The Story of Perugia 4

The Story of Perugia 4

In 1860 the Swiss were finally dislodged by Victor Emanuel's envoy, General Manfredo Fanti; and, unarmed and closely guarded by a double file of the King's soldiers, the last representatives of papal power were driven from the fortress of Paul III., and having passed a night in the cathedral, they were ousted for ever from the precincts of Perugia. Paul III.'s fortress had now been entirely pulled down by an infinite number of willing hands, and the present great buildings of the Prefettura, which represents the modern government of a prosperous town, took their place on the former site of the Baglioni palaces.        *       *       *       *       * With the loss of Perugia's independent existence in 1540 the light of romance was lost to her history. But from that minute, and in spite of all her anguish and humiliation, she learned the final lesson of how to live at peace within herself, and be at peace with all her neighbours. This lesson she had never learned through all her battlings in the past. She had risen fighting, and fighting she had flourished. It would be inaccurate to say that fighting she fell. Perugia never fell. She was merely caught and tamed. Anyone familiar with the cities of Umbria will at once recognise in this, their head, something forcible, strong, grand, and enduring, which neither nobles, emperors, nor popes were able to beat out of her; something which has kept her what she was at the beginning: Perugia, the city of plenty, and fitted her to be what she is now: Perugia the capital of Umbria; as grand in her unity with her great mother, as she was powerful in her strife. CHAPTER IV _The City of Perugia_      "C'est une vieille ville du moyen age, ville de defense et de      refuge, posee sur un plateau escarpe, d'ou toute la vallee se      decouvre."--H. TAINE, _Voyage en Italie_. Having glanced thus rapidly over the history of Perugia we turn with fresh interest to examine the city itself, and to trace through what remains of its earliest walls and houses, the character of those same fascinating, if pugnacious persons, who built those walls, fought over them, lived and died within them. Perugia is an excellent mirror of history, combining on its surface not only a reflection of the immortal past but of a prosperous present, and with the exception of ancient Roman influences, which, for some obscure reason, have almost entirely vanished, it would be difficult to find a nest of man more perfect or unchanged in all its parts. Battered and abused by warfare and by weather the stones of the middle ages may be and are, but they have not been destroyed, and there is something grand and clean in the modern buildings which confirms, rather than destroys, the æsthetic charm and splendour of the old. Perugia is very distinctly the living capital of the province. After travelling through Umbria and studying one by one the little dreamy old-world cities--each perched upon its separate hillside, which seem to have fallen asleep long centuries ago, letting the silence of [Illustration: PERUGIA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAMPO SANTO] the grass close in on their paved streets, as the need of self-protection vanished--one returns to Perugia and recognises that she, at least, has never died. She is often very silent, very brown and grim; she has her dreams, but the hope in her: the desire for rule and power, has never really vanished. The most remarkable change about the town, if we are to take what we read of her history for certain fact, is the change in her people. The inhabitants of Perugia, in every class, are unmistakably gentle and amiable, both in mind and manner. They are courteous to strangers, kind, helpful and calm. Even the street boys ask one for stamps instead of pennies. In their leisure they are gay, and in their work persistent. They are never frantic or demonstrative. As one sits at one's window on warm spring nights, one almost wishes the people in the street would either fight or sing, but they do neither. They take their pleasures calmly, and hang upon their town walls by the hour, gazing out upon a view they love. Perhaps in their inmost hearts they are counting the numberless little cities, all of which their fathers won for them in battles of the past. The fact of their supremacy may make them thrill, but there is nothing to mark their triumph in their faces. This is no place in which to discuss the rapid change of personality in the Perugians. We note it as a fact, and pass to a description of the town itself, which certainly contains abundant marks of that same "warlike" character which time has washed away from the minds of its inhabitants. The city is built, as we have shown in our first chapter, on one of the low hills formed after thousands of years by the silting up of the refuse brought down by the Tiber, and not, as one naturally at first imagines, on a spur of the actual Apennines which are divided from her by the river. Much of the power of the town in the past may be traced to her extraordinary topographical position. Perugia stands 1705 feet above the level of the sea, and 1200 above that of the Tiber. She stands perfectly alone at the extreme edge of a long spine of hill, and she commands the Tiber and the two great roads to Rome.[43] But looked at from a merely picturesque point of view, few towns can boast of a more powerful charm. Perugia, if one ignores her history, is not so much a town as an eccentric freak of nature. All the winds and airs of heaven play and rush around her walls in summer and in winter. The sun beats down upon her roofs; one seems to see more stars at night, above her ramparts, than one sees in any other town one knows of. All Umbria is spread like a great pageant at her feet, and the pageant is never one day or one hour like the other. Even in a downpour, even in a tempest the great view fascinates. In spring the land is green with corn and oak trees, and pink with the pink of sainfoin flowers. In winter it seems smaller, nearer; brown and gold, and very grand at sundown. On clear days one can easily trace a whole circle of Umbrian cities from the Umbrian capital. To the east Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Montefalco, and Trevi. The hill above Bettona hides the town of Spoleto, but its ilex woods and its convent of Monte Luco are distinct enough. To the south Todi and Deruta stand out clear upon their hillsides; and to the east the home of Perugino, Citta della Pieve, rises half hidden in its oakwoods. Early in the mornings you will see the mists lift slowly from the Tiber; at night the moon will glisten on its waters, drawing your fancy down to Rome. Strange lights shine upon the clouds behind the ridge which covers Trasimene, and to the north the brown hills rise and swell, fold upon fold, to meet the Apennines. In autumn and in winter the basin of the old Umbrian lake will often fill for days with mists, but the Umbrian towns and hamlets rise like the birds above them, and one may live in one of these in splendid sunshine, whilst looking down upon a sea of fog which darkens all the people of the plain. The inhabitants of Perugia swear by the healthy nature of their air, and indeed, were it not for the winds, the most fragile constitution would probably flourish in the high hill city. But it must be confessed that there come days when man and horse quiver like dead leaves before the tempest, and when the very houses seem to rock. Indeed, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate the arctic power of a Perugian whirlwind. Yet the average temperature is mild, and myrtles grow to the size of considerable trees in the villa gardens round the town. To fully understand the city of Perugia, the marvellous fashion of its building, and the way in which its houses have become a part of the landscape and seem to creep about and cling to the unsteady crumbling soil, one should pass out into the country through one of its gates, and, rambling round the roads and lanes which wind beneath its walls, look ever up and back again towards the town. In this way only is it possible to understand what man can do with Nature, and how, with the centuries, Nature can gather to herself man's handiwork and make of it a portion for herself. Birds and beasts have built in this same fashion, but rarely except in Umbria have men. "The unstable quality of the soil on which Perugia is built," writes Mariotti, "has made strong walls and very costly buildings a necessity," and he goes on to point out the different and expensive ways in which the town has been bolstered up with solid masonry. The Etruscans were the first to recognise this necessity. They may have been a peaceful and a rather bourgeois set of human beings, differing in all ways from their combative successors, but they understood the science of building, and their walls, which encompassed only about one-third of the space covered by the mediæval town, remain a monument of splendid solid masonry wherever they can be traced. [Illustration: ETRUSCAN ARCH. PORTA EBURNEA]        *       *       *       *       * The Etruscan walls are a marked feature of some Umbrian cities, and although it is rather the fashion to dispute their authenticity in Perugia, the bits which remain of them there are probably quite genuine. They have, however, become such a part of the mediæval and the modern town, and are often so embedded in later buildings, that without close study it is difficult to trace them; we have therefore marked their course in red on the map of the town. Five of the present gates of the town, namely, _Porta Eburnea_, _Porta Susanna_, _Porta Augusta_, _Porta Mandola_, and _Porta Marzia_ are the genuine old gates of the Etruscan town, and although the Romans altered them a little, enlarging them from below, a great part of their masonry is the work of the Etruscans, and from three to four thousand years old. Of these gates, the _Porta Augusta_ is familiar to every one, as it is one of the most remarkable and impressive features of the town. Rome and the Renaissance have combined to give it a fantastic and a fascinating appearance, even as these same influences have made a miniature museum of the now disused _Porta Marzia_. Strangely enough the work of the Etruscan masons is far better preserved than any which followed them, and the great blocks of travertine neatly placed (as some suppose without mortar) on one another, are easily distinguishable from those built above and below them. Perugia always felt a certain respect for her oldest walls, and even in the fifteenth century, when she was in her prime, and bristling with new towers and churches, the work of the dead people was respected. In 1475 we read that a law was passed for the preservation of the Etruscan walls, as "they were very marvellous, and worthy to be preserved into all eternity." Beyond the city walls nothing remains of the Etruscans at Perugia, except what is found in their tombs. That the town was rich in temples and other beauties we may gather, but these, together with the houses, were [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL STAIRCASE IN THE VIA BARTOLO] destroyed when Augustus took the town in 40 B.C., and when her devoted citizen, Caius Cestius, set fire to his native city, to cover her disgrace. Of the Roman occupation, which covered a period of many centuries, no trace remains in Perugia. The present town is therefore a monument of the purest mediæval building crowned by some rare and beautiful bits of Renaissance architecture. But before entering into a description of the city, it may be well to insist once more on the fact already made plain in our history, that if men made Perugia, men also marred her.[44] The impatience of man is everywhere discernible in her streets her palaces and churches, and only the latest buildings have their towers and stones intact. The towers of S. Pietro, S. Domenico, and others have had their tops all truncated by popes, by nobles, and by people in moments of their fury or their vengeance. The city was built for warfare and defence, and not for beauty, luxury and peace. In these comparatively quiet times of ours we go about in foreign towns and look for art, and art alone. We seem to forget that art is but a small affair--a little landmark in the history of nations. There is an art in Umbria, an art so pure, so sweet, so tender that thinking of it we may easily forget the history of her men, or, if remembering, we seem to dream a dual dream. The art of Perugia was, maybe, the outcome of her almost fanatical religion, but the wars of her inhabitants have always been her life-blood. The very first walls were built for defence, or, as some say, to store the crops, the corn and hay, in; and the houses of the earliest mediæval town were also built purely with a view to personal safety and protection. Bonazzi gives a curious account of the growth of the city, and the almost fantastic fashion in which its inhabitants hammered its houses together, and then proceeded to live in them. "There were," he says, describing the town in about 1100 and 1200, "few monuments or buildings of importance up to the sixteenth century. The houses were all on one floor, the sun barely reached them; some of them were of stone and bricks, but the greater part of mud, clay and straw. Hence incessant and considerable fires, increased by the lack of chimneys. And they were so inconveniently arranged that often eight or ten persons slept in a single room. A motto, a saint, some small sign took the place of our modern numbers, and the lamp which burned in front of the many shrines served to light the streets at nightfall. There were no flags or pavements then upon the streets, which took their names from the churches or houses of the nobles which happened to look down upon them; these were narrow and tortuous, simply because they grew without any method or premeditation, they were horrible to behold as all the dirt was thrown into them, and because of the herds of swine which passed along them, grunting and squeaking as they went."[45] Bonazzi next goes on to trace the topography of the mediæval town, which was much smaller than the present one, and lacking in large monuments. There was no Corso in those days, no Piazza Sopramuro, no Palazzo Pubblico. Where the present cathedral now stands there was only the little old church of S. Lorenzo and a big and beautiful tower with a cock on the top of it. The towers of Perugia were a most marked feature of her architecture and, indeed, in old writings she is always mentioned as _Turrena_ because of them.[46] "About this time," says Bonazzi, "another great work began in our city, which was continued into the following centuries. The feudal lords who came in from their own places in the country to inhabit the town, brought with them each the tradition of his own strong tower in the abandoned castle. Great therefore was the competition between them of who should build the highest, and this each noble did, not so much for decoration as for a means of defence and of offence, and according to the amount of power possessed by himself or by his neighbour.... In the shadow of the massive feudal towers," Bonazzi writes in another place, "like grass which is shaded by giant plants, rose the little houses of the poor. The more elegant houses were of terra-cotta (bricks) without plaster or mortar, and their windows were arched in the Roman fashion.[47] After 600 they were roofed with flat tiles in imitation of the Lombards." The city gates were always closed at nightfall, and some of the streets were blocked by means of huge iron chains which stretched across the road, preventing the passage of horse or carts, from one house to another. One can still see the hooks and holes belonging to these somewhat barbaric defences in some of the more solid houses of Perugia; and in the neighbouring town of Spello the chains themselves have been left hanging to one of the houses. In 1276 we read that the law of closing the city gates was abolished, but a little later on it was again found necessary to barricade the town at nightfall, and during some of the fights between the nobles in 1400 and in 1500 we hear of the difficulties which one or the other party had to combat in the "chains across their path." Strange scattered relics of this nest of mediæval man linger and come down to us even in the nineteenth century. Amongst these are the _porte del mortuccio_, or doors of the dead. All the best houses had these doors alongside of their house-doors, but they are bricked up now and quite disused, and might easily be ignored in passing through the streets. The _porta del mortuccio_ is tall, narrow, and pointed at the top; it is, indeed, just wide enough to pass a coffin through. It seems that in very early days, even so far back as the Etruscans, there was a superstition that through the door where Death had passed, Death must enter in again. By building a separate door, which was only used by the dead, the spirit of Death passed out with the corpse, the narrow door was closely locked behind it, and the safety of the living was secured, as far as the living can secure, from Death. Other charming details of the mediæval city are the house doors. They are built of travertine or _pietra serena_, and have little garlands of flowers and fruit bound with ribbons, and delicate friezes above them. Some of them have very beautiful Latin inscriptions, which show a strong religious sentiment. We quote a few of them here: _Janua coeli_ (door of heaven, over a church); _Pulchra janua ubi honesta domus_ (beautiful the door of the house which is honest); _A Deo cuncta--a domino omnia_ (all things from God); _Ora ut vivas et Deo vives_ (pray to live and thou shalt live to God); _Prius mori quam fædari_ (die rather than be disgraced); _In parvis quies_ (in small things peace); _Solicitudo mater divitiarum_ (carefulness is the mother of riches); _Ecce spes I.H.S. mea semper_ (Christ always my hope). Over one or two of the doorways in Perugia you will find almost byzantine bits of tracery with figures of unknown animals--beasts of the Apocalypse--carved in grey travertine all round them. One of the very earliest bits of mediæval building is the fragment of a door of this sort, belonging to the first palace of the _Priori_, which is now almost buried in the more modern buildings of the sixteenth century. There is another amusing procession of beasts over a gateway below S. Ercolano. These odd animal friezes were probably first designed for some sort of closed market where beasts were sold, and the old Pescheria has medallions of _lasche_ on its walls. As for the ways and manners of the people who inhabited this mediæval city, Ciatti and other writers supply us with plenty of fantastic information: "Perugia lies beneath the sign of the Lion and of the Virgin," Ciatti says in his account, which is as usual, unlike the account of anybody else, and highly entertaining, "and from this cause it comes that the city is called _Leonina_[48] and _Sanguinia_, and the habits of the Perugians are neither luxurious nor effeminate. Like those of whom Siderius writes, they came forth strong in war, they delighted in fish, were humorous in speech, swift in counsel, and loved the law of the Pope.... The women," he continues with a certain monastic indifference to female charm, "were not beautiful, although Siderius calls them elegant;[49] the genius of Perugia was ever more inclined to the exercise of arms than the cultivation of beauty, and many famous captains have brought fame to this their native city through their brave deeds. In Tuscany the Sienese have the reputation of being frivolous, the Pisans astute and malicious, the Florentines slow and serious, and the Perugians ferocious and of a warlike spirit." Concerning the clothes and the feasts of this combative race of people who lived for warfare rather than for delight, we hear that they were accustomed to wear a great deal of fur, the nobles using pelisses of martin and of sable, the poor, sheep or foxes' skins. The fur tippets still worn by the canons of cathedrals in Italian towns in winter are probably a remnant of these days. For the rest an adaptation of the Roman tunic was perhaps worn by the men, whilst the women kept to the tradition of the Etruscan headgear. "Victuals," Bonazzi tells us, "were of a coarse description, more lard and pepper was eaten in those days, than meat and coffee in ours. But at the feasts of the priests and nobles an incredible quantity of exquisite viands was consumed; great animals stuffed with dainties were cooked entire, and monstrous pasties served at table, from which, when the knife touched them, a living and jovial dwarf jumped out upon the table, unexpected and to the great delight of all the company."        *       *       *       *       * But from the Age of Darkness men awoke both in their manners and in their buildings. Perugia of the Middle Ages shook the sleep from off her heavy eyelids, and with that passionate impulse towards Light which was perhaps the secret of the Renaissance, she too strove toward the Beautiful, and in a hurried, fevered fashion, she too decked herself with fairer things than castle towers and hovels. The fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries were, as we know, the Age of Gold in later art, and Perugia, in spite of all her tumults, in spite of her feuds, and even her passionate religious abstinences, woke with the waking world. Most of her churches, and most of those monuments which mark her as a point for travellers, date from that period. "And at that time," says the chronicler Fabretti, "there was so great a building going on in different parts of the city that neither mortar nor stones nor masons could have been procured even for money, unless a number of Lombards had come in to build. And they were building the palace of the _Priori_ (Palazzo Pubblico), they were building S. Lorenzo, Santa Maria dei Servi, S. Domenico, S. Francesco, the houses of Messer Raniero ... the tower of the Palazzo, and numerous other houses of private citizens all at that same time." But it was not merely a love of beauty which prompted the Perugians to this sudden departure in the way of architecture; the spirit of the great saint of Umbria had much to do with it. In Perugian chronicles and histories we find a strange silence about the influence of S. Francis on a city which was only separated by some fourteen miles from Assisi. Yet it is not possible that so strong a force as that of this man's preaching could have been kept outside the walls of the neighbour town, and Ciatti declares that at one time nearly a third part of the inhabitants of Perugia took the Franciscan habit. In 1500 and 1600 there were more than fifty convents in Perugia, many of which had sixty to eighty inhabitants, but that was during the rule of the popes. Of the great period of building in the fourteenth century, which included many fine churches and convents, the buildings of the people and not of the priests remain intact. The splendid Palazzo Pubblico and Pisano's fountain in the square belong to this period. But because the work of the Renaissance is so conspicuous and charming we have described it in another place, and in our description of the town have lingered rather over the fragments of the Etruscan and the mediæval city. As it would be impossible in this small book to give anything beyond a cursory sketch of all the different buildings of the town, we have decided to deal with the details of some of the principal ones, leaving the rest for the discovery of those whose leisure and intelligence will always make such exploration a delight. There is no lack of excellent guide-books to Perugia. Of the fuller and rarer ones we would mention those of Siepi and Orsini and the more modern one of Count Rossi Scotti. These are in Italian. Murray's last edition of "Central Italy" contains clear and excellent general information, and there are several small local guides--the best of these by Lupatelli--which can be had in the hotel. No one who really desires to study the town should fail to read the fascinating books of its best lover, Annibale Mariotti; and the works of Conestabile and Vermiglioli are invaluable for students. All these can be had in the public library of the town where there is a pleasant quiet room in which to study them, and the excessive courtesy of whose head--Count Vincenzo Ansidei--makes research an easy pleasure there. The topography of Perugia is simple: "The entire city," says Mariotti, "since the very earliest days, was divided into five quarters or _rioni_, which from the centre, that is to say, the highest point of the town, and with as gentle an incline as the condition of the ground allows, stretch out in five different directions like so many sunbeams across the mountain side. These gates are: _Porta Sole_ to the east, _Porta Susanna_ to the west (formerly called Trasimene), _Porta S. Angelo_ (formerly Porta Augusta) to the north, _Porta S. Pietro_ to the south, and _Porta Eburnea_ to the southwest. Each of these separate gates bears its own armorial design and colour. Porta Sole is white and bears a sun with rays; Porta Susanna blue, with a chain; Porta S. Angelo red, with a branch of arbutus; Porta S. Pietro yellow, with a balance, and Porta Eburnea green, with a pilgrim's staff." Owing to the extraordinary situation of the town there are hardly any level squares or streets. The two considerable flat open spaces on either side of the Prefettura, the site of the Prefettura itself and of the hotel Brufani are artificial spaces, the result of the demolition of Paul III.'s fortress (see chap. vi.). We imagine that many intelligent persons have passed through the comfortable hotel of Perugia not realising at all the artificial nature of the ground on which it stands. The Corso and the Piazza di S. Lorenzo may be said to be the heart of the town; its pulse beats a little lower down in the Piazza Sopramuro where fruit and vegetables are sold and where there is a perpetual market-day.[50] The other big open square is the Piazza d'Armi, on a lower level of the hill and to the south of the town. There the cattle fair is held on Tuesdays, and there the beautiful white Umbrian oxen, with skins that are finer than the cattle of the plain, and the grey Umbrian pigs, and tall Umbrian men and girls can be seen in all their glory. Here too is the convent of S. Giuliana with its splendid cloisters and little Gothic campanile, and here above all do the soldiers of Perugia practice their bands, their horses, and their bugles every morning. There are three things lacking in Perugia, as there are naturally in all hill-cities, and these are gardens, carriages, and running water. But all these wants have been delightfully overcome by the inhabitants. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of hidden gardens, behind the houses in the town, but in almost every house you will see that iron sockets or rings have been fastened to the walls below the windows, and in [Illustration: PIAZZA SOPRAMURO, SHOWING THE PALACE OF THE CAPITANO DEL POPOLO AND THE BUILDINGS OF THE FIRST UNIVERSITY OF PERUGIA] these, pots of geraniums, daisies, and carnations are hung and tended with excessive care. Some of the better palaces or convents have stone brackets in the shape of shells for window gardens, and even in the dusk of grim December days the old stone walls seem green and living. The lack of carriages is really only felt in winter when the inhabitants seem to fall for the while asleep, leaving the streets to assume their mediæval character, and to be swept by winter hurricanes; in spring and summer the place is gay enough; indeed the Corso is a very good specimen of Umbrian Piccadilly on a fine May evening, and there are plenty of carriages in the tourist season. But go into any palace of Perugia and you will find the sedan chairs of our grandfathers ready for instant use, proving that carriages are quite a modern innovation in the town. The need of running water is, of course, the most serious point about so big and prosperous a city, and a running stream to turn a paper mill would heal more ills than all her pictures and her wide calm view. The great rushing stream of the Tiber down at the foot of the hill seems like a sort of solemn mockery to people who have only wells and a little river from the hill to drink from and to wash their linen in. We have realized this on winter nights when the Tiber was out in flood in the moonlight down below our windows, and small drops freezing, one by one, on Pisano's fountain behind us in the square. Yet the town is prosperous. Its inhabitants and those of the commune have increased by some six thousand since the days of its first prosperity. Commerce, it is true, seems somewhat at a standstill. There is the commerce of travellers, which is by no means inconsiderable; and there is the commerce of Mind. This last Perugia has always had since the days when she grew powerful, and the University of Perugia has played a constant and important part throughout her annals. It was founded in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and its management, like other things in the city, was chiefly in the hands of the people and their representatives, the _Priori_. Five _Savi_, one from each _rione_, were told off to regulate its affairs and to elect its professors. Urban VIII. brought it under the management of the Church, but this did not in any way alter its first rules and laws. We hear that "the Emperor Charles IV. bestowed upon the University all those distinctions which were enjoyed by the most celebrated universities of the Empire," and Napoleon confirmed these and added much to the magnificence of Perugia's university. It was during the Napoleonic rule that the college was transferred from its old quarters in the Piazza Sopramuro to the vast new buildings at Montemorcino. Her three main branches of study are jurisprudence, science, and theology. Several of the popes studied in Perugia. S. Thomas Aquinas lectured here, and many distinguished men of science and of law passed through their first schools in the Umbrian hill town. The two great lawyers Baldo Baldeschi and Bartolo Alfani were students in the University of Perugia, and Alberico Gentile, who afterwards lectured in Oxford, studied here at the University. The affairs of war were never allowed to interfere with those of the mind, and we hear that a guarantee of safe conduct was given to any scholar who came here from a distance. The arts of peace, such as the manufacture of wool and silken stuffs, were known in the middle ages in spite of the want of water (the hand and foot looms of Perugia are almost prehistoric in their simplicity), and in 1297 we hear of the magistrates of Perugia sending an embassy into Lombardy to fetch two friars thence who should teach their townsfolk the secrets of weaving. This art was zealously kept up for many years, but finally it fell into decay. A branch of it has lately been revived by a Milanese lady, and thanks to her efforts we are again able to buy the strange flame-patterned carpets which we find on the altars of so many of the older Umbrian churches.        *       *       *       *       * Except in the Corso, life seems very quiet in Perugia. Yet though there is poverty, there is none of that feeling of decayed splendour, of arrested magnificence and luxury which we feel in so many cities of Italy. The Perugians were probably never very luxurious. There are one or two beautiful old palaces, but they are plain to look at, and the palaces of the nobles had a bad time of it and were constantly pulled to bits as their different owners were driven into the country. The town is a town of a strong people; it is dignified and peaceful. When the wind is not battering about its roofs and howling through its narrow streets one becomes aware of an extraordinary silence. And in that silence the questions rise--one cannot stifle them: Where are the _Beccherini_ and where are the _Raspanti_? Are the Baglioni really dead, and the Oddi, where are they? And the Flagellants and the _Penitenti_--have even their ghosts departed? Will not a pope ride in at the gates with his nephews and his cardinals and take up peaceful quarters in the grim Canonica? Will not some warlike Abbot come and batter down the church towers to build himself a palace? Will no procession pass us with a banner of Bonfigli, and women wailing that the plague should be removed?... The snow falls silently upon the roads in winter. No blood of nobles stains it. In May all Umbria is green with crops. No _condottiere_ comes to trample down the corn. But high upon her hill-top Perugia stands as she stood then, and in her silence seems to wait for something yet to come.        *       *       *       *       * Before closing this chapter we would once again repeat that no one with a few hours' leisure should forbear to wander round the outer walls of the town before leaving Perugia. With only one break: that which is formed by the deep ravine (or _bulagnjo_ in the local dialect) between Porta Sant Antonio and Porta S. Angelo, one can walk on quite good paths and roads under the outer walls of the entire city. The Via della Cuparella is a pleasant lane reached by passing out through Porta Eburnea. It skirts under the mediæval and Etruscan walls to the west of the town and re-enters the city again a little below Porta Susanna. This lane is one of the most sheltered corners in Perugia, and we have wandered up and down it in the early days of January, and found the sleepy lizards basking on its banks and yellow aconites in all the furrows. The trees bud early there; their young green shimmers like a vision of immortal youth against the grim walls of the mediæval and Etruscan city up beyond. Another charming walk is that along the eastern side of the town, passing out through Porta S. Ercolano and through the Corso away along the broad high-road to the convent of Monte Luce, which is quite one of the most fascinating buildings of Perugia, with its front of white and rosy marble, its court-yard and rose window, and the splendid block of its nunnery walls covering the crest of the hill behind the church. The convent was built early in the thirteenth century on the site, some say, of an Etruscan temple dedicated to the Goddess Feronia, but more probably in the sacred wood or _lucus_ from which it derived its name. It was one of the most prosperous convents of the country, and Mariotti gives a delightful account of a visit paid by the great Farnese Pope, Paul III., to its Abbess. The Pope, it seems, gave himself the permission to visit the nuns, who received him, "marvelling," as the most learned nun of her day relates, "that the Vicar of God on earth should so far humiliate himself as to visit such vile servants, as we were." The Pope came into the church and took the seat prepared for him in the choir, "all of his own accord, without being helped by anybody, and like a meek and gentle lamb ... and being seated, he said to the sisters, 'Come everyone of you and kiss my foot.'" Then the Abbess and the sisters kissed the feet of the Pope. A long conversation and exchange of compliments followed, and finally at sundown the Pope departed, "very greatly edified." [Illustration: CONVENT OF MONTE LUCE] From Monte Luce one road winds down to the Tiber, passing under the charming villa of Count Rossi Scotti, and another back into the city, first through a strange row of wooden booths which are opened on the feast day of Monte Luce (August 15th), and then on through the walls of Mommaggiore's fortress and back into the town through Porta S. Antonio.        *       *       *       *       * But it is not possible to describe all the details of a place which, like all fair things, should be explored to be enjoyed. The discovery of its hidden lanes, its little wayside villas, and its churches must be left as it was left to the present writers, who never will forget the tramps they took in the brown winter twilight, the drives on warm spring afternoons when honeysuckle scented all the hedges, and the strange excited feelings which possessed them when they found the hidden wayside house or chapel, which had no written record to tell them who had built it, and nothing but its own Perugian charm to endear it to them, and to give it history. CHAPTER V _Palazzo Pubblico, The Fountain, and the Duomo_ In Professor Freeman's small sketch of Perugia he says very truly that the most striking points of the city--that is to say, of the Mediæval and Renaissance period--are those which are gathered together in the _Piazza di San Lorenzo_. The whole atmosphere of the square is unique and impressive: individual as are the piazzas of the largest and the smallest towns in Italy which have battled for their independence throughout the course of centuries. The buildings have been changed about, burnt, battered and rebuilt, but the spirit of the middle ages has never really left them. Sitting on the steps of the Duomo we seem to feel it creep up round our feet telling us stories of a past which is immortal. It was here that the people of Perugia fought and judged, preached and repented, loved maybe, and most certainly hated. It was in this little pulpit above our heads that S. Bernardino preached, and saw the books of necromancy and the false hair of the ladies burned; here that the _Podesta_ and the people received ambassadors with deeds of submission from terrified neighbour towns. On the spikes of the railing round the fountain one set of nobles stuck the heads of others whom they hated, whom they slaughtered; and down those steps of the palazzo opposite, the great procession of the _Priori_ came on days of solemn ceremony, and up through the dark gateway of the Canonica the Pope and all his cardinals passed in when they arrived from Rome. Truly the spirit of the past history is not dead. It is painfully and supremely living. The Piazza di S. Lorenzo on a December night with windstorms hurrying the sleet across its great grim walls is more absolutely filled with the _terribilita_ of humanity than anything we ever realised. One strange fact to trace in the square is the splendid preservation of the municipal buildings as compared to the almost ruinous condition of those of the church. The strife between the people and the papacy is carved as it were upon the very hearts of the monuments, and whereas the palace of the people has remained comparatively perfect--a beautiful finished building which delights the eye--the palace of the popes has been battered and abused almost to destruction at the hand of man, of fires and of time. Almost the only lovely detail which still clings to the face of the cathedral is the small pulpit whence the saint of Siena preached to the people; and this in itself is a symbolical fact, for it was the power of a single human _soul_ which, for an instant tamed, if it could not quell, the passion of the Perugians. The power of the church, as church, never really mastered them. Paul III. mastered them, but he did so in the character of a warrior and tyrant. As far as position goes the cathedral entirely dominates the municipal palace. It stands so high that in any distant view of the city it seems to soar above the other buildings. As we have seen before, the Perugians had but little patience with architectural or æsthetic matters. "They always preferred Mars to the Muse," says Bonazzi. Some grim and enduring respect kept their hands off their municipal palace when once it had been completed to their satisfaction, they [Illustration: PIAZZA DI S. LORENZO, SEEN FROM UNDER THE ARCHES OF THE PALAZZO PUBBLICO] took the precaution of putting a large iron fence round their fountain, but their cathedral suffered. They were zealous during the time of their prosperity to have a large and splendid church, but they never found time to finish or adorn it. They left the brickwork naked, hoping for some chance fight to furnish them with marbles for it, and in 1385 they were able to secure those which had been prepared for the cathedral of Arezzo. But they did not keep them. Pellini gives a weird account of the bringing of these marbles. "These things being accomplished," he says, referring to a very inhuman siege and conquest over the unfortunate Arezzo, "some outward sign of the acknowledged victory was necessary; so many marble stones were brought back to Perugia with some paintings upon them which had been formerly in the cathedral of the city; and the oxen and carts which brought them hither, with all the men who worked to bring them, were dressed out by our city with red cloth; but of those said stones, although they were certainly put up outside the walls of our cathedral, no sign at all remains." A little later Pellini explains their loss, for the people of Arezzo got back their marbles. "They started on their journey back to Arezzo," says the faithful historian, who will acknowledge no possible conquest of his own city, "and were put up on a part of their church where they may now be seen, white and red in colour, and very lovely to behold." Throughout the history of Perugia, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we hear of fights and skirmishes in the square, but it was always the cathedral and not the palace which was turned into a fortress. In 1489 one of the endless fights between the Baglioni and the Oddi occurred, and the cathedral became a castle. Guido Baglioni arrived in hot haste from Spello, and proceeded to turn the Oddi out of Perugia. "Girolamo della Penna," says Villani, "deserted his brother Agamemnon and joined the Signori Baglioni, taking with him Silvio del Abate and others, and, together with the Baglioni, they took possession of S. Lorenzo, placed artillery there, and fortified the church, its loggia, and its roof in every way they knew of." The Duomo, on this occasion, proved such an excellent stronghold, that the Oddi outside were entirely discomfited, and had to abandon the siege and retire once more to the country. Another remarkable instance of fighting between the two pugnacious families is given by Fabretti, which illustrates, moreover, the slight power possessed by the Pope at that period. "At the end of October 1488 there was a great fight in the Piazza degli Aratri, and then the Baglioni collected in the piazza, and an ever-increasing throng of supporters assembled round them. And on that same day the brother of the Pope (Innocent VIII.) arrived, and as he passed by the piazza the people called out, '_Chiesa, chiesa_.' He was accompanied to the steps of the Palazzo Pubblico by Guido and Grifonetto Baglioni, who hoped that he might manage to arrange matters. But the _Priori_ looked out of the windows above them, and seeing the Baglioni in the street below, they began to throw down large and heavy stones in the hopes of wounding Guido Baglioni. The hubbub continued with renewed force, and only at dusk did stillness fall upon the city." PALAZZO PUBBLICO. Having glanced thus rapidly over the general historical interest of the piazza, it may be well to describe the buildings separately, taking the _Palazzo Pubblico_ first. Anyone who comes to Perugia, even for a single afternoon, will naturally hurry to this point and spend an hour or two in the Cambio and Pinacoteca; but if a little time remains he should wander further through its public corridors and halls and archives, its council chambers, library, and prisons. All these are gathered together with a certain indifference to the first lines of architecture in the shell of the massive old buildings, and by penetrating these mysterious regions one seems better able to understand the spirit of historical Perugia. The iron force of the [Illustration: REMAINS OF THE FIRST PALAZZO DEI PRIORI IN THE VIA DEL VERZARO] people's law--that force which alone kept head above the breakers of foreign wars and civil discord in the past--slumbers, but is not dead, in the halls where it once reigned. A hum of modern life, a host of modern busts and portraits now clash with, now mellow, the sombre walls and passages. At the other end of the Corso there is a grand new Prefettura, where the Prefect of all Umbria manages Umbrian matters, but the pulse of the old city beats on in its old veins. The _Priori_, with their golden chains and crimson gowns, have vanished, but the men and women of the land are pretty much the same. They wear big collars of foxes' fur on their long winter cloaks, just as they did in mediæval times, and they bring their claims of business into their first house of business, they swarm and hum within the corridors, and trample up and down the wide stone staircase with dignified determination stamped upon their features. In the rooms to which they go the clerks sit writing steadily amidst their piles of archives and of blue-books. Few probably of all these people know, and fewer care, about the Peruginos and Bonfiglis in the rooms above; for the natural man or woman desires to pray before his saints and not to pay to stare at them. We hear that the present palace was finished in the middle of the fourteenth century. Long before that date there had been a public hall where the rulers of the city met to discuss and settle its affairs.[51] But this building was comparatively small and cramped, and the new meeting-house was undertaken with superb disregard to expense. A rough calculation from the many bills shows us that upwards of 14,041 _libre_ was spent on the building of it, but it took nearly one hundred and thirty years to build, and the fact that it was finished at different periods--a bit being added at intervals down the Corso--may account for the waving and irregular line of the east front, which is one of its most marked features. The first architects employed were natives of Perugia: Fra Bevignate and Messers Giacomo di Servadio and Giovanello di Benvenuto. The original plan of the building was probably a perfect square, reaching from its present north front down to where the great door now stands. One should examine the building from the back in order to understand it fully. At one time we hear that Lombard workmen were called in to assist in the "very heavy labour," which, perhaps, gives a certain Lombard look to parts of the brickwork round the windows. The citizens took a vast interest in the erection of their public palace, and allowed many private houses and even churches to be pulled down in order to make room for it. As for the decoration of the cathedral, so also for that of the palace, a neighbouring town was ransacked to furnish ornaments, and the unhappy Bettona was stripped of marbles to supply the magnificent _Priori_ with their pillars and their friezes. Different portions of the huge edifice were given to the principal city guilds to decorate, and it was probably a spirit of emulation in these societies which produced the costly beauties of the separate parts. The chapel was decorated by the Merchants' Guild, and also the principal door, which was dedicated to St Louis of Toulouse. It is a beautiful piece of work, rich and lovely in its smallest detail, and carved in the grey stone called _pietra serena_, which always looks a little cold and dusty, like the fur on a grey mole's back, but which lends itself to a certain attractive style of polished carving peculiar to old doorways in Perugia.[52] Through it one passes into an immense hall, from which a staircase leads into the rooms of the palace above. In former times there were no steps, and persons of distinction and of wealth rode up on horseback to the council chambers.