests of fir-pines.” The description is good to-day, and, while the ways of access are many, including even a funiculaire from Pontassieve to Vallombrosa, to approach the sainted pile in the true and reverend spirit of the pilgrim one should make his way by the winding mountain road – even if he has to walk. Indeed, walking is the way to do it; the horses hereabouts are more inert than vigorous; they mislead one; they start out bravely, but, if they don’t fall by the wayside, they come home limping. But for the fact that the road uphill to Vallombrosa is none too good as to surface and the turns are many and sharp, it is accessible enough by automobile.

Various granges, hermitages and convent walls are passed en route. At Sant’Ellero was a Benedictine nunnery belonging to the monks of Vallombrosa in the thirteenth century, and in its donjon tower – a queer adjunct for a nunnery by the way – a band of fleeing Ghibellines were besieged by a horde of Guelphs in 1267.

Domini and Saltino mark various stages in the ascent from the valley. Up to this latter point indeed one may come by the funiculaire, but that is not the true pilgrim way.

Up to within a couple of kilometres of the summit chestnuts, oaks, and beech are seen, justifying Milton’s simile, the accuracy of which has been called in question on the ground that the forest consisted entirely of fir.

“Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooksIn Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades,High overarch’d, embower.”

Four miles beyond Paterno, after passing through a fine forest of pines, the traveller arrives at the Santuario of Vallombrosa:

“Cosi fu nominata una badia,Ricca e bella ne men religiosaE cortese a chiunque vi venia.”– Orl. Fur. can. 22, st. 36.

Among the remarkable men who have been monks of Vallombrosa, was Guido Aretino, who was a member of this house when he first became known as a writer upon music (about A. D. 1020). After having visited Rome twice, upon the invitation of two succeeding popes, he was prevailed upon by the abbot of a monastery at Ferrara to settle there. Some writers have ascribed to this Guido the invention of counterpoint, which is scarcely less absurd than ascribing the invention of a language to any individual. However, it is pretty certain that he was the first person to use, or to recommend the use of “lines” and “spaces” for musical notation.

High above the convent of Vallombrosa itself rises Il Paradisino (1,036 metres) with a small hermitage, while Monte Secchieta is higher still, 1,447 metres. Vallombrosa, its convent and its hermitages are in the midst of solitude, as indeed a retreat, pious or otherwise, should be. If only some of us who are more worldly than a monk would go into a retreat occasionally and commune with solitude awhile, what a clarifying of ideas one would experience!

Back of Vallombrosa and the Paradisino the upper valley of the Arno circles around through Arezzo, Bibbiena and Poppi and rises just under the brow of Monte Falterona which, in its very uppermost reaches, forms a part of the Casentino.

From Pontassieve where one branches off for Vallombrosa one may descend on Arezzo either by Poppi-Bibbiena or Montevarchi, say seventy kilometres either way.

The Casentino and the Valley of the Arno form one of the most romantically unspoiled tracts in Italy, although modern civilization is crowding in on all sides. The memories of Saint Francis, La Verna, Saint Romuald the Camaldoli and Dante and the great array of Renaissance splendours of its towns and villages, will live for ever.

Here took place some of the severest conflicts in the civil wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and in numerous ruins of castles and hill-forts are retained memorials of the many struggles.

Just where the Arno traverses the plain of Campaldino was the scene of a celebrated battle on the 11th of June, 1289. The Aretines, who formed the chief portion of the Ghibelline party, were routed with a loss of 1,700 men killed, and 2,000 taken prisoners. Among the former was the celebrated Guglielmino Ubertini, Bishop of Arezzo, who fell fighting desperately in the thickest of the fray, having rallied his troops upon the bridge at Poppi, half a mile further on. Dante was present at this battle, being then twenty-four years old, and serving in the Guelph cavalry.

The Casentino is the most opulent district in all the region of the Apennines. Six centuries ago the Counts Palatine of Tuscany held it; then came the Popes, and then Dante and his followers. The chronicles of the Casentino are most fascinating reading, particularly those concerned with the Counts of Guidi.