I I irinTuununiiainiKiiui iiiuaiuiiunmnni iiiiuiunuiniuiuinnitiiii liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllll ITALIAN HIGHWAYS cmdBYWAYS OTOR Car '•■'•■••'-•'----I 'FRANCIS MiLTGUN liiniiniiiiinimmininiiniiiunimiiinionniianniiniiiiuiniiiiiuiii W^^f'&^&f'SWKff^ ••■■''■icr THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES I In. 1^ ^% .l^nPi '- -'I'll': j, f _ ■nil iiiiLmurtimLiHi im ijiiriD nil ■ ■' miii f^ Hill ((injiiiiaiiiiH '111 I' P — j 111 .LL_ b. •• tr^ '1 iijjJt{.l|OL_{i vm y OWi^^ Italian Highways and Byways From a Motor Car WORKS OF FRANCIS MIL TO UN Rambles on the Riviera ^2.50 Rambles in Normandy 2.50 Rambles in Brtttany 2.50 The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine 2.50 The Cathedrals of Northern France 2.50 The Cathedrals of Southern France 2.50 In the Land of Mosques and Minarets 3-00 Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Lotre Country 3«00 Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces 3«00 Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car 3.CX) The Automobilist Abroad net 3.00 Postage Extra L. C, PAGE y COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass. ^ from a Motor Car ■ties and • and IN ^BOLOGNA t^M! Jias»iJ.b6) M ^..JiyX Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car By Francis M i l t o u n j; r^^exi-dovsv^, o. N. I. Author of " Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," " Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre," " In the Land of Mosques and Minarets," etc. fViib Pictures By Blanche McManus Boston L. C. PAGE & COMPANY I 909 Copyright, igog By L. C, Page & Company (incorporated) All rights reserved First Impression, May, 1 909 Electrotyped and Printed at THE COLONIAL PRESS: CH.Simonds iB!,Co.,Boston,U.S.A. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Way about Italy 1 II. Of Italian Men and Manners ... 23 III. Chianti and Macaroni . . » . . 41 IV. Italian Roads and Routes .... 60 V. In Liguria 81 VI. The Riviera di Levantb .... 108 VII. On Tuscan Roads 124 VIII. Florentine Backgrounds .... 144 IX. The Road to Rome 164 X. The Campagna and Beyond . . . .181 XI. La Bella Napoli 196 XII. The Beautiful Bay of Naples . . . 207 XIII. Across Umbria to the Adriatic . . 225 XIV. By Adriatic's Shore . . , . . 237 XV. On the Via Emilia 260 XVI. In Venetia 277 XVII. Through Italian Lakeland . . . 309 XVIII. Milan and the Plains of Lombardy . 333 XIX. Turin and the Alpine Gateways . . 346 XX. From the Italian Lakes to the Riviera . 360 Index .,.,,.... 371 if^i OO^i In Bologna {See page 266) .... Map of Italy Italy in the XVIII Century (map) . Barberino di Mugello A Chianti Seller A Wayside Trattoria Road Map of North Italy .... Italian Road Signs ..... Profile Road Map, Bologna — Florence Palazzo Doria, Genoa Genoa (map) Sun Dial, Genoa Rapallo Rapallo and its Gulf (map) Lucca (arms) On a Tuscan Highway Florence and Its Palaces (map) Torch-holders, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence Palazzo Vecchio, Florence .... A Lantern, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence . San Gimignano VoLTERRA (map) vii facing facing facing facing facing PAGE Frontispiece facing 2 24 26 32 42 72 77 79 100 101 106 110 111 122 124 134 136 136 137 138 140 facing facing facing facing viii List of Illustrations PAGE Villa Palmieri (diagram) 148 FlESOLE 150 Palazzo della Signoria, Siena . . . facing 164 Orvieto facing 168 Arms of Various Papal Families .... 172 Castle of Sant' Angelo, Rome . . . facing 174 Palazzo Vaticano (diagram) 175 The Borgia Window, Rome .... facing 176 Papal Arms of Caesar Borgia 177 Arms of a Medicis Prelate 178 Villa Medici, Rome facing 178 SuBiAco facing 190 Villa d'Este, Tivoli facing 192 Hadrian's Villa (diagram) ...... 194 Naples (diagram) 196 Castello dell' Ovo, Naples .... facing 202 The Bay of Naples (map) 208 IscHiA facing 212 Lava Beds of Vesuvius (map) 213 The Excavations of Pompeii (diagram) . . . 216 The Environs of Pompeii .... facing 218 Assisi (arms) 228 Assisi ; Its Walls, Castle and Church (diagram) . 229 Architectural Detail, Perugia . . . facing 230 Palazzo Ducale, Urbino .... facing 232 Brindisi ; The Terminal Column of the Appian Way 240 Trajan's Arch, Ancona facing 242 Castel Malatesta, Rimini .... facing 244 Palazzo di Teodorico, Ravenna . . facing 248 Column to Gaston de Foix, Ravenna , . . 249 The Madonna of Chioggia 252 Borgia Arms 254 Ferrara facing 254 Casa del Petrarca, Arqua 259 Bologna (diagram) 267 List of Illustrations ix PAGE The Leaning Towers of Bologna . . facing 268 Paema (arms) 272 PiACENZA (diagram) 275 Padua (arms) 278 In Padua facing 280 Palaces of the Grand Canal, Venice (diagram) . 289 The so-called " House of Desdemona," Venice facing 290 AsoLO 296 VicENZA (diagram) 300 VicENZA facing 302 Seal of Verona 304 Palazzo Ducal, Mantua 311 On the Lago di Garda facing 314 Castle of Brescia facing 316 Bergamo facing 318 The Italian Lakes (map) 319 On the Lago di Como facing 322 Cadenabbia 324 On the Lago di Maggiore .... facing 326 Orta facing 330 A Lombard Fete facing 334 The Ancient Castle of Milan . . . facing 338 The Iron Crown of Lombardy 345 Palazzo Madonna, Turin .... facing 346 On the Strada, Moncenisio .... facing 350 Castle op Fbnis facing 358 Italian Highways and Byways From a Motor Car CHAPTER I THE WAY ABOUT ITALY One travels in Italy chiefly in search of the picturesque, but in Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice or Milan, and in the larger towns lying between, there is, in spite of the romantic asso- ciation of great names, little that appeals to one in a personal sense. One admires what Ruskin, Hare or Symonds tells one to admire, gets a smattering of the romantic history of the great families of the palaces and villas of Rome and Florence, but absorbs little or nothing of the genuine feudal traditions of the background regions away from the well-worn roads. Along the highways and byways runs the itin- erary of the author and illustrator of this book, 1 2 Italian Highways and Byways and they have thus been able to view many of the beauties and charms of the countryside which have been unknown to most travellers in Italy in these days of the modern railway. Alia Campagna was our watchword as we set out to pass as many of our Italian days and nights as possible in places little celebrated in popular annals, a better way of knowing Italy than one will ever know it when viewed simply from the Vatican steps or Frascati's gardens. The palaces and villas of Rome, Florence and Venice are known to most European travellers — as they know Capri, Vesuvius or Amalfi; but of the grim castles of Ancona, of Rimini and Ravenna, and of the classic charms of Taor- mina or of Sarazza they know considerably less; and still less of Monte Cristo's Island, of Elba, of Otranto, and of the little hidden-away mountain towns of the Alps of Piedmont and the Val d'Aoste. The automobile, as a means of getting about, has opened up many old and half-used by- ways, and the automobile traveller of to-day may confidently assert that he has come to know the countryside of a beloved land as it was not even possible for his grandfathers to know it. The Italian tour may be made as a conducted tour, as an educative tour, as a mere butterfly The Way About Italy- tour (as it often has been), or as a honeymoon trip, but the reason for its making is always the same; the fact that Italy is a soft, fair, romantic land where many things have existed, and still exist, that may be found nowhere else on earth. The romance of travel and the process of gathering legends and tales of local manners and customs is in no way spoiled because of modern means of travel. Many a hitherto un- exploited locality, with as worthy a monumental shrine as many more celebrated, will now be- come accessible, perhaps even well known. The pilgrim goes to Italy because of his de- votion to religion, or to art or architecture, and, since this is the reason for his going, it is this reason, too, which has caused the making of more travel books on Italy than on all other continental countries combined. There are some who affect only '' old masters " or lit- erary shrines, others who crave palaces or villas, and yet others who haunt the roulette tables of Monte Carlo, Biarritz, or some ex- clusive Club in the " Eternal City." Euro- pean travel is all things to all men. The pilgrims that come to Italy in increasing numbers each year are not all bom and bred of artistic tastes, but the expedition soon brings 4 Italian Highways and Byways a glimmer of it to the most sordid soul that ever took his amusements apart from his edification, and therein lies the secret of pleasurable travel for all classes. The automobilist should bear this in mind and not eat up the roadway through Emilia at sixty miles an hour simply because it is possible. There are things to see en route,, though none of your speeding friends have ever mentioned them. Gret acquainted with them yourself and pass the information on to the next. That is what the automobile is doing for modern travel — more than the stage or the railway ever did, and more than the aeroplane ever will ! One does not forget the American who went home to the '' Far West " and recalled Rome as the city where he bought an alleged panama hat (made probably at Leghorn). He is no myth. One sees his like every day. He who hurried his daughter away from the dim out- lined aisles of Milan's Gothic wonder to see the new electric light works and the model tram- way station was one of these, but he was the better for having done a round of the cathe- drals of Italy, even if he did get a hazy idea of them mixed up with his practical observations on street-lighting and transportation. Superficial Italian itineraries have been made The Way About Italy often, and their chronicles set down. They are still being made, and chronicled, but the makers of guide books have, as yet, catered but little to the class of leisurely travellers, a class who would like to know where some of these un- exploited monuments exist; where these unfa- miliar histories and legends may be heard, and how they may all be arrived at, absorbed and digested. The people of the countryside, too, are usually more interesting than those of the towns. One has only to compare the Italian peasant and his picturesque life with the top- hatted and frock-coated Roman of to-day to arrive quickly to a conclusion as to which is typical of his surroundings. The Medicis, the Borgias, and the Colonnas have gone, and to find the real romantic Italian and his manner of life one has to hunt him in the small towns. The modern traveller in Italy by road will do well to recall the conditions which met the traveller of past days. The mere recollection of a few names and dates will enable the auto- mobilist to classify his impressions on the road in a more definite and satisfying manner than if he took no cognizance of the pilgrims who have gone before. Chaucer set out ostensibly for Genoa in 1373 and incidentally met Petrarch at Padua and 6 Italian Highways and Byways talked shop. A monk named Felix, from Ulm on the banks of the Danube, en route for Jeru- salem, stopped off at Venice and wrote things down about it in his diary, which he called a " faithful description." Albrecht Durer vis- ited Venice in 1505 and made friends with many there, and from Venice went to Bologna and Ferrara. An English crusading knight in the same century " took in " Italy en route to the Holy Land, entering the country via Chambery and Aiguebelle — the most delightful gateway even to-day. Automobilists should work this itinerary out on some diagrammatic road map. Martin Luther, " with some business to trans- act with the Pope's Vicar," passed through Milan, Pavia, Bologna and Florence on his way to Rome, and Rabelais in 1532 followed in the train of Cardinal du Bellay, and his account of how he '' saw the Pope " is interesting reading in these days when even personally-conducted tourists look forward to the same thing. Joa- chim du Bellay 's " visions of Rome " are good poetry, but as he was partisan to his own be- loved Loire gaulois, to the disparagement of the Tiber latin, their topographical worth is somewhat discounted. Sir Philip Sidney was in Padua and Venice in 1573, and he brought back a portrait of him- The Way About Italy self painted in the latter city by Paul Veronese, as tourists to-day carry away wine glasses with their initials embossed on them. The sentiment is the same, but taste was better in the old days. Rubens was at Venice in 1600, and there are those who say that Shakespeare got his local colour " on the spot." Mr. Sidney Lee says no! Back to the land, as Dante, Petrarch, even Horace and Virgil, have said. Dante the way- farer was a mighty traveller, and so was Pe- trach. Horace and Virgil took their view- points from the Roman capital, but they penned faithful pictures which in setting and colouring have, in but few instances, changed unto this day. Dante is believed to have been in Rome when the first sentence was passed upon him, and from the Eternal City one can follow his jour- neyings northward by easy stages to Siena and Arezzo, to the Alps, to Padua, on the Aemilian Way, his wandering on Roman roads, his flight by sea to Marseilles, again at Verona and finally at Ravenna, the last refuge. This was an Italian itinerary worth the doing. Why should we modern travellers not take some historical personage and follow his (or her) footsteps from the cradle to the grave? 8 Italian Highways and Byways To follow in the footsteps of Jeanne d'Arc, of Dante Alighieri, or of Petrarch and his Laura — though their ways were widely divergent — or of Henri IV, Francois I, or Charles V, would add a zest and reason for being to an automo- bile tour of Europe which no twenty-four hour record from London to Monte Carlo, or eight- een hours from Naples to Geneva could possi- bly have. There is another class of travellers who will prefer to wax solemn over the notorious jour- ney to Italy of Alfred de Musset and Georges Sand. It was a most romantic trip, as the world knows. De Musset even had to ask his mother's consent to make it. The past mistress of eloquence appeared at once on the maternal threshold and promised to look after the young man — like a mother. De Musset 's brother saw the pair off *' on a misty melancholy evening, ' ' and noted amongst other dark omens, that ' ' the coach in which the travellers took their seats was the thirteenth to leave the yard," but for the life of us we cannot share his solemnity. The travellers met Stendhal at Lyons. After supper '' he was very merry, got rather drunk and danced round the table in his big topboots." In Florence they could not make up their minds whether to The Way About Italy 9 go to Rome or to Venice, and settled the matter by the toss of a coin. Is it possible to care much for the fortunes of two such heedless cynics 1 It is such itineraries as have here been out- lined, the picking up of more or less indistinct trails and following them a while, that gives that peculiar charm to Italian travel. Not the dreamy, idling mood that the sentimentalists would have us adopt, but a burning feverishness that hardly allows one to linger before any individual shrine. Rather one is pushed from behind and drawn from in front to an ever un- reachable goal. One never finishes his Italian travels. Once the habit is formed, it becomes a disease. We care not that Cimabue is no longer considered to be throned the painter of the cele- brated Madonna in Santa Maria Novella, or that Andrea del Sarto and his wife are no longer Andrea del Sarto and his wife, so long as we can weave together a fabric which pleases us, regardless of the new criticism, — or the old, for that matter. We used to go to the places marked on our railway tickets, and '' stopped off " only as the regulations allowed. Now we go where fancy wills and stop off where the vagaries of our automobile force us to. And we get more no- 10 Italian Highways and Byways tions of Italy into our heads in six weeks than could otherwise be acquired in six months. One need not go so very far afield to get away from the conventional in Italy. Even that strip of coastline running from Menton in France to Reggio in Calabria is replete with unknown, or at least unexploited, little corners, which have 8. wealth of picturesque and romantic charm, and as noble and impressive architectural mon- uments as one may find in the peninsula. Com e hella, say the French honeymoon couples as they enter Italy via the Milan Ex- press over the Simplon; com e hella, say one and all who have trod or ridden the highways and byways up and down and across Italy; com e hella is the paean of every one who has made the Italian round, whether they have been frequenters of the great cities and towns, or have struck out across country for themselves and found some creeper-clad ruin, or a villa in some ideally romantic situation which the makers of guide-books never heard of, or have failed to mention. All this is possible to the traveller by road in Italy, and one's only un- pleasant memories are of the huona mano of the brigands of hotel servants which infest the large cities and towns — about the only brig- ands one meets in Italy to-day. The Way About Italy 11 The real Italy, the old Italy, still exists, though half hidden by the wall of progress built up by young liberty-loving Italy since the days of Garibaldi ; but one has to step aside and look for the old regime. It cannot always be discov- ered from the window of a railway carriage or a hotel omnibus, though it is often brought into much plainer view from the cushions of an au- tomobile. '' Motor Cars and the Genus Loci " was a very good title indeed for an article which recently appeared in a quarterly review. The writer ingeniously discovered — as some of the rest of us have also — the real mission of the automobile. It takes us into the heart of the life of a country instead of forcing us to travel in a prison van on iron rails. Let the tourist in Italy '' do " — and " do '* as thoroughly as he likes — the galleries of Rome, Florence, Siena, and Venice, but let him not neglect the more appealing and far more natural uncontaminated beauties of the coun- tryside and the smaller towns, such as Caserta, Arezzo, Lucca, Montepulciana, Barberino in Mugello and Ancona, and as many others as fit well into his itinerary from the Alps to ^tna or from Reggio to Ragusa. They lack much of the popular renown that the great centres possess, but they still have an aspect of the 12 Italian Highways and Byways reality of the life of medisevalism which is diffi- cult to trace when surrounded by all the up-to- date and supposedly necessitous things which are burying Rome's ruins deeper than they have ever yet been buried. It is difficult indeed to imagine what old Rome was like, with Pras- cati given over to " hunt parties " and the hotel drawing rooms replete with Hungarian orchestras. It is difficult, indeed ! Italy is a vast kinetoscope of heterogeneous sights and scenes and memories and traditions such as exist on no other part of the earth's surface. Of this there is no doubt, and yet each for himself may find something new, whether it is a supposed '' secret of the Vatican " or an unheard of or forgotten romance of an Italian villa. This is the genus loci of Italy, the charm of Italy, the unresistible lodestone which draws tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands thither each year, from England and America. Italy is the most romantic touring ground in all the world, and, though its high- ways and byways are not the equal in surface of the '' good roads " of France, they are, in good weather, considerably better than the au- tomobilist from overseas is used to at home. At one place we found fifty kilometres of the worst road we had ever seen in Italy immedi- The Way About Italy 13 ately followed by a like stretch of the best. The writer does not jprofess to be able to ex- plain the anomaly. In general the roads in the mountains are better than those at low level, so one should plan his itineraries accordingly. The towns and cities of Italy are very well known to all well-read persons, but of the coun- tryside and its manners and customs this is not so true. Modern painters have limned the out- lines of San Marco at Venice and the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, on countless canvases, and pictures of the ' ^ Grand Canal ' ' and of * ' Vesu- vius in Eruption " are familiar enough; but paintings of the little hill towns, the wayside shrines, the olive and orange groves, and vine- yards, or a sketch of some quaint roadside al- bergo made whilst the automobile was tempo- rarily held up by a tire blow out, is quite as interesting and not so common. There is many a pine-clad slope, convent-crowned hill-top and castled crag in Italy as interesting as the more famous, historic sites. To appreciate Italy one must know it from all sides and in all its moods. The hurried itin- erary which comprises getting off the ship at Naples, doing the satellite resorts and " sights " which fringe Naples Bay, and so on to Rome, Florence and Venice, and thence 14 Italian Highways and Byways across Switzerland, France and home is too fre- quently a reality. The automobilist may have a better time of it if he will but be rational; but, for the hurried flight above outlined, he should leave his automobile at home and make the trip by *' train de luxe." It would be less costly and he would see quite as much of Italy — perhaps more. The leisurely automobile traveller who rolls gently in and out of hitherto unheard of little towns and villages is in an- other class and learns something of a beloved land and the life of the people that the hurried tourist will never suspect. The genuine vagabond traveller, even though he may be a lover of art and architecture, and knows just how bad Canova's lions really are, is quite as much concerned with the question as to why Italians drink wine red instead of white, or why the sunny Sicilian will do more quar- relling and less shovelling of dirt on a railroad or a canal job than his northern brother. It is interesting, too, to learn something — by stumbling upon it as we did — about Carrara marble, Leghorn hats and macaroni, which used to form the bulk of the cargoes of ships sailing from Italian ports to those of the United States. The Canovas, like the Botticellis, are always there — it is forbidden to export art treasures The Way About Italy 15 from Italy, so one can always return to confirm his suspicions — but the marble has found its competitor elsewhere, Leghorn hats are now made in far larger quantities in Philadelphia, and the macaroni sent out from Brooklyn in a month would keep all Italy from starvation for a year. The Italian picture and its framing is like no other, whether one commences with the snow- crested Alps of Piedmont and finishes with Bella Napoli and its dazzling blue, or whether he finishes with the Queen of the Adriatic and begins with Capri. It is always Italy. The same is not true of France. Provence might, at times, and in parts, be taken for Spain, Al- geria or Corsica; Britanny for Ireland and Lorraine for Germany. On the contrary Pied- mont, in Italy, is nothing at all like neighbour- ing Dauphine or Savoie, nor is Liguria like Nice. As for the disadvantages of Italian travel, they do undoubtedly exist, as well for the auto- mobilist as for him who travels by rail. In the first place, in spite of the picturesque charm of the Italian countryside, the roads are, as a whole, not by any means the equal of those of the rest of Europe — always, of course, except- ing Spain. They are far better indeed in Al- 16 Italian Highways and Byways geria and Tunisia. Hotel expenses are double what they are in France for the same sort of accommodation — for the automobilist at any rate. Garage accommodation is seldom, if ever, to be found in the hotel, at least not of a satis- factory kind, and when found costs anywhere from two to three, or even five, francs a night. Grasoline and oil are held at inflated figures, though no one seems to know who gets all the profit that comes from the fourteen to eighteen francs which the Italian garage keeper or grocer or druggist takes for the usual five gal- lons. With this information as a forewarning the stranger automobilist in Italy will meet with no undue surprises except that bad weather, if he happens to strike a spell, will considerably affect a journey that would otherwise have proved enjoyable. The climate of Italy is far from being uni- form. It is not all orange groves and palm trees. Throughout Piedmont and Lombardy snow and frost are the frequent accompani- ments of winter. On the other hand the sum- mers are hot and prolific in thunder storms. In Venetia, thanks to the influence of the Adri- atic, the climate is more equable. In the centre, Tuscany has a more nearly regular climate. The Way About Italy 17 From Naples south, one encounters almost a North African temperature, and the south wind of the desert, the sirocco here blows as it does in Algeria and Tunisia, though tempered some- what by having crossed the Mediterranean. There are a hundred and twenty-five varieties of mosquitoes in Italy, but with most of them their singing is worse than their stinging. The Pontine Marches have long been the worst breeding places for mosquitoes known to a suf- fering world. The mosquitoes of this region were supposed to have been transmitters of malaria, so one day some Italian physicians caught a good round batch of them and sent them up into a little village in the Apennines whose inhabitants had never known malaria. Straightway the whole population began to shake with the ague. That settled it, the mos- quito was a breeder of disease. The topography of Italy is of an extraordi- nary variety. The plains and wastes of Cala- bria are the very antitheses of that semi-cir- cular mountain rampart of the Alps which defines the northern frontier or of the great solid mass of the Apennines in Central Italy. Italy by no means covers the vast extent of territory that the stranger at first presupposes. From the northern frontier of Lombardy to the 18 Italian Highways and Byways toe of the Calabrian boot is considerable of a stretch to be sure, but for all that the actual area is quite restricted, when compared with that of other great continental powers. This is all the more reason for the automobilist to go comfortably along and not speed up at every town and village he comes to. The automobilist in Italy should make three vows before crossing the frontier. The first not to attempt to see everything; the second to review some of the things he has already seen or heard of; and the third to leave the beaten track at least once and launch out for himself and try to discover something that none of his friends have ever seen. The beaten track in Italy is not by any means an uninteresting itinerary, and there is no really unbeaten track any more. What one can do, and does, if he is imbued with the proper spirit of travel, is to cover as much little-trav- elled ground as his instincts prompt him. Be- tween Florence and Rome and between Rome and Naples there is quite as much to interest even the conventional traveller as in those cities themselves, if he only knows where to look for it and knows the purport of all the remarkable and frequent historical monuments continually springing into view. Obscure vil- The Way About Italy 19 lages, with good country inns where the arrival of foreigners is an event, are quite as likely to offer pleasurable sensations as those to be had at the six, eight or ten franc a day pension of the cities. The landscape motives for the artist, to be found in Italy, are the most varied of any coun- try on earth. It is a wide range indeed from the vineyard covered hillsides of Vicenza to the more grandiose country around Bologna, to the dead-water lagoons before Venice is reached, to the rocky coasts of Calabria, or to the chest- nut groves of ^tna and the Roman Campagna. The travelling American or Englishman is himself responsible for many of the inconve- niences to which he is subjected in Italy. The Italian may know how to read his own class distinctions, but all Americans are alike to him. Englishmen, as a rule, know the language better and they get on better — very little. The Frenchman and the German have very little trouble. They have less false pride than we. The American who comes to Italy in an auto- mobile represents untold wealth to the simple Italian ; those who drive in two horse carriages and stop at big hotels are classed in the same category. One may scarcely buy anything in a decent shop, or enter an ambitious looking 20 Italian Highways and Byways cafe, but that the hangers-on outside mark him for a millionaire, while, if he is so foolish as to fling handfuls of soldi to an indiscriminate crowd of ragamuffins from the balcony of his hotel, he will be pestered half to death as long as he stays in the neighbourhood. And he de- serves what he gets ! There is a way to coun- teract all this but each must learn it for him- self. There is no set formula. Beggars are importunate in certain places in Italy be-ridden of tourists, but after all no more so than elsewhere, and the travelling public, as much as anything else, conduces to the contin- ued existence of the plague. If Italy had to choose between suppressing beggars or fore- going the privilege of having strangers from overseas coming to view her monuments she would very soon choose the former. If the beggars could not make a living at their little game they too would stop of their own accord. The question resolves itself into a strictly per- sonal one. If it pleases you to throw pennies from your balcony, your carriage or your auto- mobile to a gathered assembly of curious, do so ! It is the chief means of proving, to many, that they are superior to ^ ' foreigners ! ' ' The little-travelled person does this everywhere, — on the terrace of Shepheard's at Cairo, on the The Way About Italy 21 boulevard cafe terraces at Algiers, from the deck of his ship at Port Said, from the tables even of the Cafe de la Paix ; — so why should he not do it at Naples, at Venice, at Rome? For no reason in the world, except that it's a nuisance to other travellers, decidedly an ob- jectionable practice to hotel, restaurant and shop keepers, and a cause of great annoyance and trouble to police and civic authorities. The following pages have been written and illus- trated as a truthful record of what two inde- fatigable automobile travellers have seen and felt. "We were dutifully ravished by the splendours of the Venetian palaces, and duly impressed by the massiveness of Sant' Angelo; but we were more pleased by far in coming unexpectedly upon the Castle of Fenis in the Valle d'Aoste, one of the finest of all feudal fortresses; or the Castle of Rimini sitting grim and sad in the Adriatic plain; or the Villa Cesarini outside of Perugia, which no one has ever reckoned as a wonder-work of architecture, but which all the same shows all of the best of Italian villa ele- ments. Our taste has been catholic, and the impres- sions set forth herein are our own. Others might have preferred to admire some splendid 22 Italian Highways and Byways church whilst we were speculating as to some great barbican gateway or watch tower. A saintly shrine might have for some more appeal than a hillside fortified Rocca; and again some convent nunnery might have a fascination that a rare old Eenaissance house, now turned into a macaroni factory, or a wine press, might not. CHAPTER n OP ITALIAN MEN AND MANNEES Italian politics have ever been a game of intrigue, and of the exploiting of personal am- bition. It was so in the days of the Popes; it is so in these days of premiers. The pilots of the ships of state have never had a more peril- ous passage to navigate than when manoeuvring in the waters of Italian politics. There is great and jealous rivalry between the cities of Italy. The Roman hates the Pied- montese and the Neapolitan and the Bolognese, and they all hate the Roman, — capital though Rome is of Church and State. The Evolution of Nationality has ever been an interesting subject to the stranger in a strange land. When the national spirit at last arose Italy had reached modern times and be- come modern instead of medisBval. National character is born of environment, but nation- alism is born only of unassailable unity, a thor- 23 24 Italian Highways and Byways ough absorbing of a love of country. The in- habitant of Rouen, the ancient Norman capital, m ITALY m ^It\lheXVlH Century^ is first, last and all the time a Norman, but he is also French; and the dweller in Rome or Milan is as much an Italian as the Neapolitan, though one and all jealously put the Cam- Of Italian Men and Manners 25 pagna, Piedmont, or the Kingdom of Naples before the Italian boot as a geographical di- vision. Sometimes the same idea is carried into politics, but not often. Political warfare in Italy is mostly confined to the unquenchable prejudices existing between the Quirinal and the Vatican, a sort of inter urban warfare, which has very little of the aspect of an inter- national question, except as some new-come diplomat disturbs the existing order of things. The Italian has a fondness for the Frenchman, and the French nation. At least the Italian politician has, or professes to have, when he says to his constituency: ^' I wish always for happy peaceful relations with France . . . but I don't forget Magenta and Solferino." The Italians of the north are the emigrating Italians, and make one of the best classes of labourers, when transplanted to a foreign soil. The steamship recruiting agents placard every little background village of Tuscany and Lom- bardy with the attractions of New York, Chi- cago, New Orleans and Buenos Ayres, and a hundred or so lire paid into the agent's coffers does the rest. Calabria and Sicily are less productive. The sunny Sicilian always wants to take his gaudily- painted farm cart with him, and as there is no 26 Italian Highways and Byways economic place for such a useless thing in America, he contents himself with a twenty- hour sea voyage to Tunisia where he can easily get back home again with his cart, if he doesn't like it. Every Italian peasant, man, woman and child, knows America. You may not pass the night at Barberino di Mugello, may not stop for a glass of wine at the Osteria on the Futa Pass, or for a repast at some classically named borgo on the Voie Emilia but that you will set up longings in the heart of the natives who stand around in shoals and gaze at your auto- mobile. They all have relatives in America, in New York, New Orleans or Cripple Creek, or per- haps Brazil or the Argentine, and, since money comes regularly once or twice a year, and since thousands of touring Americans climb about the rocks at Capri or drive fire-spouting auto- mobiles up through the Casentino, they know the new world as a land of dollars, and dream of the day when they will be able to pick them up in the streets paved with gold. That is a fairy-tale of America that still lives in Italy. Besides emigrating to foreign lands, the Ital- ian peasant moves about his own country to an Barberino di Mu2eUo Of Italian Men and Manners 27 astonishing extent, often working in the coun- try in summer, and in the towns the rest of the time as a labourer, or artisan. The typical Italian of the poorer class is of course the peasant of the countryside, for it is a notable fact that the labourer of the cities is as likely to be of one nationality as another. Different sections of Italy have each their distinct classes of country folk. There are landowners, ten- ants, others who work their land on shares, mere labourers and again simple farming folk who hire others to aid them in their work. The braccianti, or farm labourers, are worthy fellows and seemingly as intelligent workers as their class elsewhere. In Calabria they are probably less accomplished than in the region of the great areas of worked land in central Italy and the valley of the Po. The mezzadria system of working land on shares is found all over Italy. On a certain prearranged basis of working, the landlord and tenant divide the produce of the farm. There are, accordingly, no starving Italians, a living seemingly being assured the worker in the soil. In Ireland where it is rental pure and simple, and foreclosure and eviction if the rent is not promptly paid, the reverse is the case. Land- lordism of even the paternal kind — if there is 28 Italian Highways and Byways such a thing — is bad, but co-operation between landlord and tenant seems to work well in Italy. It probably would elsewhere. The average Italian small farm, or podere, worked only by the family, is a very unambi- tious affair, but it produces a livelihood. The house is nothing of the vine-clad Kent or Sur- rey order, and the principal apartment is the kitchen. One or two bedrooms complete its appointments, with a stone terrace in front of the door as it sits cosily backed up against some pleasant hillside. There are few gimcracks and dust-harbour- ing rubbish within, and what simple furniture there is is clean — above all the bed-linen. The stable is a building apart, and there is usually some sort of an out-house devoted to wine- pressing and the like. A kitchen garden and an orchard are near by, and farther afield the larger area of workable land. A thousand or twelve hundred lire a year of ready money passing through the hands of the head of the family will keep father, mother and two children going, besides which there is the " living," the major part of the eatables and drinkables coming off the property itself. The Italians are as cleanly in their mode of Of Italian Men and Manners 29 life as the people of any other nation in sim- ilar walks. Let us not be prejudiced against the Italian, but make some allowance for sur- rounding conditions. In the twelfth century in Italy the grossness and uncleanliness were incredible, and the manners laid down for be- haviour at table make us thankful that we have forks, pocket-handkerchiefs, soap and other blessings! But then, where were we in the twelfth century ! No branch of Italian farming is carried on on a very magnificent scale. In America the harvests are worked with mechanical reapers; in England it is done with sickle and flail or out of date patterns of American machines, but in Italy the peasant still works with the agri- cultural implements of Bible times, and works as hard to raise and harvest one bushel of wheat as a Kansas farmer does to grow, harvest and market six. The American farmer has become a financier; the Italian is still in the bread- winning stage. Five hundred labourers in Da- kota, of all nationalities under the sun, be it remarked, on the Dalrymple farm, cut more wheat than any five thousand peasants in Eu- rope. The peasant of Europe is chiefly in the stage of begging the Lord for his daily bread, but as soon as he gets out west in America, he 30 Italian Highways and Byways buys store things, automatic pianos and auto- mobile buggies. No wonder he emigrates! The Italian peasant doesn't live so badly as many think, though true it is that meat is rare enough on his table. He eats something more than a greasy rag and an olive, as the well-fed Briton would have us believe; and something more than macaroni, as the American fondly thinks. For one thing, he has his eternal min- estra, a good, thick soup of many things which Anglo-Saxons would hardly know how to turn into as wholesome and nourishing a broth; meat of any kind, always what the French call pate d'ltalie, and herbs of the field. The maca- roni, the olives, the cheese and the wine — always the wine — come after. Not bad that ; considerably better than corned beef and pie, and far, far better than boiled mutton and cauli- flower as a steady diet! Britons and Ameri- cans should wake up and learn something about gastronomy. The general expenses of middle-class domes- tic town life in Italy are lower than in most other countries, and the necessities for outlay are smaller. The Italian, even comfortably off in the working class, is less inclined to spend money on luxurious trivialities than most of us. He prefers to save or invest his surplus. Of Italian Men and Manners 31 One takes central Italy as tjrpical because, if it is not the most prosperous, considered from an industrial point of view, it is still the region endowed with the greatest natural wealth. By this is meant that the conditions of life are there the easiest and most comfortable, A middle class town family with an income of six or seven thousand lire spends very little on rent to begin with ; pretence based upon the size of the front door knob cuts no figure in the Italian code of pride. This family will live in a flat, not in a villini as separate town houses are called. One sixth of the family income will go for rent, and though the apartment may be bare and grim and lack actual luxury it will possess amplitude, ten or twelve rooms, and be near the centre of the town. This applies in the smaller cities of from twenty to fifty thou- sand inhabitants. With very little modification the same will apply in Rome or Naples, and, with perhaps none at all, at Florence. The all important servant question would seem to be more easily solved in Italy than elsewhere, but it is commonly the custom to treat Italian servants as one of the family — so far as certain intimacies and affections go — though, perhaps this of itself has some unan- ticipated objections. The Italian servants have 32 Italian Highways and Bjrways the reputation of becoming like feudal retain- ers; that is, they '' stay on the job," and from eight to twenty-five lire a month pays their wages. In reality they become almost personal or body servants, for in few Italian cities, and certainly not in Italian towns, are they obliged to occupy themselves with the slogging work of the London slavey, or the New York chore- woman. An Italian servant, be she young or old, however, has a seeming disregard for a uniform or badge of servitude, and is often rather sloppy in appearance. She is, for that, all the more picturesque since, if untidy, she is not apt to be loathsomely dirty in her apparel or her manner of working. The Italian of all ranks is content with two meals a day, as indeed we all ought to be. The continental morning coffee and roll, or more likely a sweet cake, is universal here, though sometimes the roll is omitted. Lunch is com- paratively a light meal, and dinner at six or seven is simply an amplified lunch. The chianti of Tuscany is the usual wine drunk at all meals, or a substitute for it less good, though all red wine in Italy seems to be good, cheap and pure. Adulteration is apparently too costly a process. Wine and biscuits take the place of afternoon tea — and with advantage. The wine com- 32 i lion of bt': ;; are those of Italy, and hence the ..... ■ ^ ,^ .;, not the tourist estab- r.diMi by even the second order id the Italian landlord shows - a client who would know ? — a nd be will usually die first demand, for fear round " and finally go else- j' !t', .i« ever}*where, tends to ifiuch depends on the indi- t ravel ler. A convincing nd knowledge on the part ir^'S, will speedily . ; ; IV Italian landlord. i>ossible and always ask the Chianti and Macaroni 43 price beforehand — even while your motor is still chugging away. That never fails to bring things to a just and proper relation. It is at Florence, and in the environs of Na- ples, of all the great tourist centres, that one finds the best fare at the most favourable pricee, but certainly at Rome and Venice, in the great hotels, it is far less attractive and a great deal dearer, delightful though it may be to so- journ in a palace of other days. The Italian wayside inns, or trattoria, are not all bad; neither are they all good. The average is better than it has usually been given the credit of being, and the automobile is doing much here, as in France, towards a general improvement. A dozen automobiles, with a score or more of people aboard, may come and go in a day to a little inn in some picturesque framing on a main road, say that between Si- ena and Rome via Orvieto, or to Finale Marina or Varazze in Liguria, to one carriage and pair with two persons and a driver. Accordingly, ,this means increased prosperity for the inn- holder, and he would be a dull wit indeed if he didn't see it. He does see it in France, with a very clear vision; in Italy, with a point of view very little dimmed ; in Switzerland, when the governmental authorities will let him; and 44 Italian Highways and Byways in England, when the country boniface comes anywhere near to being the intelligent person that his continental compeer finds himself. This is truth, plain, unvarnished truth, just as the writer has found it. Others may have their own ideas about the subject, but this is the rec- ord of one man's experiences, and presumably of some others. The chief disadvantages of the hotel of the small Italian town are its often crowded and incomplete accessories, and its proximity to a stable of braying donkeys, bellowing cows, or an industrious blacksmith who begins before sun-up to pound out the same metallic ring that his confreres do all over the world. There is nothing especially Italian about a blacksmith's shop in Italy. All blacksmith interiors are the same whether painted by " Old Crome," East- man Johnson or Jean Frangois Millet. The idiosyncrasies of the inns of the small Italian towns do not necessarily preclude their offering good wholesome fare to the traveller, and this in spite of the fact that not every one likes his salad with garlic in liberal doses or his macaroni smothered in oil. Each, however, is better than steak smothered in onions or potatoes fried in lard; any '^ hygienist " will tell you that. Chianti and Macaroni 45 The trouble with most foreigners in Italy, when they begin to talk about the rancid oil and other strange tasting native products, is that they have not previously known the real thing. Olive oil, real olive oil, tastes like — well, like olive oil. The other kinds, those we are mostly used to elsewhere, taste like cotton seed or peanut oil, which is probably what they are. One need not blame the Italian for this, though when he himself eats of it, or gives it you to eat, it is the genuine article. You may eat it or not, according as you may like it or not, but the Italian isn't trying to poison you or work off anything on your stomach half so bad as the rancid bacon one sometimes gets in Germany or the kippers of two seasons ago that appear all over England in the small towns. As before intimated, the chief trouble with the small hotels in Italy is their deficiencies, but the Touring Club Italiano in Italy, like the Touring Club de France in France, is doing heroic work in educating the country inn- keeper. Why should not some similar institu- tion do the same thing in England and Amer- ica? How many American country hotels, in towns of three or five thousand people, in say Georgia or Missouri, would get up, for the chance traveller who dropped in on them unex- 46 Italian Highways and Byways pectedly, a satisfactory meal? Not many, the writer fancies. There is, all over Europe, a desire on the part of the small or large hotel keeper to fur- nish meals out of hours, and often at no in- crease in price. The automobilist appreciates this, and has come to learn in Italy that the old Italian proverb '' cM tardi arriva mal al- loggia " is entirely a myth of the guide books of a couple of generations ago. A cold bird, a dish of macaroni, a salad and a flask of wine will try no inn-keeper's capabilities, even with no notice beforehand. The Italian would seem- ingly prefer to serve meals in this fashion than at the tavola rotonda, which is the Italian's way of referring to a table d'hote. If you have doubts as to your Italian Boniface treating you right as to price (after you have eaten of his fare) arrange things beforehand a prezzo fisso and you will be safe. As for wine, the cheapest is often as good as the best in the small towns, and is commonly included in the prezzo fisso, or should be. It's for you to see that you get it on that basis of reckoning. The padrona of an Italian country inn is very democratic; he believes in equality and fra- ternity, and whether you come in a sixty-horse Chianti and Macaroni 47 Mercedes or on donkey-back he sits you down in a room with a mixed crew of his country- men and pays no more attention to you than if you were one of them. That is, he doesn't exploit you as does the Swiss, he doesn't over- charge you, and he doesn't try to tempt your palate with poor imitation of the bacon and eggs of old England, or the tenderloins of America. He gives you simply the fare of the country and lets it go at that. Of Italian inns, it may be truly said the day has passed when the traveller wished he was a horse in order that he might eat their food; oats being good everywhere. The fare of the great Italian cities, at least that of the hotels frequented by tourists, has very little that is national about it. To find these one has to go elsewhere, to the small Ital- ian hotels in the large towns, along with the priests and the soldiers, or keep to the b3^ways. The polenta, or corn -meal bread, and the com- panatico, sardines, anchovies or herrings which are worked over into a paste and spread on it butter-wise, is everywhere found, and it is good. No osteria or trattoria by the roadside, but will give you this on short order if you do not seek anything more substantial. The minestra, or cabbage soup — it may not be cabbage at all, 48 Italian Highways and Byways but it looks it — a sort of " omnium gatherwm " soup — is warming and filling. Polenta, com- panatico, minestra and a salad, with fromag- gio to wind up with, and red wine to drink, ought not to cost more than a lira, or a lira and a half at the most wherever found. You won't want to continue the same fare for dinner the same day, perhaps, but it works well for lunch- eon. Pay no charges for attendance. No one does anyway, but tourists of convention. Let the huono mano to the waiter who serves you be the sole largess that you distribute, save to the man-of-all-work who brings you water for the thirsty maw of your automobile, or to the ami- able, sunshiny individual who lugs your bag- gage up and down to and from your room. This is quite enough, heaven knows, according to our democratic ideas. At any rate, pay only those who serve you, in Italy, as elsewhere, and don't merely tip to impress the waiter with your importance. He won't see it that way. The Italian other go, or hotel of the small town, is apt to be poorly and meanly furnished, even in what may be called '' public rooms,'* though, indeed, there are frequently no public rooms in many more or less pretentious Italian inns. If there ever is a salon or recejition room Chianti and Macaroni 49 it is furnished scantily with a rough, uncom- fortable sofa covered with a gunny sack, a small square of fibre carpeting (if indeed it has any covering whatever to its chilly tile or stone floor), and a few rush covered chairs. Usually there is no chimney, but there is always a stuffy lambrequined curtain at each window, almost obliterating any rays of light which may filter feebly through. In general the average recep- tion room of any Italian albergo (except those great joint-stock affairs of the large cities which adopt the word hotel) is an uncomfort- able and unwholesome apartment. One regrets to say this but it is so. Beds in Italian hotels are often *' queer," but they are surprisingly and comfortably clean, considering their antiquity. Every one who has observed the Italian in his home, in Italy or in some stranger land, even in a crowded New York tenement, knows that the Italian sets great store by his sleeping arrange- ments and their proper care. It is an ever-to- be-praised and emulated fact that the common people of continental Europe are more fre- quently ' ' luxurious ' ' with regard to their beds and bed linen than is commonly supposed. They may eat off of an oilcloth (which by some vague conjecture they call " American cloth ") 50 Italian Highways and Byways covered table, may dip their fingers deep in the polenta and throw bones on the tile or brick floor to the dogs and cats edging about their feet, but the draps of their beds are real, rough old linen, not the ninety-nine-cent-store kind of the complete house-furnishing establish- ments. The tiled floor of the average Italian house, and of the kitchens and dining room of many an Italian inn, is the ever at hand receptacle of much refuse food that elsewhere is relegated to the garbage barrel. Between meals, and bright and early in the morning, everything is flushed out with as generous a supply of water as is used by the Dutch housvrou in washing down the front steps. Result: the microbes don't rest behind, as they do on our own car- peted dining rooms, a despicable custom which is '' growing " with the hotel keepers of Eng- land and America. Another idol shattered ! What you don't find in the small Italian hotels are baths, nor in many large ones either. When you do find a haignoir in Europe (except those of the very latest fashion) it is a poor, shallow affair with a plug that pulls up to let the water out, but with no means of getting it in except to pour it in from buckets. This is a fault, sure enough, and it's not the Ameri- Chianti and Macaroni 51 can's idea of a bath tub at all, though it seems to suit well enough the Englishman en tour. France is, undoubtedly, the land of good cooks par excellence, but the Italian of all ranks is more of a gourmet than he is usually ac- counted. There may be some of his tribe that live on bread and cheese, but if he isn't out- rageously poor he usually eats well, devotes much time to the preparing and cooking of his meals, and considerably more to the eating of them. The Italian's cooking utensils are many and varied and above all picturesque, and his table ware invariably well conditioned and cleanly. Let this opinion (one man's only, again let it be remembered) be recorded as a protest against the universally condemned dirty Italian, who supposedly eats cats and dogs, as the Chinaman supposedly eats rats and mice. We are not above reproach ourselves; we eat mushrooms, frog legs and some other things besides which are certainly not cleanly or healthful. More than one Italian inn owes its present day prosperity to the travel by road which fre- quently stops before its doors. Twenty-five years ago, indeed much less, the vetturino de- posited his load of sentimental travellers, ac- companied perhaps by a courier, at many a 52 Italian Highways and Byways miserable wayside osteria, which fell far short of what it should be. To-day this has all changed for the better. Tourists of all nationalities and all ranks make Italy their playground to-day, as indeed they have for generations. There is no diminu- tion in their numbers. English minor digna- taries of the church jostle Pa and Ma and the girls from the Far West, and Germans, fiercely and wondrously clad, peer around corners and across lagoons with field glasses of a size and power suited to a Polar Expedition. Every- body is '' doing " everything, as though their very lives depended upon their absorbing as much as possible of local colour, and that as speedily as possible. It will all be down in the bill, and they mean to have what they are pay- ing for. This is one phase of Italian travel that is unlovely, but it is the phase that one sees in the great tourist hotels and in the chief tourist cities, not elsewhere. To best know Italian fare as also Italian manners and customs, one must avoid the res- taurants and trattoria asterisked by Baedeker and search others out for himself; they will most likely be as good, much cheaper, more characteristic of the country and one will not be eternally pestered to eat beefsteak, ham and Chianti and Macaroni 53 saurkraut, or to drink paleale or whiskey. In- stead, he will get macaroni in all shapes and sizes, and tomato sauce and cheese over every- thing, to say nothing of rice, artichokes and onions now and again, and oil, of the olive brand, in nearly every plat. If you don't like these things, of course, there is no need going where they are. Stick to the beefsteak and paleale then! Romantic, sentimental Italy is disappearing, the Italians are becoming prac- tical and matter of fact; it is only those with memories of Browning, Byron, Shelley, Leopold Robert and Boeklin that would have Italy sen- timental anyway, Maximilien Mission, a Protestant refugee from France in 1688, had something to say of the inns at Venice, which is interesting reading to-day. He says : — ' ' There are some good inns at Venice; the ' Louvre,' the ' White Lyon, ' the ' Arms of France ; ' the first enter- tains you for eight livres (lire) per day, the other two somewhat cheaper, but you must al- ways remember to bargain for everything that you have. A gondola costs something less than a livre (lire) an hour, or for a superior looking craft seven or eight livres a day." This is about the price of the Venetian water craft when hired to-day, two centuries and more 54 Italian Highways and Byways after. The hotel prices too are about what one pays to-day in the smaller inns of the cities and in those of the towns. All over Italy, even on the shores of the Bay of Naples, crowded as they are with tourists of all nationalities and all ranks, one finds isolated little Italian inns, backed up against a hillside or crowning some rocky promontory, where one may live in peace and plenitude for six or seven francs a day. And one is not condemned to eating only the national macaroni either. Frankly, the Neapolitan restaurateur often scruples as much to put macaroni before his stranger guests as does the Bavarian innkeeper to offer sau- sage at each repast. Some of us regret that this is so, but since macaroni in some form or other can always be had in Italy, and sausages in Germany, for the asking, no great inconve- nience is caused. Macaroni is the national dish of Italy, and very good it is too, though by no means does one have to live off it as many suppose. Not- withstanding, macaroni goes with Italy, as do crackers with cheese. There are more shapes and sizes of macaroni than there are beggars in Naples. The long, hollow pipe stem, known as Nea- politan, and the vermicellij which isn't hollow, Chianti and Macaroni 55 but is as long as a shoe string, are the leading varieties. Tiny grains, stars, letters of the al- phabet and extraordinary animals that never came out of any ark are also fashioned out of the same pasta, or again you get it in sheets as big as a good sized handkerchief, or in piping of a diameter of an inch, or more. The Romans kneaded their flour by means of a stone cylinder called a maccaro. The name macaroni is supposed to have been derived from this origin. Naples is the centre of the macaroni industry, but it is made all over the world. That made in Brooklyn would be as good as that made in Naples if it was made of Russian wheat instead of that from Dakota. As it is now made it is decidedly inferior to the Italian variety. By contrast, that made in Tunis is as good as the Naples variety. Russian wheat again ! A macaroni factory looks, from the outside, like a place devoted to making rope. Inside it feels like an inferno. It doesn't pay to get too well acquainted with the process of making macaroni. The flour paste is run out of little tubes, or rolled out by big rollers, or cut out by little dies, thus taking its desired forms. The long, stringy macaroni is taken outside and hung up 56 Italian Highways and Byways to dry like clothes on a line, except that it is hung on poles. The workmen are lightly and innocently clad, and the workshops themselves are kept at as high a temperature as the stoke- room of a liner. Whether this is really neces- sary or not, the writer does not know, but he feels sure that some genius will, some day, evolve a process which will do away with hand labour in the making of macaroni. It will be mixed by machinery, baked by electricity and loaded up on cars and steamships by the same power. The street macaroni merchants of Naples sell the long ropy kind to all comers, and at a very small price one can get a * ' filling ' ' meal. You get it served on a dish, but without knives, forks or chop sticks. You eat it with your fingers and your mouth. The meat is tough in Italy, often enough. There is no doubt about that. But it is usually a great deal better than it is given credit for being. The day is past, if it ever existed, when the Anglo-Saxon traveller was forced to quit Italy " because he could not live without good meat." This was the classic complaint of the innocents abroad of other days, whether they hailed from Kensington or Kalamazoo. They should never have left those superlatively ex- Chianti and Macaroni 57 cellent places. The food and Mazzini were the sole topics of travel talk once, but to-day it is more a question of whether one can get his rail- way connection at some hitherto unheard of little junction, or whether the road via this river valley or that mountain pass is as good as the main road. These are the things that really matter to the traveller, not whether he has got to sleep in a four poster in a bedroom with a tile or marble floor, or eat macaroni and ravioli when he might have — if he were at home — his beloved " ham " and blood-red beefsteaks. The Italian waiter is usually a sunny, con- fiding person, something after the style of the negro, and, like his dark-skinned brother, often incompetent beyond a certain point. You like him for what he is though, almost as good a thing in his line as the French gargon, in that he is obliging and a great deal better than the mutton-chopped, bewhiskered nonentity who shuffles about behind your chair in England with his expectant palm forever outstretched. The Italian cameriere, or waiter, takes a pride in his profession — as far as he knows it, and quite loses sight of its commercial possi- bilities in the technicalities of his craft, and his seeming desire only to please. Subito mo- mento is his ever ready phrase, though often 58 Italian Highways and Byways it seems as though he might have replied never. Seated in some roadside or seashore trat- toria one pounds on the bare table for the came- riere, orders another '' Torino," pays his reck- oning and is off again. Nothing extraordi- narily amusing has happened the while, but the mere lolling about on a terrace of a cafe over- looking the lapping Mediterranean waves at one's feet is one of the things that one comes to Italy for, and one is content for the nonce never to recur to palazzos, villas, cathedrals, or picture galleries. There have been too many travellers in past times — and they exist to-day — who do not seek to fill the gaps between a round of churches and art galleries, save to rush back to some palace hotel and eat the same kind of a dinner that they would in London, Paris or New York — a little worse cooked and served to be sure. It's the country and its people that impress one most in a land not his own. Why do so many omit these " attrac- tions? " The huona mano is everywhere in evidence in Italy, but the Italian himself seems to under- stand how to handle the question better than strangers. The Italian guest at a hotel is fairly lavish with the quantity of his tips, but each is Chianti and Macaroni 59 minute, and for a small service he pays a small fee. We who like to impress the waiter — for we all do, though we fancy we don't — will often pay as much to a waiter for bringing us a drink as the price of the drink. Not so the Italian; and that's the difference. Ten per cent, on the bill at a hotel is always a lavish fee, and five would be ample, though now and again the head waiter may look askance at his share. Follow the Italian's own system then, give everybody who serves you something, however little, and give to those only, and then their little jealousies between each other will take the odium off you — if you really care what a waiter thinks about you any- way, which of course you shouldn't. These little disbursements are everywhere present in Italy. One pays a franc to enter a museum, a picture gallery or a great library, and one tips his cabman as he does elsewhere, and a dozen francs spent in riding about on Venetian gondolas for a day incurs the implied liability for another two francs as well. CHAPTER IV ITALIAN KOADS AND ROUTES The cordiality of the Italian for the stranger within his gates is undeniable, but the auto- mobilist would appreciate this more if the Latin would keep his great highways (a tradition left by the Romans of old, the finest road-builders the world has ever known) in better condi- tion. Italy, next to France, is an ideal touring ground for the automobilist. The Italian pop- ulation everywhere seems to understand the tourist and his general wants and, above all, his motive for coming thither, and whether one journeys by the railway, by automobile or by the more humble bicycle, he finds a genial re- ception everywhere, though coupled with it is always an abounding curiosity which is at times annoying. The native is lenient with you and painstaking to the extreme if you do not speak his language, and will struggle with lean scraps 60 Italian Roads and Routes 61 of English, French and German in his effort to understand your wants. Admirably surveyed and usually very well graded, some of the most important of the north and south thoroughfares in Italy have been lately so sadly neglected that the briefest spell of bad weather makes them all but impassable. There is one stretch between Bologna and Imola of thirty-two kilometres, straightaway and perfectly flat. It is a good road or a bad road, according as one sees it after six weeks of good weather or after a ten days' rainy spell. It is at once the best and worst of its kind, but it is badly kept up and for that reason may be taken as a representative Italian road. The mountain roads up back of the lake region and over the Alpine passes, in time of snow and ice and rain — if they are not actually buried under — are thoroughly good roads. They are built on different lines. Road-building is a na- tional affair in Italy as it is in France, but the central power does not ramify its forces in all directions as it does across the border. There is only one kind of road-building worth taking into consideration, and that is national road- building. It is not enough that Massachusetts should build good roads and have them degen- erate into mere wagon tracks when they get to 62 Italian Highways and Byways the State border, or that the good roads of Mid- dlesex should become mere sloughs as soon as they come within the domain of the London County Council. Italy is slack and incompetent with regard to her road-building, but England and America are considerably worse at the present writing. Entering Italy by the Eiviera gateway one leaves the good roads of France behind him at Menton and, between Grimaldi, where he passes the Italian dogana and its formalities, and Ven- timiglia, or at least San Remo, twenty-five kilo- metres away, punctures his tires one, three or five times over a kilometre stretch of unrolled stone bristling with flints, whereas in France a side path would have been left on which the automobilist might pass comfortably. It isn't the Italian's inability to handle the good roads question as successfully as the French; it is his woefully incompetent, care- less, unthinking way of doing things. This is not saying that good roads do not exist in Italy. Far from it. But the good road in Italy sud- denly descends into a bad road for a dozen kilometres and as abruptly becomes a good road again, and this without apparent reason. Lack of unity of purpose on the part of individual road-building bodies is what does it. Italian Roads and Eoutes 63 Eoad-buildiug tlirougliout Italy never rose to the height that it did in France. The Romans were great exploiters beyond the frontiers and often left things at home to shuffle along as best they might whilst their greatest energies were spent abroad. One well defined Roman road of . antiquity (aside from the tracings of the great trunk lines like the Appian or ^milian Ways) is well known to all automobilists entering Naples via Posilippo. It runs through a tunnel, alongside a hooting, puffing tram and loose-wheeled iron- tired carts all in a deafening uproar. This marvellous tunnelled road by the sea, with glimpses of daylight now and then, but mostly as dark as the cavern through which flowed the Styx, is the legitimate successor of an engineering work of the time of Augustus. In Nero 's reign, Seneca, the historian, wrote of it as a narrow, gloomy pass, and mediaeval su- perstition claimed it as the work of necro- mancy, since the hand of man never could have achieved it. The foundation of the roadway is well authenticated by history however. In 1442 Alphonso I, the Spaniard, widened and height- ened the gallery, and Don Pedro of Toledo a century later paved it with good solid blocks of granite which were renewed again by Charles 64 Italian Highways and Byways III in 1754. Here is a good road that has en- dured for centuries. We should do as well to-day. There are, of course, countless other short lengths of highway, coming down from historic times, left in Italy, but the Roman viae with which we have become familiar in the classical geographies and histories of our schooldays are now replaced by modern thoroughfares which, however, in many cases, follow, or frequently cut in on, the old itineraries. Of these old Ro- man Ways that most readily traced, and of the greatest possible interest to the automobilist who would do something a little different from what his fellows have done, is the Via Emilia. With Bologna as its central station, the an- cient Via Emilia, begun by the Consul Marcus j^milius Lepidus, continues towards Cisalpine Gaul the Via Flamina leading out from Rome. It is a delightfully varied itinerary that one covers in following up this old Roman road from Placentia (Piacenza) to Ariminum (Ri- mini), and should indeed be followed leisurely from end to end if one would experience some- thing of the spirit of olden times, which one can hardly do if travelling by schedule and stop- ping only at the places lettered large on the maps. Italian Roads and Routes 65 The following are the ancient and modern place-names on this itinerary : Placentia (Piacenza) Florentia (Firenzuola) Fidentia (Borgo S. Donnino) Parma (Parma) Tannetum (Taneto) Regium Lepidi (Reggio) Mutina (Modena) Forum Gallorum (near Castel Franco) Bononia (Bologna) Claterna (Quaderna) Forum Cornelii (Imola) Faventia (Faenza) Forum Livii (Forli) Forum Populii (Forlimpopoli) Caesena (Cesena) Ad Confluentes (near Savignamo) Ariminum (Rimini) Connecting with the Via Emilia another important Roman road ran from the valley of the Casentino across the Apennines to Piacenza. It was the route traced by a part of the itin- erary of Dante in the " Divina Commedia," and as such it is a historic highway with which the least sentimentally inclined might be glad to make acquaintance. Another itinerary, perhaps better known to the automobilist, is that which follows the Li- gurian coast from Nice to Spezia, continuing thence to Rome by the Via Aurelia. This coast 66 Italian Highways and Byways road of Liguria passed through Nice to Luna on the Gulf of Spezia, the towns en route being as follows : — Varium fl. Nicae Cemenelium Portus Herculis Monoeci Albium Intermelium Albium Ingaunum Vada Sabbata Genua Portus Delphini TiguUia Segesta Portus Veneris Portus Erici The Var (river) Nice Cimiez, back of Nice Monaco Ventimiglia Albenga Vado, near Savona Genoa Portofino Tregesco, near Sestri Sestri Porto Venere Lerici The chief of these great Roman roadways of old whose itineraries can be traced to-day are : Via iEmilia Via iEmelia-Scauri Via Ameria Via Appia Via Aquilla Via Ardentina Via Aurelia Via Cassia Via Flaminia Via Latina Via Laurentia Via Ostiensis The most celebrated of N. Italy- Built long after the original Via Amelia From Rome to Amelia Of which the main trunk line ran from Rome to Capua From Rome to Pisa The Great North Road of the Romans One of the most ancient of Roman roads From Rome to Ostia Italian Roads and Routes 67 Via Salaria Leading from Rome through the valley of the Tiber Via Valeria From the Tiber to the Adriatic at Ancona These ancient Roman roads were at their best in Campania and Etruria. Campania was trav- ersed by the Appian Way, the greatest highway of the Romans, though indeed its original con- struction by Appius Claudius only extended to Capua. The great highroads proceeding from Rome crossed Etruria almost to the full ex- tent ; the Via Aurelia, from Rome to Pisa and Luna ; the Via Cassia and the Via Clodia. The great Roman roads were marked with division stones or bornes every thousand paces, practically a kilometre and a half, a little more than our own mile. These mile-stones of Ro- man times, many of which are still above ground {milliarii lapides), were sometimes round and sometimes square, and were entirely bare of capitals, being mere stone posts usually standing on a squared base of a somewhat larger area. A graven inscription bore in Latin the name of the Consul or Emperor under whom each stone was set up and a numerical indication as well. Caius Gracchus, away back in the second cen- 68 Italian Highways and Byways tury before Christ, was the inventor of these aids to travel. The automobilist appreciates the development of this accessory next to good roads themselves, and if he stops to think a minute he will see that the old Romans were the inventors of many things which he fondly thinks are modern. The automobilist in Italy has, it will be in- ferred, cause to regret the absence of the fine roads of France once and again, and he will regret it whenever he wallows into a six inch deep rut and finds himself not able to pull up or out, whilst the drivers of ten yoke ox-teams, drawing a block of Carrara marble as big as a house, call down the imprecations of all the saints in the calendar on his head. It's not the automobilist 's fault, such an occurrence, nor the ox-driver's either; but for fifty kilometres after leaving Spezia, and until Lucca and Livorno are reached, this is what may happen every half hour, and you have no recourse except to ac- cept the situation with fortitude and revile the administration for allowing a roadway to wear down to such a state, or for not providing a parallel thoroughfare so as to divide the dif- ferent classes of traffic. There is no such dis- gracefully used and kept highway in Europe as this stretch between Spezia and Lucca, and one Italian Roads and Routes 69 must of necessity pass over it going from Genoa to Pisa unless he strikes inland through the mountainous country just beyond Spezia, by the Strada di Reggio for a detour of a hundred kilometres or more, coming back to the sea level road at Lucca. Throughout the peninsula the inland roads are better as to surface than those by the coast, though by no means are they more attractive to the tourist by road. This is best exemplified by a comparison of the inland and shore roads, each of them more or less direct, between Flor- ence and Rome. The great Strada di grande Communicazione from Florence to Rome (something less than three hundred kilometres all told, a mere mouth- ful for a modern automobile) runs straight through the heart of old Siena, entering the city by the Porta Camollia and leaving by the Porta Romana, two kilometres of treacherous, narrow thoroughfare, though readily enough traced because it is in a bee-line. The details are here given as being typical of what the automobilist may expect to find in the smaller Italian cities. There are, in Italy, none of those unexpected right-angle turns that one comes upon so often in French towns, at least not so many of them, and there are no cork-screw 70 Italian Highways and Byways thoroughfares though many have the " rain- bow curve," to borrow Mark Twain's expres- sion. On through Chiusi, Orvieto and Viterbo runs the highroad direct to the gates of Rome, for the most part a fair road, but rising and falling from one level to another in trying fashion to one who would set a steady pace. It is with respect to the grades on Italian roads, too, that one remarks a falling off from French standards. North of Florence, in the valley of the Mugello, we, having left the well- worn roads in search of something out of the common, found a bit of seventeen per cent, grade. This was negotiated readily enough, since it was of brief extent, but another rise of twenty-five per cent, (it looked forty-five from the cushions of a low-hung car) followed and on this we could do nothing. Fortunately there was a way around, as there usually is in Eu- rope, so nothing was lost but time, and we bene- fited by the acquisition of some knowledge con- cerning various things which we did not before possess. And we were content, for that was what we came for anyway. From Florence south, by the less direct road via Arezzo, Perugia and Terni, there is another surprisingly sudden rise but likewise brief. It Italian Roads and Routes 71 is on this same road that one remarks from a great distance the towers of Spoleto piercing the sky at a seemingly enormous height, while the background mountain road over the Passo della Somma rises six hundred and thirty me- tres and tries the courage of every automobilist passing this way. To achieve many of these Italian hill-towns one does not often rise abruptly but rather al- most imperceptibly, but here, in ten kilometres, say half a dozen miles, the Strada di grande Communicazione rises a thousand feet, and that is considerable for a road supposedly laid out by military strategists. As a contrast to these hilly, switch-back roads running inland from the north to the south may be compared that running from Rome to Na- ples, not the route usually followed via Val- lombrosa and Frosinone, but that via Velletri, Terracina and Gaeta. Here the highroad is nearly flat, though truth to tell of none too good surface, all the way to Naples. Practically it is as good a road as that which runs inland and offers to any who choose to pass that way cer- tain delights that most other travellers in Italy know not of. At Cisterna di Roma, forty-eight kilometres from Rome, one is in the midst of the Pontine 72 Italian Highways and Byways Marshes it is true, and it is also more or less of a marvel that a decent road could have been built here at all. From this point of view it is interesting to the automobilist who has a hobby of studying the road-building systems of the countries through which he travels. Of the Pontine Marshes themselves it is certain that they are not salubrious, and malaria is most prevalent near them. Appius Claudius, in 312 B. c, tried to drain the marsh and so did Caesar, Augustus and Theodoric after him, and the Popes Boniface VIII, Martinus V and Sixtus V, but the morass is still there in spite of the fact that a company calling itself Ufficio della Bonifi- cazione delle Paludi Pontine is to-day working continuously at the same problem. Putting these various classes of Italian roads aside for the moment there remains but one other variety to consider, that of the mountain roads of the high Alpine valleys and those crossing the Oberland and, further east, those in communication with the Austrian Tyrol. On the west these converge on Milan and Turin via the region of the lakes and the valleys of Aosta and Susa, and in the centre and east give communication from Brescia, Verona and Ven- ice with West Germany and Austria. These are the best planned and best kept PORTOCSUiRO lA , mm «»"' •tS^siii Italian Roads and Routes 73 roads in Italy, take them by and large. The most celebrated are those leading from Turin into France; via Susa and the Col du Mont Genevre to Briangon, and via Mont Cenis to Modane and Grenoble; via the Val d'Aosta and the Petit Saint Bernard to Albertville in France, or via the Grand Saint Bernard to Switzerland. Just north of the Lago di Maggiore, accessi- ble either from Como or from Milan direct via Arena, is the famous road over the Simplon Pass, at an elevation of 2,008 metres above the sea. By this road, the best road in all Italy, without question, one enters or leaves the king- dom by the gateway of Domodossola. On entering Italy by this route one passes the last rock-cut gallery near Crevola and, by a high-built viaduct, thirty metres or more above the bed of the river, it crosses the Di- veria. Soon the vineyards and all the signs of the insect life of the southland meet the eye, Italy has at last been reached, no more eternal snow and ice, no more peaked rooftops, the whole region now flattens out into the Lombard plain. Domodossola has all the ear-marks of the Italian's manner of life and building of houses, albeit that the town itself has no splen- did monuments. 74 Italian Highways and Byways Another entrance to the Italian lake region through the mountain barrier beyond is by the road over the San Bernardino Pass and Bellin- zona. The San Bernardino Pass is not to be confounded with tliose of the Grand and Petit Saint Bernard. The present roadway dates from 1822, when it was built by the engineer Pocobelle, at the joint expense of the Sardinian and Grisons governments. Its chief object was to connect Genoa and Turin directly with Switz- erland and west Germany. The pass crosses the Rheinwald at a height of 2,063 metres. This passage across the Alps was known to the ancient Romans, and down to the fifteenth century it was known as the Vogelberg. A mis- sion brother, Bernardino of Siena, preaching the gospel in the high valleys, erected a chapel here which gave the pass the name which it bears to-day. In part the road tunnels through the hillsides, in part runs along a shelf beside the precipice, and here and there crosses a mountain torrent by some massive bridge of masonry. Like most of the mountain roads leading into Italy from Switzerland and Germany the south- em slope descends more abruptly than that ou the north. The coach driver may trot his horses down hill, though, so well has the descent been Italian Roads and Routes 75 engineered, and the automobilist may rush things with considerably more safety here than on the better known routes. Another celebrated gateway into Italy is that over the Splugen Pass from Coire (in Italian nomenclature: Colmo dell' Or so). It was com- pleted by the Austrian government in 1823 to compete with the new-made road a few kilome- tres to the west over the Bernardino which fa- voured Switzerland and Germany and took no consideration whatever of the interests of Aus- tria. The summit of the Splugen Pass is 2,117 metres above sea-level and on a narrow ridge near by runs for six kilometres the boundary between Switzerland and Italy. Entering Italy by the Splugen Pass one finds the dog ana a dull, ugly group of buildings just below the first series of facets which drop down from the crest. It is as lonesome and gloomy a place of residence as one can possibly con- ceive as existing on the earth's surface. One forgets entirely that it is very nearly the heart of civilized Europe; there is nothing within view to suggest it in the least, not a scrap of vegetation, not a silvery streak of water, not a habitation even that might not be as appropri- ately set upon a shelf of rock by the side of Hecla. 76 Italian Highways and Byways The French army under Marechal Macdonald crossed the pass in 1800 when but a mere trail existed, but with a loss of a hundred men and as many horses. Of late years the passage of the Col has been rendered the easier by the cutting of two long galleries. Another engineering work of note is met a little farther on in the Gorge of San Giacomo, a work completed by Carlo Donegani in the reign of the Emperor Francis II, and, just beyond, the boiling torrent of the Liro is spanned by a daring bridge of masonry. Road signs in Italy are not as good or as fre- quent as one finds in France, but where they exist they are at least serviceable. The Roman milestone of old has ceased to serve its pur- pose, though solitary examples still exist, and their place is taken by the governmental '' bornes " and the placards posted at the in- itiation of the Touring Club and various auto- mobile organizations in certain parts, particu- larly in the north. The signboards of the Touring Club Italiano are distinctly good as far as they go, but they are infrequent. All hotels and garages affiliated with the club hang out a characteristic and ever welcome sign, and there one is sure of finding the best Italian Roads and Routes 77 welcome and the best accommodations for man and his modern beast of burden, the mechanical horses of iron and bronze harnessed to his luxu- rious tonneau or limousine. With regard to road maps for Italy there exist certain governmental maps like those of the Ordnance Survey in England or of the Etat Major in France, but they are practically use- less for the automobilist, and are only interest- ing from a topographic sense. Taride, the French map publisher, issues a cheap series of Italian road maps, covering the entire peninsula in three sheets printed in three colours, with main roads marked plainly in red. They are easily read and clear and have the advantage of being cheap, the three sheets cost- ing but a franc each, but one suspects that they were not composed entirely from first hand, well-authenticated, recent sources of informa- 78 Italian Highways and Byways tion. Little discrepancies such as just where a railway crosses a road, etc., etc., are frequently to be noted. This is perhaps a small matter, but the genuine vagabond tourist, whether he is plodding along on foot or rolling smoothly on his five inch pneumatics, likes to know his exact whereabouts at every step of the way. On the whole the Italian " Taride " maps are fairly satisfactory, and they are much more easily read than the more elaborate series in fifty-six sheets on a scale of 1-1,250,000 issued by the Touring Club Italiano, or the thirty-five sheets of the Carta Stradale d 'Italia Sistema Becherel-Marieni, which by reason of the num- ber of sheets alone are in no way as convenient as the three sheet map. The Becherel-Marieni maps are, however, beautifully printed and have a system of mark- ing localities where one finds supplies of gaso- line, a mechanician or a garage which is very useful to the automobilist, besides giving warn- ing of all hills and, with some attempt at pre- cision, also marking the good, mediocre and bad roads. This is important but, as the writer has so often found that a good road of yesterday has become a bad road of to-day, and will be perhaps a worse one to-morrow, he realizes that the fluctuating quality of Italian roads prevents Italian Roads and Routes 79 ■'//'///.. ///.M,, /,/:^!/'.'/.,//y//., (K » 2] 23 24 29 M 27 n 39 3t » 32 33 U 35 36 3? 38 39 <|) a 41 n a u n a a a « so ii s} m m ss s« s) m s9 to i%. e< 82 83 M U 86 87 wi 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 91 98 99 (Oft PROFILE ROSJD 3W^P BOLOGNA- FLORENCE Px.t01_l« 80 Italian Highways and Byways any genius of a map-maker from doing his best. These maps in seven colours are perhaps the best works of their kind in Italy, at least rank- ing with the Touring Club maps, and completely cover the country, whereas the other series is not as yet wholly complete. Membership in the great Touring Club Itali- ano is almost a necessity for one who would enjoy his Italian tour to the full. The " An- nuario," giving information as to hotels and garages and miniature plans of all the cities and principal towns — presented gratis to members — is all but indispensable, while the three pocket volumes entitled Strade di Grande Com- municazione, with the kilometric distances be- tween all Italian places except the merest ham- lets and the profile elevations (miniature maps, hundreds of them) of the great highways are a boon and a blessing to one who would know the easiest and least hilly road between two points. The accompanying diagram explains this better than words. CHAPTER V IN LIGUKIA The most ravishingly beautiful entrance into Italy is by the road along the Mediterranean shore. The French Riviera and its gilded pleasures, its great hotels, its chic resorts and its entrancing combination of seascape and landscape are known to all classes of travellers, but at Menton, almost on the frontier, one is within arm's reach of things Italian, where life is less feverish, in strong contrast to the French atmosphere which envelops everything to the west of the great white triangle painted on the cliff above the Pont Saint Louis and marking the boundary between the two great Latin coun- tries. The '' Route Internationale," leading from France to Italy, crosses a deep ravine by the Pont Saint Louis with the railway running close beside. Not so very long ago there was a unity of speech and manners among the inhabitants of 81 82 Italian Highways and Byways Menton and the neighbouring Italian towns of Grimaldi, Mortola and Ventimiglia, but little by- little the Ravine of Saint Louis has become a hostile frontier, where the custom house officials of France and Italy regard each other, if not as enemies, at least as aliens. The two peoples are, however, of the same race and have the same historic traditions. It was just here, on passing the frontier, that we asked a deep-eyed, sun-burnt young girl of eighteen or twenty if she was an Italian, think- ing perhaps she might be a Nigoise, who, among the world's beautiful women, occupy a very high place. She replied in French-Italian: '' Oui, aussi bien Venitienne! " This was strange, for most Venetians, since Titian set the style for them, have been blondes. A chateau of the Grimaldi family crowns the porphyry height just to the eastward of the Italian frontier, and below is the Italian Do- gana, where the automobilist and other travel- lers by road go through the formalities made necessary by governmental red tape. Red tape is all right in the right place, but it should be cut off in proper lengths, so that officials need not be obliged to quibble over a few soldi while individuals lose a dozen francs or more in val- uable time. In Liguria 83 This matter of customs formalities at Gri- maldi is only an incident. The automobilist's troubles really commence at a little shack in Menton, on French soil, just before the Pont Saint Louis is crossed. Here he has his " pas- savant " made out, an official taking a lot of valuable time to decide whether the cushions of your automobile are red, orange or brown. You stick out for orange because they were that colour when you bought the outfit, but the rep- resentative of the law sticks out too — he for red. The result is, you compromise on brown, and hope that the other customs guardian on duty at the frontier post by which you will enter France again will be blessed with the same sense of colour-blindness as was his fellow of Menton. Once this formality gone through — and you pay only two sous for the documents — you have no trouble getting back into France again by whichever frontier town you pass. There are no duties to pay and no disputes, so really one cannot complain. It is for his bene- fit anyway that the ^' passavant " describing the peculiarities of automobile is issued. At the Grimaldi Dogana on entering Italy you are made to pay duty on what little gasoline you may have in your tanks, even for as little as a litre. Presumably you pass your machine 84 Italian Highways and Byways through the Italian customs with one of the " triptyches " issued by any of the great auto- mobile clubs or touring associations, as other- wise you have to put down gold, and a thousand or fifteen hundred francs in gold one does not usually carry around loose in his pocket. We passed through readily enough, but a poor non- French, non-Italian speaking American who followed in our wheel-tracks had not made his preparations beforehand, and French bank- notes didn't look good enough to the Italian customs official, and a day was lost accordingly while the poor unfortunate rolled back down hill to Menton and sought to turn the notes into gold. The banks having just closed he was not able to do this as readily as he thought he might, and it was well on after sunrise that he followed our trail — and never caught up with us all the way to Grosetto. Mortola is the first town of note that one passes on entering Italian soil, but beyond its aspect, so alien to that of the small town in France, it is not worthy of remark. Ventimiglia comes next, where the traveller by rail goes through equally annoying customs formalities to those experienced by the travel- ler by road at Grimaldi. These are not apt to be so costly, as the customs officials take him In Liguria 85 at his word, graciously chalk his luggage and pass him on. The Guardie-Finanze, or customs officer, of Italy is a genteel looking young per- son with a bowler hat, topped with a feather cockade. He is even as gay and picturesque as the '^ carabinieri reales," though he is a mere plebeian among the noblesse of soldier- dom. The Vintimille of the French, or the Venti- miglia of the Italians, was the ancient Intemil- ium of the Romans. To-day, on the left bank of the Roja, is a new city made up of the attri- butes of a great railway and frontier station and a numerous assemblage of alberghi, hotels, restaurants and the like. Ventimiglia is not unlovely, neither is it lovely in a picturesque romantic sense. Its site is charming, on the banks of the tumbling Roja at the base of the Alps of Piedmont, just where they plunge, from a height of a thousand or twelve hundred metres, down into the lapping Mediterranean waves. Ventimiglia is, practically, the frontier town of Piedmont, and it was fought for by all the warring houses of these parts in the middle ages. The Genoese held it for a time, then the Counts of Provence and the Duke of Savoy. It was a game of give-and-take all round, and in 86 Italian Highways and Byways the melee most of the town's mediaeval monu- ments have disappeared. Across the Nervia, to the north, is Monte Appio, one of the chief spurs of the Maritime Alps in Italy. On a jutting crag of rock, in plain view from the town below, is an ancient Roman castellum. Two fragmentary towers alone remain, and as a ruin, even, it is beneath consideration. One only notices it in passing and recalls the more magnificent Tower of Au- gustus at La Turbie, high above Monte Carlo's rock, and still in plain view of Ventimiglia — with a good glass. A fine relic of the Dorias — that great family of great Genoese — is still to be seen in pictur- esque ruin at Dolce Acqua, a few miles further up the valley of the torrent. Bordighera is the first of the Italian Riviera winter stations for invalids. That describes it perfectly. Its surroundings are delightful enough, but there is little that is attractive about the place itself. The automobilist will have no trouble finding his way through the town if he keeps straight on but drives care- fully and avoids the invalids and baby car- riages. It was a sailor of Bordighera who gave the order to ' ' wet the ropes " — an old sea-faring In Liguria 87 trick, known the world over — when the obe- lisk on the Piazza san Pietro at Rome, erected by Sixte-Quint, was tottering on its base. In return for the service he asked the favour of the Pope that his native town should have the honour of supplying the churches of Rome with their greenery on Palm Sunday. The supply- ing of palm branches and the exploiting of semi- invalids are the chief industries of Bordighera. San Remo is very like Bordighera, except that it is an improvement on it. The quarter where the great hotels are found looks like all towns of its class, but the old town with its narrow canyon-like streets, its buttressed roofs and walls, still breathes of the mediaeval spirit. It is as crowded a quarter, where dwell men, women and children, — seemingly children mostly, — as can be found east of Grand, Canal or Hester Streets, in down-town New York. The automobile tourist will not care much for San Remo unless he is hungry, in which case the Hotel de Paris will cater for him a little better than any other of the town's resort hotels. The road continues close beside the sea, as it has since Frejus in the Var was passed, sweeping around bold promontories on a shelf of rock, tunnelling through some mountain 88 Italian Highways and Byways spur, dipping down to sea-level here and rising three or five hundred metres ten kilometres further on. This delightfully disposed road by the sea may well be reviled by the automobilist because of the fact that every half dozen kilometres or so it crosses the railway at the same level. These level crossings are about as dangerous as the American variety; in a way more so. They are barred simply by a great swinging tree-trunk, which, of all things, swings outwards and across the road when not in use. Even when closed this bar is so placed that an auto- mobile at speed could well enough slip beneath it, and the passengers who were not thrown out and killed by this operation surely would be by the train which would probably come along be- fore they could pick themselves up. These railway barriers are almost always closed, whether a train is due or not, and it is commonly said that they are only opened for the automobilist on the payment of a few soldi. This, the writer knows to be calumny. It is conceivable that the circumstance has been met with, and it is conceivable that, in many more instances, stranger automobilists have scat- tered coin in their wake which led to the devel- opment of the practice, but all the same one In Liguria 89 need not, should not, in fact, countenance any such practice of blackmail. The mere fact that these obstructions are there is enough of a pen- ance for the automobilist, who in ten hours of running will certainly lose one or two hours waiting for the gates to be opened. These Italian coast line vistas are quite the most savagely beautiful of any along the Med- iterranean. We rave over the strip dominated by La Turbie and Monte Carlo's rock, and over the Corniche d'Or of the Esterel in France, but really there is nothing quite so primitive and unspoiled in its beauty as this less-known itin- erary. The background mountains rise, grim, behind, and beneath. At the bottom of the cliff, a hundred metres below the road on which you ride, break the soapy waves of the sea. Gulls circle about uttering their shrill cries, an eagle soars above, and far below a fisherman pushes lazily at his oar in the conventional stand-up Mediterranean fashion, or a red-brown latteen- rigged fishing boat darts in or out of some half- hidden bay or calanque. The whole poetic en- semble is hard to beat, and yet this part of the average Italian journey is usually rolled off in express trains, with never a stop between the frontier and Genoa, most of the time passing through the fifty rock-cut tunnels which allow 90 Italian Highways and Byways tlie railway access to these parts. To see this wonderful strip of coast line at its best it must i be seen from the highroad. At Arma, as the road runs along at the water's very edge, is an old square donjon tower, reminding one of those great keeps of England and of Foulque's Nerra in Normandy. Its history is lost in oblivion, but it is a land- mark to be noted. Porto Maurizio is the very ideal of a small Mediterranean sea-port. It is a hill-top town too, in that it crowns a promontory jutting sea- wards, forming a sheltering harbour for its busy coming and going of small-fry shipping. Olive oil and a sweet white wine, like that of Cyprus, grown on the hillsides roundabout, form the chief of the merchandise sent out from the little port ; but the whole town bears a pros- perous well-kept air that makes one regret that it had not a battery of " sights," in order that one might linger a while in so pleasant a place. Porto Maurizio 's church is a remarkably vast and handsome building. Oneglia, the birthplace of the great Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria, lies just beyond. Wine in skins, hung up on rafters to mellow, seems to be Oneglia 's substitute for wine cellars, but otherwise the hurried traveller at Oneglia re- In Liguria 91 marks nothing but that it is a " resort " with big hotels and big gardens and many guests lolling about killing time. The older part of the town, with the wine skins, is decidedly the most interesting feature. At Marina-Andora is the ruin of an old castle with a ghostly legend to it to add an attrac- tion it might not otherwise have. A Papal Nuncio was one day murdered here within its walls and '' in extremis " the prelate called down curses upon the surrounding country, praying that it might wither and dry up. It must have been an efficacious imprecation as the country roundabout looks like a desert waste. Not an olive nor an orange grove is in sight and only a few scrubby vineyards dot the land- scape. At the Capo delle Melle, a dozen kilometres beyond, it all changes and the land blossoms again, though truth to tell both the wine and olive products have the reputation of falling off in quality as one goes further east. Alassio is a now well-developed Italian sea- side resort. The Italians and the Germans fill it to overflowing at all seasons of the year, and prices are mounting skywards with a rapidity which would do credit to Monte Carlo itself. There is a considerable fishing and coastwise 92 Italian Highways and Byways trade at Alassio which along the quais endows it with a certain picturesqueness, and the chief hotel is quartered in a seventeenth century palazzo, formerly belonging to the Marchese Durante. Alassio took its name from Alassia, a daughter of Otho the Great, who, fleeing from the paternal roof, came here with her lover long years ago. This was the beginning of the development of Alassio as a Mediterranean re- sort. And the Germans have been coming in increasing numbers ever since. Off shore is the isle of Gallinaria. It has a circular tower on it, and a legend goes with it that the name of the island is derived from a species of hens and chickens which were bred here. The connection seems a little vague, but for the sake of variation, it is here given. Here and there as the road winds along the coast some vine-clad ruin of a castle tower is passed, and the background foot-hills of the Alps are peopled with toy villages and towns like Switzerland itself. Albenga is primarily a great big overgrown coast town of to-day, but was formerly the an- cient metropolis of a minor political division of Liguria, and the one time ally of Carthage. Evidences of this fallen pride of place are not wanting in Albenga to-day. There are innu- In Liguria 93 merable great brick and stone towers, now often built into some surrounding structure. Three may be remarked as landmarks of the town's great civic and military glory of the past : the Torre de Marchese Malespina, the Torre dei Guelfi, and another, unnamed, built up into the present Casa del Commune. Albenga is not a resort, since it has the repu- tation of being an unheal thful place, but prob- ably this is not so as there is no particular squalidness to be noticed, save that incident to the workaday affairs of factories, workshops and shipping. The inhabitants of the neigh- bouring towns profess to recognize the native of Albenga at a glance when they hail him with the remark: " Hai faccia di Albenga." — *' You have the Albenga face.'* This is prob- ably local jealousy only, and is not really con- tempt. A short way out from Albenga is the Ponte Lungo, an old Roman bridge of the time of the Emperor Honorius. Savona, the largest place between the frontier and Genoa, is still fifty kilometres to the eastward, but midway between it and Albenga is Finale Marina, a town of one main street, two enormous painted churches, an imposing fortification wall, a palm-planted promenade and a municipal palace bearing, 94 Italian Highways and Byways over its portal, the arms of a visiting Spanish monarch who ruled here temporarily in the fif- teenth century. The Castello Gavone, on a hillside above the town and back from the coast, is a ruin, but its picturesque outer walls, with diamond-cut stone facets, like those of the great round tower of Milan or of Tantallon Castle in Scotland, are quite remarkable. Finale Marina's Albergo Grimaldi is housed in an old chateau of some noble of the days when the town was the capital of a Marquisate. Not much changed is the old chateau, except to put new wine in the old bottles and new linen on the antique beds. To be sure there are elec- tric push-buttons in the chambers, but as they are useless they can hardly be taken into con- sideration. The Albergo Grimaldi has scant accommoda- tion for automobiles. Three might range them- selves along the wall in the lower corridor, and would indeed be well enough housed, though in no sense is there the least semblance of a ga- rage. You pay nothing additional for this, and that's something in Italy where automobiles — in the small towns — are still regarded as me- chanical curiosities and their occupants as fanatics with more money than good sense. In Liguria 95 The Italian country population is by no means hostile to the automobilist, but their good na- ture, even, is often exasperating. Finale Marina is the best stopping place between Menton and Genoa if one is travelling by road, and would avoid the resorts. Noli, just beyond the Capo di Noli, is an un- important small town; nevertheless it is the proud possessor of a collection of ruined walls and towers which would be a pride to any medi- aeval " borgo." Noli, like Albenga, was once the chief town of a little political division ; but to-day it is a complete nonentity. In bright sunshine, from the road winding over the Capo di Noli, one may see the smoke of Genoa's chimneys and shipping rising, cloud- like, on the horizon far away to the eastward, and may even descry that classic landmark, the great lighthouse called '' La Lanterna " at the end of the mole jutting out between San Pier d 'Arena and Genoa. A castle-crowned rocky islet, the Isola dei Bergeggi, lies close off shore beneath the Capo di Vado, itself crowned with a seventeenth cen- tury fortress cut out of the very rock. Still following the rocky coastline, one draws slowly up on Savona. Savona is backed up by olive gardens and pine-clad hills, while above, 96 Italian Highways and Byways away from the coast, roll the first foothills of the Apennines, their nearby slopes and crests dotted, here and there, with some grim fortress of to-day or a watch tower of mediaeval times. The Alps are now dwindling into the Apen- nines, but the change is hardly perceptible. Above the roofs and chimneys of the town itself rises an old tower of masonry on which is perched a colossal madonna, a venerated shrine of the Ligurian sailor-folk. It bears an inscription which seems to scan equally well in school-book Latin or colloquial Italian. " In mare irato, in subita procella Invoco te, nostra benigna stella." Mago, the Carthaginian, made Savona a ref- uge after his sack of Genoa. The Genoese, in turn, came along and blocked up the port out of sheer jealousy, lest it might become a commer- cial rival of Genoa itself. The bay of Savona is delightful, even Words- worth, who mostly sang of lakes and larks, re- marked it, though in no way is it superior in beauty to a score of other indentations in the Mediterranean coastline from Marseilles around to Naples. The automobilist will best remember Savona In Liguria 97 for its exceedingly bad exits and entrances, and the clean and unencumbered streets in the town itself. Here are great wide park-like thorough- fares flagged with flat smooth stones which are a dream to the automobilist. There never were such superbly laid paving blocks as one fimds in Savona. As one leaves Savona he actually begins to sense the smoke and activities of Genoa in his nostrils, albeit they are a good fifty kilometres away as yet ; around a half a dozen jutting bar- rier capes, and across innumerable railway tracks. Varazze is not a stopping point on many travellers' Italian journeyings and, to state it frankly, perhaps, for the majority, it is not worth visiting. It is a sort of overflow Sunday resort for the people of Genoa, in that each of its two hotels have dining accommodation for a hundred people or more. Aside from this it is endowed with a certain quaint picturesque- ness. It has a palm-tree-lined quay which bor- ders a string of ship-building yards where the wooden walls of Genoa's commerce-carrying craft were formerly built in large numbers, and where, to-day, a remnant of this industry is still carried on. Great long-horned white oxen haul timber through the crooked streets and 98 Italian Highways and Byways along the quays, and there is ever a smell of tar and the sound of sawing and hammering. An artist with pen or brush will like Varazze better than any other class of traveller. The automobilist will have all he can manage in dodging the ox teams and their great trundling loads of timber. There is a fragment of a ruined castle near by on the outskirts of the town, and farther away, back in the hills, is a monastery called *' II Deserto," and properly enough named it is. It was founded by a lady of the Pallavicini family who as a recompense — it is to be pre- sumed — insisted on being represented in the painted altar-piece as the Madonna, though clad in mediaeval Genoese dress. What vanity ! Cogoletto, practically a Grenoese suburb, claims to be the birth place of Columbus. Per- haps indeed it is so, as his father Dominico was known to be a property owner near Genoa. Savona, Oneglia and Genoa itself all have mem- ories of the family, so the discoverer was of Ligurian parentage without doubt. '' Sestri-Ponente ! Cornigliano-Ligure ! San Pier d 'Arena! " (with its Villa Serra and its Babylonian-like gardens) cry out the railway employees at each stop of the Genoa-bound train ; and the same names roll up on the auto- In Liguria 99 inobilist's road map witli a like persistency. Each class of traveller wonders why Genoa is not reached more quickly, and the automobilist, for the last dozen kilometres, has been cursed with a most exasperating, always-in-the-way tramway, with innumerable carts, badly paved roads and much mud. The approaches to al- most all great cities are equally vile ; Genoa is no exception and the traffic in the city — and in all the built up suburbs — keeps to the left, a local custom which is inexplicable since in the open country it goes to the right. Voltri is a long drawn-out, uninteresting, waterside town with more chimneys belching smoke and cinders in strong contrast to the pine-clad background hills, in which nestle the suburban villas of the Doria, the Galliera and the Brignole families of other days. Pegli is but a continuation of Voltri, Genoa La Superba is still a dozen kilometres away. Pegli is a resort of some importance and its chief attraction is the Villa Pallavicini, with a labyrinth of grottoes, subterranean lakes, cement moulded rocks, Chinese pagodas and the like. It is not lovely, but is commonly reckoned a sight worth stopping off to see. The Ital- ians call this hodge podge *' a ferocity of inven- tion." The phrase is worthy of peipetuation. 100 Italian Highways and Byways The Palazzo Pallavicini was tlie suburban residence of the banker of the Court of Borne, but he was a sort of renegade financier, for he went off to England with the churchly funds and became an English country gentleman, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His ' ' past ' ' was known, for some poet-historian of the time branded him with the following couplet : — " Sir Horatio Palvasene, Who robbed the Pope to pay the Queen." The Villa Doria at Pegli was a work of Can- zio built for one of the richest merchants of Genoa in the days of Charles V. It was, like its contemporaries, a gorgeous establishment, but in popular fancy it enjoys not a whit of the enthusiasm bestowed upon the stagy, tricky bric-a-brac and stucco Villa Pallavicini. The entrance to '' Genoa la Superba " by road from the west is a sorry spectacle, a grim, crowded thoroughfare decidedly workaday and none too cleanly. From San Pier d 'Arena one comes immediately within the confines of Genoa itself, just after circling the western port and passing the sky-piercing ^' La Lanterna," one of the most ancient lighthouses extant, dating from 1547. In Liguria 101 Genoa is neglected or ignored by most trav- ellers and searchers after the picturesque in Italy. This is a mistake, for Genoa's park of Acquasola, the gardens of the Villa Eosazza and of the Villa de Negroni, and the terraces of the Palazzo Doria offer as enchanting a series of panoramas as those of Rome or Florence, and quite different, in that they have always the vista of the blue Mediterranean as a back- ground. Genoa is a bizarre combination of the old and the new, of the mountain and the plain, of great docks and wharves, and of streets of stairs ris- ing almost vertically. 102 Italian Highways and Byways The general effect of Grenoa is as if every- thing in it had been piled one on top of another until finally it had to spread out at the base. Enormous caserns fringe the heights and great barracks line the wharves, while in between, and here, there and everywhere, are great and venerable palaces and churches of marble, many of them built in layers of black and white stone, indicating that they were built by the commune in mediaeval days, or by one of the four great families of Doria, Grimaldi, Spinola or Fieschi, the only ones who had the privilege of using it. Genoa's labyrinth of twisting, climbing streets and alleys are all but impracticable for wheeled traffic, and, for that reason, strangers, who do not walk " en tour " as much as they ought, save in the corridors of picture galler- ies and the aisles of churches, know not Genoa save its main arteries — nor ever will, unless they change their tactics. The automobile is only useful in Genoa in get- ting in and out of town, and even that is accom- plished with fear and trembling by the most cold-blooded chauffeur that ever lived. What with the vile roads, the magnificent distances and the ceaseless irresponsible traffic of carts and drays, ti'amways and what not, Genoa is In Liguria 103 indeed, of all other cities on earth, in need of a boulevard for the new traffic. To get to your hotel at the further end of the town as you make your entrance by the road circling the base of " La Lanterna," can only be likened to a trip down Broadway in New York at four o'clock in the afternoon. That would not be pleasure ; neither is getting in and out of Genoa at any time between five in the morning and seven at night. To what degenerate depths these great pal- aces of the Genoa of other days have fallen only the curious and inquisitive are likely to know. One into which we penetrated — looking for something which wasn't there — was a veritable hive of industry, and as cosmopolitan as Baby- lon. It was near the Bourse and one entered marble halls by a marble staircase, flanked by a marble balustrade and finished off with newel posts supported by marble lions. The great entrance hall was surrounded by a colonnade of svelt marble columns, and in the centre as- cended a monumental marble staircase. Two marble fountains played in au inner courtyard, which was paved with marble flags, and a statue, also marble, in a niche faced the great doorway. On the first floor were more marble columns 104 Italian Highways and Byways and a frescoed vaulting. From the corridors opened a battery of doors into offices of all sorts of industrial enterprises, from one given to ex- ploiting a new combustible to another which was financing a rubber plantation in Abyssinia. A chestnut-roaster was perambulating the cor- ridors with his stock in trade, furnace all alight, and a brown-robed monk was begging his daily bread. On the next floor, up another marble stair- case, were still other business offices, — ship- ping firms, wine-factors and one Guiseppe Bel- lini, representing an American factory, whose output of agricultural machinery is found in all four quarters of the globe. Breakfast foods were there, too, and there was a big lithograph of a Fall River Line Steamer on the walls. A whole city of merchants and agents were clois- tered here in the five stories of this one-time ducal abode. Up under the roof was a photographer and an artist's studio, where a long-haired Italian (Signor something or other, the sign read) painted the bluest of blue sky pictures, and the most fiery Vesuvian eruptions, to sell to tour- ists through the medium of the hotel porters of the town below. Thus it was that an antique shrine of gal- In Liguria 105 lantry and romance had become the temple of twentieth century commerce. The noble arms, with a heraldic angel still to be seen over the entrance doorway, count for nothing to-day, but exist as a vivid reminder of a glorious past. In 1500 the palace was the shrine of an artistic nobility; to-day it is a temple of chicanery. The new part of Genoa imitates Milan, as Milan imitates Paris. The galleries or arcades of Milan, Genoa and Naj^les, full of shops, cafes and restaurants, would be admirable institu- tions in a more northerly clime, where the sun is less strong and rain more frequent. Here their glass roofs radiate an insufferable heat, which only in the coldest and most intemperate months is at all bearable. Nevertheless these arcades are an amusing and characteristic fea- ture of the large Italian cities. Hotels in Genoa for the automobilist are of all ranks and at all prices. Bertolini's has ga- rage accommodation for twenty-five automo- biles, and charges two francs and a half to four francs a night for the accommodation, which is dear or not accordingly as you may feel. The Albergo Unione, on the Palazzo Cam- petto, has no garage (you will have to seek out the F. I. A. T. garage a mile or more away), but you get something that is thoroughly Ital- 106 Italian Highways and Byways ian and very well ap pointed too, reasonable prices. The Genoese subur- ban villas are a part of Genoa itself, in that they were built and in- habited by nobles of the city. To the east of Genoa, at Albaro, is a collec- tion of villas which comes upon one as a great surprise. In reality they are suburban palaces, with here and there more modest villas, and again mere modest dwellings. All are surrounded with hedges of aloes, vines, olive and orange groves, and the effect is of the coun- try. In the Villa del Paradiso In Liguria 107 Lord Byron was once a guest. Its loggia was a favourite lounging place, and the whole aspect of the villa and its grounds is as paradisal as one has any right to expect to find on earth. The Villa Cambiaso was built in 1557 by Alessi from designs, it is commonly said, of the great Michael Angelo. The ancient Sardinian Palazzo Imperiali is also here, and is popularly known as the Albero d'Oro. A dozen miles to the east the gardens of the Villa de Franchi extend down, stair by stair, and fountain by fountain, to the Mediterranean rocks. The villa is a typical terrace-house, long, and almost dwarfish on the front, where the *' piano nobile " is also the ground floor; but on the side facing the sea it is a story higher, and of stately proportions, and is flanked by widely extending wings. It is the typical Li- gurian coast villa, one of a species which has set the copy for many other seacoast villas and grounds. CHAPTER VI THE KIVIEEA DI LEVANTE The gorgeous panorama of coast scenery continues east of Genoa as it has obtained for some three hundred kilometres to the west. In fact the road through Nervi and Recco is finer, if anything, and more hilly, though less precip- itous, than that portion immediately to the west- ward of Genoa. Between Genoa and Spezia the railway passes through fifty tunnels. The traveller by the high road has decidedly the best of it, but there are always those level crossings to take into consideration though fewer of them. Nervi is a place of German hotels, much beer and an unaccommodating tram line. The Grand Hotel gives access to the gardens of the villa of the Marchese Gropollo, and this of it- self is an attraction that Nervi 's other rather tawdry inns lack. Recco is an attractive and populous town, but has no monuments of note. 108 The Riviera di Levant e 109 The highroad here climbs up the mouutain of Portofino where the promontory joins the mainland, and drops down the other side to Rapallo, Santa Margherita, Cervara and Porto- fino. High up on the mountain cape is the Mon- astery of San Fruttoso, a i^icturesque and soli- tary conventual establishment in whose chapel are many tombs of the Dorias, all with good Gothic sculptures. In the convent of Cervara, en route to the village of Portofino on the east side of the cape, Frangois I, just after he lost '' all save honour " at the battle of Pavia, was imprisoned previous to his voyage to Spain in the galleys which were to carry him a captive to the domain of Charles Quint. The roads along here are quite the best of the whole extent of the eastern and western Italian Rivieras. They are encumbered with a new class of traffic not met with further west. Up over the mountain of Portofino winds the road in genuine mountain fashion though beau- tifully graded and kept. At almost any turning one is likely to meet a great lumbering char-a- banc crowded with tourists, with five, six or eight horses caparisoned like a circus pageant, with bells around their necks, pheasants' fea- thers bobbing in their top-knots, and a lusty Ligurian on the hindermost seat blowing a 110 Italian Highways and Byways coaching horn for all he is worth. This is the Italian and German pleasure seeker's way of amusing himself. He likes it, the rest of us don't! Santa Margherita is now a full-blown resort with great hotels, bathing-machines and all the usual attributes of a place of its class. Lace- making and coral-fishing are the occupations of the inhabitants who do not live off of exploit- ing the tourists. Both products are made here (and in Belgium and Birmingham) in the imi- tation varieties, so one had best beware. If one doesn't speak Italian, German will answer in all these resorts of the Levantine Riviera, quite as well as French or English. The " Tea-Shop " and " American Bar " signs here give way to those of *' Munich " and *' Pilsner." The village of Portofino itself is delightful; a quaint little fishing port surrounded by tree- clad hills running to the water's edge. There is a Hotel Splendide, once a villa of the accepted Ligurian order, and a less pretentious, more characteristic, Albergo Delfino lower down on the quay. The arms of the little port are a spouting dolphin as befits its seafaring aspect, so the Albergo Delfino certainly ought to have the preference for this reason if no other. 110 Italian Highways and Byways coaching iiorn I'or all ln^ iy worth. Tlus is the Italian and Gernian pleasure s way of amusing him ie likes it, the rest of us don't! P'- ^ .^sort vi » ;il! the t-i class. Lace- • and ">: li hshing are the occupations of ine lUhabitaiits who do not live off of exploit- ing til" tourists. Both products are made here (and in Belgium and Birmingham) in the imi- tation varieties, so one had best beware. If one doesn't s^^FyCtHfiXn, German will answer in all these resorts of the Levantine Kiviera, quite as well as French or English. The '' Tea-Shop " and *' American Bar " signs hero give way to those of " Munich " and " Pilsner." ■ ' village of Portotino itself is delightful; it little fishing port surrounded by tree- ils running to the water's edge. There is Splendide, once a villa of the accepted Li »rder, and a less pretentious, more chit: stic, Albergo Delfino lower down on the (|u,!\ Tlie arms of the little port are a spouting dolphin as befits its seafaring aspect, y'^ so the Albcij'o Delfino certainly ought to have the preferenoo for this reason if no other. "it ^a^M^ The Riviera di Levante 111 On the clilf road rumiiug around the proiu- ontory from Portofmo to liapallo are a half a dozen more or less modern villas of question- able architecture, but of imposing proportions, and one and all delightfully disposed. The Villa Pagana is the property of the Mar- GULrif chese Spinola, and the Castel Paraggi, the property of a gentleman prosaically named Brown, is theatrically and delightfully dis- posed, though bizarre in form. Eapallo, at the head of tlie bay, is a contin- uation of what has gone before. There are great hotels and pensions, and many of them. Its campaniles and church towers set off the framing of Eapallo delightfully. The Hotel de 112 Italian Highways and Byways 1 'Europe has more than once been the abode of Queen Margherita of Italy, and most of the notables who pass this way. The hotel curi- ously enough seems none the worse for it; it is good, reasonable in price and conveniently situated on the quay, overlooking a picturesque granite tower built up from a foundation sunk in the waters of the Mediterranean. The Cor- sair Dragutte, a buccaneer of romantic days, came along and plundered these Ligurian towns as often as he felt like it. Frequently they paid no attention to his visits, save to give up what blackmail and tribute he demanded; but Ra- pallo built this tower as a sort of watch tower or fortress. It is an admirable example of a sentinel watch tower, and might well be classed as a diminutive fortress-chateau. From Rapallo to Chiavari the coast road winds and rises and falls with wonderful va- riety between villa gardens and vineyards. On the slopes above are dotted tiny dwellings, and church towers point skywards in most unex- pected places. The chief architectural attributes of Chiavari are its arcaded house fronts, a queer blend of round and pointed arches, and columns of all orders. The effect is undeniably good. The The Riviera di Levante 113 town was one of the most important in the old Genoese Republic, save the capital itself. The towers scattered here and there through the town and in the neighbourhood are all feu- dal relics, albeit they are fragmentary. The Castle which the native points out with pride is neither very magnificent nor very elegant, but is indicative of the style of building of the feudal time in these parts. Decidedly the best things of Chiavari are its house fronts, and some crazy old streets running back from the main thoroughfares. There are some slate quarries in the neighbourhood and a ten foot slab, larger than the top of a billiard table, can be cut if occasion requires. The church of San Salvatore near Lavagna, where the quarries are, was founded by Pope Innocent IV in 1243. Lavagna, near by, has a Palazzo Rosso, in that it is built of a reddish stone, though that is not its official name. It was an appanage of the Pieschi family, who owned to Popes, Cardi- nals and soldiers in the gallant days of the Grenoese Republic. Sestri-Levante, a half a dozen kilometres beyond Chiavari, is the last of the Riviera resorts. It is a mere strip of villa and hotel-lined roadway with a delightful water front and a charming and idyllic background. Spezia is reached only by climbing a lengthy 114 Italian Highways and Byways mountain road up over the Pass of the Bracco ; sixty kilometres in all from Sestri to Spezia. The highroad now leaves the coast to wind around inland over the lower slopes of the Ap- ennines. The railway itself follows the shore. It is a finely graded road with entrancing far-away vistas of the sea, the distant snow- capped summits of the mountains to the north and, off southward, the more gently rising Tus- can hills. After having climbed some twenty-one hun- dred feet above the sea, the highroad runs down through the valley of the Vara, until finally at Spezia, Italy's great marine arsenal, one comes again to the Mediterranean shore. Just before Spezia is reached, snuggled close in a little bay, is Vernazza — where the wine comes from, at least, the wine the praises of which were sung by Boccaccio ' ' as the paragon of wines." Wine is still a product of the re- gion, but its quality may not be what it once was. Spezia is a snug, conservative and exclusive military and naval town. The gold-lace and blue-cloth individuals of the '' service " dom- inate everything, even to the waiters in the hotels and cafes. No one else has a show. The Hotel Croix de Malte (with a French The Riviera di Levante 115 name be it observed) is the cliic hotel of Spezia, with prices on a corresponding scale, and no garage. The Albergo Italia, equally well sit- uated, a typical Italian house of its class, is more modest in its prices and better as to its food. It has no garage either, but under the circumstances, that of itself is no drawback. Across the street, in a vacant store, you may lodge your automobile for two francs a night, or for one franc if you tell the ambitious and obliging little man who runs it that he demands too much. He is really the best tiling we found in Spezia. We had run out of gasoline in enter- ing the city, the long run down hill flattened out into a plain just before the town was reached, but he accommodatingly sent out a five gallon tin {'^ original package " goods from Philadelphia) and would take no increase in price for his trouble. Such a thing in the automobile line ought to be encouraged. We pay *' through the nose," as the French say, often enough as it is. Spezia 's suburban villas are a natural out- come of its environment, but they are all mod- ern and have, none of them, the flavour of historic romanticism about them. An ancient castle tower on the hills above Spezia is about the only feudal ruin near by. 116 Italian Highways and Byways The viper, the device of the Viseontis, is still graven above its entrance door to recall the fact that the device of the Milanese nobles was a viper, and that their natures, too, took after that of the unlovely thing. The Viper of Milan and the Viseontis is a worthy cage companion to the hedgehog of Frangois I. Spezia's gulf is all that Spezia is not; ro- mantic, lovely and varied. It was described in ancient times by Strabo, the geographer, and by Persius. Little of its topographical sur- roundings or climatic attributes have changed since that day. The road down the coast from Spezia is marked on the maps as perfectly flat, but within a dozen kilometres, before Areola is reached, is as stiff a couple of hair-pin turns as one will remember ever having come across suddenly in his travels. They are not formidable hills, per- haps, but they are surprising, and since one has to drop down again immediately to sea level they seem entirely unnecessary. The river Magra which enters the sea just east of Spezia divided the Genoese territory from that of Tuscany. '* Macra che per cammin corto Lo Gonovese parta dal Toscano." — Dante, " Paradisio." The Riviera di Levante 117 Sarzana is not a tourist point, but the trav- eller by road will not be in a hurry to pass it by. It has, curiously enough, an Albergo della Nuova York, built on the fortification walls of feudal days. It is not for this, though, that one lingers at Sarzana. The Bonapartes were originally descended from Sarzana ancestry. It was proven by contemporary documents that a certain Buonaparte, a notary, lived here in 1264. Supposedly, it was this limb of the law who became the chief of the Corsican family. The old feudal castle of Sarzana, with its round tower, its moat and its later Renaissance gateway is the very ideal of mouldy medias- valism. From Sarzana, it is, figuratively speaking, but a step to Carrara and Massa, the centres of the marble industry. Of all the materials the artist requires, none is so much sought after as the pure white marble of Carrara. The sculptured marble of Carrara goes out into the world from thousands of ateliers to thousands of resting places but it all comes from this great white mountainside in the Apennines which has made the region famous and rich. This little Tuscan town of Carrara owes its all to its, seemingly, inexhaustible stores of milk- white, fine-grained marbles. More especially is 118 Italian Highways and Byways the marble of Carrara in demand for statuary ; but in all the finer forms of carven stone it finds its place supreme. Men and beasts, oxen, horses and mules, and carts of all shapes and sizes, make the vicinity of Carrara the centre of an uproar that would be maddening if one had to live in it; but it is all very interesting to the stranger, and speaks more loudly than words of the impor- tance of the great industry of the neighbour- hood. All around are great heaps — mountains al- most — of broken, splintered marble; the de- bris merely of the great blocks which have, in times past, been quarried and sent to all quar- ters of the earth. The quarries of Carrara have been worked ever since the Roman epoch, and the tufted hill- sides round about have been burrowed to their bowels in taking out this untold wealth which, without exaggeration, has been as great as that of many mines of gold. Quite twenty per cent, of the population work at the industry, and five hundred men are actu- ally engaged in hewing out and slicing off the great blocks. Ten thousand, at least, find their livelihood dependent upon the industry, and two hundred thousand tons is a normal annual The Riviera di Levante 119 outi3ut; in price, valued at from 150 to 1,500 francs the cubic metre. At Massa one joins the main road again run- ning south by the shore. One never hears of the conventional tourist stopping at Massa ; but we found the Hotel Massa and its dinner in the garden worth the taking and agreed that the Chateau, in base rococo style, (now the public administrative buildings), a curiosity worth see- ing. Massa has a Napoleonic memory hanging over it, too, in that it was once the residence of the Little Corporal's sister. Massa 's Cas- tello, high above all else in the town, is grim, lofty and spectacular though to be viewed only from without. Massa is worth making a note of, even by the hurried traveller. Since leaving Sarzana the high road has be- come worse and worse, until in the vicinity of Carrara and Massa it is almost indescribably bad. There is no such stretch of bad road in Europe as this awful fifty kilometres, for it continues all the way to Lucca and Livorno. The vast amount of traffic drawn by ten head of oxen at a time is what does it of course, and as there is no way around one has to go through it, though it's a heart-breaking job to one that cares anything for his automobile. Pietrasanta, eight kilometres farther on, was, 120 Italian Highways and Byways for us, an undiscovered beauty spot and his- toric shrine ; at least, none of us had ever heard of it till we passed the portals. Now we know that the walls, through which we passed, were the same that the blood-thirsty, battling Lo- renzo di Medici besieged in 1482 ; and that the ancient bronze font in the Baptistery was the work of Donatello. We were glad that Massa and Pietrasanta were counted in, as they should be by everyone passing this way, even though they did take up half a day's time — all on ac- count of the awful road — part of which time, however, you are eating that excellent lunch in the garden of the Hotel Massa. That time will not be lost anyway, one must eat somewhere. Eight kilometres beyond Massa is Viareggio, an unlovely, incipient seaside resort for dwell- ers in the Tuscan towns; but a historic spot nevertheless, and interesting from that view- point at any rate. Viareggio has no villas or palaces of note, and its chief associations for the traveller lie in its memories of Shelley and Ouida, the Mar- quise de la Ramee. There is a monument, erected to Shelley in 1894, commemorating the fact that he was drowned here, in the Tyrrhe- nian Sea, and his body consumed by fire, on the shore. The Riviera di Levante 121 It was in the village of Massarosa, near Via- reggio, that that much-abused and very abusive old lady, Ouida, the Marquis de la Ramee, died in January, 1908. Since 1877 she had made Italy her home, and for years she had lived here alone, not in poverty or misery, for she had a '' civil pension " which was more than suffi- cient to keep the wolf from the door. She died miserable and alone however. Ouida was a more real, more charitable person than she was g^ven credit for being. She didn't like the Eng- lish, and Americans she liked still less, but she loved the Italians. Whose business was it then if she chose to live among them, with her un- kempt and unwholesome-looking dogs and her slatternly maid-of-all-work ? Ouida, as she her- self said, did not hate humanity; she hated society; and she had more courage than some of the rest of us in that she would have nothing to do with it. The vineyards lying back of Viareggio may not be the most luxuriant in Italy, but they blossom abundantly enough. Lucca is thirty-five kilometres from Via- reggio and the road still bad — on to Livorno, turning to the right instead of the left at Via- reggio, it is worse. Lucca has a right to its claim as one of the 122 Italian Highways and Byways most ancient cities of Tuscany, for it is one of the least up-to-date of Italian cities. Wlien Florence was still sunk in its marsh Lucca was already old, and filled with a commercial im- portance which to-day finds its echo in the dis- tribution of the Lucca olive oil of trade which one may buy at Vancouver, Johannesburg or Rio. Indeed the label on the bottle of olive oil is the only reminiscence many have of Lucca. The decadence came to Lucca in due time and it degenerated sadly, about its last mag- The Riviera di Levante 123 uificent ray being that shot out when Napoleon gave the city to his sister Eliza Bacciochi, with the title of Princess of Lucca. She was a real benefactress to the country, but with the fall of Napoleon all his satellites were snuffed out, too, and then the benign influences of the Prin- cess Eliza were forgotten and ignored. Southwest from Lucca, with Pisa lying be- tween, is the great port of Leghorn, whence are shipped the marbles of Carrara, the oil of Lucca, the wines of Chianti and the Leghorn hats and braids of all Tuscany. These four things keep Livorno going. Leghorn is as modern as Lucca is antiquated and is the most cosmopolitan of all Italian cities. "When Philip III expelled the Moors from Spain Cosmo II, Duke of Livorno, invited two thousand of them to come to his Dukedom. Montesquieu remarked upon this conglomer- ate population, and approved of it apparently, as he called the founding and populating of the city the master work of the Medici dynasty. CHAPTER VII ON TUSCAN ROADS The valley of the Arno, as the river flows through the heart of Tuscany from its source high in the hills just south of Monte Falterona, is the most romantic region in all Italy. It is the borderland between the south and the north, and, as it was a battle-ground between Cruelph and Ghibellines, so too is it the coimnon ground where the blood of the northerner and south- erner mingles to-day. As great rivers go, the Arno is neither grand nor magnificent, but, though its proportions are not great, its banks are lined with historic and artistic ruins, from the old fortress at Marina di Pisa to Poppi, the ancient capital of the Ca- sentino, perched so quaintly upon its river- washed rock. Pisa, Leghorn and Lucca are a triumvirate of Tuscan towns which should be viewed and considered collectively. One should not be in- 124 CHAPTER VII ON TtrSCAN BOADS The valley of the Arno, as the river flows through the heart of Tuscany from its source high in the hil^^yj-us^ s^l^^p^^iff^^ffj^^ona, is the most romantic region in all Italy. It is the borderland between the south and the north, and, as it was a battle-ground between Ouelph and Ghibellines, so too is it the common ground wliere the blood of the northerner and south- erner miijgh- f<> l.tv. As great >, the Arno is neither grand nor magnificent, but, though its proportions are not great, its banks are lined with historic and nrtijitic ruins, from the old fortress at Marina di T*i^a to Po]^pi, the ancient capital of the Ca- sei'tino. perched so quaintly upon its river- washed rock. Vh\, Legboni and Lucca are a triumvirate of Tuscan towns which should be viewed and considered collectively. One should not be in- 124 ON A TUSCAN HIGHWAY ^/<7/»e fa M*' Menus ■■A^