The Environs Of This Interesting City Are Very Beautiful And Present An Exceeding Rich Soil, Highly Cultivated In Corn, Mulberry Trees And Vines Hanging From Them In Festoons.

VERONA, 12th June.

I started yesterday morning from Vicenza and arrived here in about three hours, the distance being nearly the same as between Vicenza and Padua. We crossed the Adige which divides the city into two unequal parts and drove to the Due Torri, a large and comfortable inn with excellent rooms and accommodations. Verona is a very handsome city, for here also Palladio was the designer or builder of many edifices. It has a very cheerful and gay appearance, tho' not quite so much so as Vicenza. The reason of this difference is that in Verona the greater part of the buildings are in the Gothic style, which always appears heavy and melancholy, whereas in Vicenza all is Grecian. The Amphitheatre of course claimed my first notice. It yields only to the Coliseum in size and grandeur and is in much better preservation, the whole of the ellipse and its walls being entire, whereas in the Coliseum part of the walls have been pulled down. Indeed the Amphitheatre of Verona may be said to be almost perfectly entire. Tempus edax rerum has been its only enemy; whereas avarice and religious fanaticism have contributed, much more than time, to the dilapidation of the Coliseum. The Amphitheatre of Verona can contain 24,000 persons. In it is constructed a temporary theatre of wood, where they perform plays and farces in the open air.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 459 of 558
Words from 124804 to 125064 of 151859