CHAPTER XIX

TURIN AND THE ALPINE GATEWAYS

The mountains of Piedmont are of the same variety as those of Switzerland and Savoy. They form the highland background to Turin which gives it its magnificent and incomparable framing.

Turin, or Torino, was the old capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia, up to 1864, and to-day is the chief city of Piedmont.

Turin is laid out in great rectangular blocks, with long straight streets, and it is brilliant and beautiful as modern cities go, but there is not much that is romantic about it, save an occasional historical memory perpetuated by some public monument.

Turin at the time of the founding of the kingdom of Sardinia, which included also the domain of the house of Savoy, contained but 75,000 inhabitants. Said Montesquieu, who visited it in 1728: "It is the most beautiful city in the world." De Brosseo, a few years later, declared it to be "the finest city in Italy, by the proper alignment of its streets, the regularity of its buildings, and the beauty of its squares." From this point of view the same holds true to-day, but it is not sympathetic and winsome in the least, and it is not for the contemplation of straight streets, square, box-like buildings or formal public garden plots that one comes to Italy.

Turin's monumental memories are by no means non-existent or unclassed, but they are almost overpowered by the modern note which rings so loudly in one's ears and flashes so vividly in one's eyes.

Of them all the Palazzo Madonna has the greatest appeal. It was originally a thirteenth century construction of the Montferrats, but was added to at various times until well along in the eighteenth century, when it became the palace of Madonna Reale, the widow of Charles Emmanuel II. All its value from an architectural point of view is in its exterior aspect, but its trim twelve-sided towers have a real distinction that a heavier, more clumsy donjon often lacks.

The Palazzo Carignano is a fanciful invention of an architect, Guarni by name, who in 1680 had no very clear idea as to what a consistent and pleasing architectural conception should be. This palace's sole reason to be remembered is that it was the residence of King Carlo-Alberto. To-day Guarni's original façade has been covered by a non-contemporary colonnade, with columns and statues of a certain impressive presence, which would be considered handsome if it were some degrees finer in workmanship, for the conception was certainly on becoming general lines.

The Palazzo Valentino, built in 1633 by Christine of France, the daughter of Henri IV and Marie de Medici, and wife of Vittorio Amedeo II, is now devoted to the usages of an educational institution. It is on the classic French chateau order and is as out of place in Italy as the Italian Renaissance architecture is in England.

On the Piazza Castello rises Turin's old castle of the fourteenth century, built of brick, and, though moss-grown, it is hardly a ruin.

The Palazzo Reale, built in 1678 on the north side of the Piazza, is severe and simple as to exterior, but luxurious enough within by reason of the collections which it houses.

In the armory of Turin's royal palace is the full suit of armour worn by Duke Emanuele-Filiberto on the occasion of the battle of St. Quentin, and made by his own hand. He was an armourer, a silversmith and a worker in fine metals beyond compare. In peace he was a craftsman without an equal; in war he was the same kind of a fighter.

Another armour suit is of gigantic proportions. Who its owner was history and the catalogue fail to state. The breast-plate bears a ducal coronet and the letter F. The suit contains enough metal to armour plate a small battle ship. For the more sentimentally inclined there is a cabinet of delicately fashioned stilettos, which we have always fondly believed were the national arms of Italy. These particular stilettos were taken from fair ladies after they had made away with their lovers when they came to be a nuisance. Fickle women!

Turin is one of the many places on the map of Europe famous for a specialty in the eating line. This time it is chocolate. Let not any one think that all chocolate comes from Aiguebelle or Royat. The bread of Turin, "_grissini_," is also in a class by itself. It is made in long sticks about the diameter of a pipe stem, and you eat yards of it with your _minestra_ and between courses.

The puppet show or marionette theatres of Turin have ever been famous, indeed the _fantoccini_ theatre had its origin in Piedmont. The buffon Gianduja was of Piedmontese birth, as was Arlequino of Bergamo.

Around Turin are various suburban neighbourhoods with historic memories and some palace and villa remains which might well be noted.

The Vigna della Regina, or the Queen's Vineyard, is the name given to a once royal residence, now a girls' school. The house was built in 1650 by Cardinal Maurice of Savoy. Another one of the nearby sights, not usually "taken in," is the natural garden (an undefiled landscape garden) arranged in the sixteenth century by the Duke of Savoy, Emanuele Filiberto.

King Carlo Felice had a country house called the Castello d'Aglie to the north of the city. It is remarkable for nothing but the pure air of the neighbourhood, and that abounds everywhere in these parts.

At Rivoli, a few kilometres out on the Mont Cenis road, is a clumsily built, half finished mass of buildings, planned by Vittorio Amedeo II. in the eighteenth century as a royal residence to which he some day might return if he ever got tired of playing abdicator. He occupied it surely enough, in due course, but as a prisoner, not as a ruler. He was a well-meaning monarch, and through him the house of Savoy obtained Sardinia, but he made awful blunders at times, or at least one, for ultimately he landed in prison where he died in 1732.

Six leagues from Turin is the little garrison town of Pinerolo. A heap of stones on the mountain marks the site of a chateau where were once imprisoned the man of the Iron Mask, Lauzun, the political prisoner of history, and Fouquet, the money-grabbing minister of Louis XIV.

Lauzun and his personal history make interesting reading for one versed in things Italian and French. He made a famous _mot_ when being transported to his mountain prison. He was requested from time to time to descend from his carriage, whenever by chance it had got stuck in the mud or wedged between offending rocks. With much apology he was begged to descend. "Oh! this is nothing; these little misfortunes of travel are nothing of moment compared to the object of my journey." Other prisoners may have put things similarly, but hardly with the same grace of diction.

Let no automobilist, on leaving Turin, come out by way of Pinerolo unless he is prepared for a detour of a hundred kilometres, a rise of 2,000 metres and a drop down again to 1,300 metres at Cesana Tarinese, where he strikes the main road over the Col de Mont Cenis to Modane in France, or via the Col de Mont Genevre to Briançon. The direct road from Turin is via Rivoli and Suse.

Not every traveller in Italy knows the half-hidden out-of-the-way Val d'Aoste, the obvious gateway from Turin to the north via the Col du Saint Bernard. Travellers by rail rush through via the Simplon or Mont Cenis and know not the delights and joys which possess the traveller by road as he plunges into the heart of the Alps through the gateway of the Val d'Aoste.

The Val d'Aoste, less than a hundred kilometres, all counted, has more scenic and architectural surprises than any similar strip in Europe, but it is not a _piste_ to be raced over by the scorching automobilist at sixty miles an hour. On the contrary it can not be done with satisfaction in less than a day, even by the most blasé of tourists. The railway also ascends the valley as far as Aoste, and one may cross over by coach into France or Switzerland by either the Col du Petit Saint Bernard or the Col du Grand Saint Bernard. It is worth doing!

The whole Val d'Aoste is one great reminder of feudal days and feudal ways. Curiously enough, too, in this part of Piedmont the aspect is as much French as Italian, and so too is the speech of the people. At Courmayer, for instance, the street and shop signs are all in French, and _'om_ the diminutive of _homme_ replaces the Italian _uomo_; _cheur_ stands for _coeur_ and _sita_ for _cité_ and _citta_. This patois is universal through the upper valleys, and if one has any familiarity with the patois of Provence it will not be found so very strange. French, however, is very commonly understood throughout Piedmont, more so than elsewhere in north Italy, where, for a fact, a German will find his way about much more readily than a Frenchman.

One blemish lies all over the Val d'Aoste. It was greatly to be remarked by travellers of two or three generations ago and is still in evidence if one looks for it, though actually it is decreasing. Large numbers of the population are of the afflicted class known as _Cretins_, and many more suffer from _goitre_. It is claimed that these diseases come from a squalid filthiness, but the lie is given to this theory by the fact that there is no apparent filthiness. The diseases are evidently hereditary, and at some time anterior to their appearance here they were already known elsewhere. They are then results of an extraneous condition of affairs imported and developed here in this smiling valley through the heedlessness of some one. There are certain neighbourhoods, as at Courmayer and Ivrea, where they do not exist at all, but in other localities, and for a radius of ten kilometres roundabout, they are most prevalent.

The southern gateway to the Val d'Aoste is the snug little mountain of Ivrea, 50 kilometres from Turin. The cheese and butter of the Italian Alps, known throughout the European market as Beurre de Milan, is mostly produced in this neighbourhood, and the ten thousand souls who live here draw almost their entire livelihood from these products. Ivrea has an old Castle of imposing, though somewhat degenerate, presence. It has been badly disfigured in the restorations of later years, but two of its numerous brick towers of old still retain their crenelated battlements. The place itself is of great antiquity, and Strabon has put it on record that 3,600 of the inhabitants of the Val d'Aoste were once sold en bloc in the streets of Ivrea by Terentius Varro, their captor.

The Val d'Aoste, from Ivrea to Courmayer, about one hundred kilometres, will some day come to its own as a popular touring ground, but that time is not yet. When the time comes any who will may know all the delights of Switzerland's high valleys without suffering from the manifest drawback of overexploitation. One doesn't necessarily want to drink beer before every waterfall or listen to a yoedel in every cavern. What is more to the point is that one may here find simple, unobtrusive attention on the part of hotel keepers and that at a price in keeping with the surroundings. This you get in the Val d'Aoste and throughout the Alps of Piedmont, Dauphiny and Savoy.

Up high in the Val d'Aoste lies a battery of little Alpine townlets scarce known even by name, though possessed of a momentous history and often of architectural monuments marvellously imposing in their grandeur and beauty.

Near Pont Saint Martin, high above the torrent of the Doire, is the picturesque feudal castle of Montalto, a name famous in Italian annals of the middle ages.

Over the river Lys, at Pont Saint Martin, there is a Roman bridge; a modern iron one crosses it side by side, but the advantages, from an æsthetic and utilitarian view-point, as well, are all in favour of the former. A ruined castle crowns the height above Pont Saint Martin and a few kilometres below, at Donnas, is an ancient Roman mile stone still bearing the uneffaced inscription XXXII M. P.

This whole region abounds in Napoleonic souvenirs. Fort Bard, the key to the valley, garrisoned by only eight hundred Austrians, gave Bonaparte a check which he almost despaired of overcoming. The Little Corporal's ingenuity pulled him through, however. He sent out a patrol which laid the streets of the little village below the fort with straw and his army passed unobserved in the night as if slippered with felt. But for this, the Battle of Marengo, one of the most brilliant of French feats of arms, might never have been fought.

Bard, the fort and the village, is now ignored by the high road which, by a cut-off, avoids the steep climb in and out of the place.

Unheard of by most travellers in Italy, and entirely unknown to others, Verrex in the Val d'Aoste possesses a ravishing architectural surprise in the shape of a feudal castle on a hillside overlooking the town. It is of the square keep, or donjon, variety, and played an important part in the warlike times of the past.

The chateau of Issogne near by, built by the Prior Geor. Challant, less of a castle and more of a country house, is an admirable fifteenth century domestic establishment still habitable, and inhabited, to-day.

All up and down the valley are relics of the engineering skill of the great Roman road and bridge builders. The road over Mont Jovet, a sheer cut down into the roof of a mountain, was theirs; so were the bridges at Chatillon and Pont Saint Martin, and another at Salassiens. At the Pont d'Ael is a Roman aqueduct.

Chatillon, like Verrex, is not marked in big letters on many maps, but it belongs in every architect lover's Italian itinerary. Its two bridges of olden time are veritable wonder works. Its chateau Ussel, a ruin of the fourteenth century, is still glorious under its coat of mail of moss and ivy, while the Castle of Count Christian d'Entréves is of the kind seen by most people only in picture books.

At Fénis is a magnificent feudal battlemented castle with donjon tower, a _chemin ronde_ and a barbican so awe-inspiring as to seem unreal. With Verrex and Issogne, near by, Fénis completes a trio of chateaux-forts built by the overlords of the name of Challant who possessed feudal rights throughout all the Val d'Aoste.

Aimon de Challant built the castle of Fénis in 1330. Virtually it was, and is, a regular fortress, with as complete a system of defence as ever princely stronghold had. At once a sumptuous seigneurial residence and a seemingly impregnable fortress, it is one of the most remarkable works of its class above ground.

Aoste is a little Italian mountain town far more French than Italian from many points of view. It is of great antiquity and was the Augusta Prætoria of various Roman itineraries.

Like most Roman cities Aoste was laid out on the rectangular parallelogram plan, an aspect which it still retains.

Aoste's triumphal arch, its city gate and walls, and its ancient towers all lend a quaint aspect of mediævalism which the twentieth century--so far as it has gone--has entirely failed to contaminate.

For lovers of English church history it will be a pleasure to recall that Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century, was born at Aoste. Another churchly memory at Aoste is a tablet inscribed with the particulars of the flight of Calvin from his refuge here in 1541.

Saint Bernard, who has given his name to two neighbouring mountain passes and to a breed of dogs, was Archbishop of Aoste in his time. His perilous journeys in crossing the Alps, going and coming to and from his missions of good, led to his founding the celebrated hospice on the nearby mountain pass which bears his name. The convent of the Great St. Bernard is the highest habited point in Europe.

From Aoste to the Hospice of the Grand Saint Bernard is twenty-six kilometres, with a rise of nearly 2,000 metres and a fall of a like amount to Martigny in Switzerland. The percentage of rise is considerably greater than the route leading into France by the Little Saint Bernard, which falls short of the former by three hundred metres, but the road is rather better. By far the easiest route from Turin into France is via the Col de Mont Cenis to Modane; but a modern automobile will not quarrel seriously with any of these save one or two short, ugly bits of from fifteen to seventeen per cent. They are pretty stiff; there's no doubt about that, and with a motor whose horse power is enfeebled by the rarefied atmosphere at these elevations the driver is likely to meet with some surprises.