A Little Pilgrimage in Italy

Many years later, when his fame was assured, Giotto came back to paint his allegories in the place of honour over the High Altar of the Lower Church. What did he think of it all...

I have a tender spot in my heart for Chiusi. She is a happy town. In herself she is not very picturesque: her houses are the plain, white-washed, green-shuttered homes of modern...

Little cities which had been hidden in the folds of the valley grew into our horizon--Torgiano, towering on our left, Deruta and Ripa Bianca. Our road, which had run in a straig...

But it was not only for its mediaeval beauty that we loved the Campo. This is Siena's heart. Here she has fought and loved and hated and rejoiced, ay, and died too. And if her s...

Perugia is not a religious city. It is true that she furnished the most ardent disciples of the thirteenth-century Flagellants;[3] and that Fra Bernadino of Siena, preaching to...

We drove to Spello on a September day of vagrant sunshine, when the earth was musical with running waters and the heavens, tinted mother-o'-pearl, were spread with tearful cloud...

Come in with me then to this great rich church and see these little ones at prayer. See how they press into the Santa Casa. Are not their simple faith, their gentle humility, th...

It was Fortunato Rosso who came to our rescue, dear old man, with his dilapidated vehicle, which was no larger than a riksha, and so broken down that we expected the back to fal...

These tables of bronze, which have been of such inestimable value to the student of ancient languages, are Gubbio's greatest treasure. They are housed in her Palazzo Pubblico, i...

Signor Corrado Ricci, himself a son of Ravenna, speaks truly when he says 'Ravenna is a city historically great and fatal, nay, the very charnel-house of history, whither destin...

There are many other treasures in the Duomo, besides the column upon which San Donato had his head cut off, 'without any regard for the axe,' as the custode explained, pointing...

And presently we came into a chestnut grove where the path was hidden under a carpet of rustling autumn leaves; and a tangle of wild flowers--harebell, cyclamen, saffron and fir...

Although the tiers of seats erected for knights and pages below the Palazzo Comunale already looked like a bed of tropical flowers, more banners came fluttering down the Via Cas...

A silver moon was riding low in the heavens when we left the doorway of the Leon Bianco and passed through the Arco de' Becci, the great gateway of the ancient circuit of walls,...

Ancona of to-day is a garden where the beautiful flowers of an ancient architecture are still flourishing among the energetic weeds and herbs of everyday life. Between the two h...

But one evening when the sun was sinking low behind the Appennines, filling the valleys with a sea of rosy mists, from which the fantastic rocks of San Marino and San Leo emerge...

Nature has endowed Spoleto richly. She is built on the slopes of an isolated bastion of the Appennines, which closes as it were the Central Plain of Umbria. Behind her towers th...

And she herself has an heroic history, for so great was her defence against the Romans that when at last she fell before the Consul Fulvius in B.C. 299, he was given a Triumph '...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 46092-h.htm or 46092-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46...

It was in Foligno, seeing that fair white road which threads the rich valley of Spoleto, now skirting the Hill of Trevi, now leading through the olive gardens of Le Vene to the...