But The Number Of Inhabitants Is Very
Inconsiderable; And This Very Circumstance Gives It An Air Of
Majestic Solitude, Which Is Far From Being Unpleasant To A Man Of
A Contemplative Turn Of Mind.
For my part, I cannot bear the
tumult of a populous commercial city; and the solitude that
reigns in Pisa would with me be a strong motive to choose it as a
place of residence.
Not that this would be the only inducement
for living at Pisa. Here is some good company, and even a few men
of taste and learning. The people in general are counted sociable
and polite; and there is great plenty of provisions, at a very
reasonable rate. At some distance from the more frequented parts
of the city, a man may hire a large house for thirty crowns a
year: but near the center, you cannot have good lodgings, ready
furnished, for less than a scudo (about five shillings) a day.
The air in summer is reckoned unwholesome by the exhalations
arising from stagnant water in the neighbourhood of the city,
which stands in the midst of a fertile plain, low and marshy: yet
these marshes have been considerably drained, and the air is much
meliorated. As for the Arno, it is no longer navigated by vessels
of any burthen. The university of Pisa is very much decayed; and
except the little business occasioned by the emperor's gallies,
which are built in this town, [This is a mistake. No gallies have
been built here for a great many years, and the dock is now
converted into stables for the Grand Duke's Horse Guards.] I know
of no commerce it carried on: perhaps the inhabitants live on the
produce of the country, which consists of corn, wine, and cattle.
They are supplied with excellent water for drinking, by an
aqueduct consisting of above five thousand arches, begun by
Cosmo, and finished by Ferdinand I. Grand-dukes of Tuscany; it
conveys the water from the mountains at the distance of five
miles. This noble city, formerly the capital of a flourishing and
powerful republic, which contained above one hundred and fifty
thousand inhabitants, within its walls, is now so desolate that
grass grows in the open streets; and the number of its people do
not exceed sixteen thousand.
You need not doubt but I visited the Campanile, or hanging-tower,
which is a beautiful cylinder of eight stories, each adorned with
a round of columns, rising one above another. It stands by the
cathedral, and inclines so far on one side from the
perpendicular, that in dropping a plummet from the top, which is
one hundred and eighty-eight feet high, it falls sixteen feet
from the base. For my part, I should never have dreamed that this
inclination proceeded from any other cause, than an accidental
subsidence of the foundation on this side, if some connoisseurs
had not taken great pains to prove it was done on purpose by the
architect. Any person who has eyes may see that the pillars on
that side are considerably sunk; and this is the case with the
very threshold of the door by which you enter. I think it would
have been a very preposterous ambition in the architects, to show
how far they could deviate from the perpendicular in this
construction; because in that particular any common mason could
have rivalled them; [All the world knows that a Building with
such Inclination may be carried up till a line drawn from the
Centre of Gravity falls without the Circumference of the Base.]
and if they really intended it as a specimen of their art, they
should have shortened the pilasters on that side, so as to
exhibit them intire, without the appearance of sinking. These
leaning towers are not unfrequent in Italy; there is one at
Bologna, another at Venice, a third betwixt Venice and Ferrara,
and a fourth at Ravenna; and the inclination in all of them has
been supposed owing to the foundations giving way on one side
only.
In the cathedral, which is a large Gothic pile, [This Edifice is
not absolutely Gothic. It was built in the Twelfth Century after
the Design of a Greek Architect from Constantinople, where by
that time the art was much degenerated. The Pillars of Granite
are mostly from the Islands of Ebba and Giglia on the coast of
Tuscany, where those quarries were worked by the antient Romans.
The Giullo, and the verde antico are very beautiful species of
marble, yellow and green; the first, antiently called marmor
numidicum, came from Africa; the other was found (according to
Strabo) on the mons Taygetus in Lacedemonia: but, at present,
neither the one nor the other is to be had except among the ruins
of antiquity.] there is a great number of massy pillars of
porphyry, granite, jasper, giullo, and verde antico, together
with some good pictures and statues: but the greatest curiosity
is that of the brass-gates, designed and executed by John of
Bologna, representing, embossed in different compartments, the
history of the Old and New Testament. I was so charmed with this
work, that I could have stood a whole day to examine and admire
it. In the Baptisterium, which stands opposite to this front,
there are some beautiful marbles, particularly the font, and a
pulpit, supported by the statues of different animals.
Between the cathedral and this building, about one hundred paces
on one side, is the famous burying-ground, called Campo Santo,
from its being covered with earth brought from Jerusalem. It is
an oblong square, surrounded by a very high wall, and always kept
shut. Within-side there is a spacious corridore round the whole
space, which is a noble walk for a contemplative philosopher. It
is paved chiefly with flat grave-stones: the walls are painted in
fresco by Ghiotto, Giottino, Stefano, Bennoti, Bufalmaco, and
some others of his cotemporaries and disciples, who flourished
immediately after the restoration of painting.
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