BY ADRIATIC SEA AND SHORE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 81

BY ADRIATIC SEA AND SHORE.

Bt Edits Searle Ghossmann. VIL— BRINDISI, ANCIENT AND ' MODERN. Unlike Turin, Brindisi has never taken the trouble" to renovate itself with the youth of new Italy. It is singularly, shabDily, carelessly - antique. A visitor, m searching for ite antiquities, should always bear in mind its history It was a great city under the Romans — indeed, their chief naval station — and after numerous disasters it fell into the hands of the Normans, who, as one is rather apt to forget, overran a great part of the south-east of Europe, as well as the north-west. Probably the round church of the Sepulchre is really a Norman, not a Byzantine, church. Brindisi became the port of embarkation for the Crusaders or their way to Greece or the Holy Land, and in their time it flourished again ; but when the Crusades were over it again became insignificant. The mail service and its position as a port ti call keep it half alive to-day, but it does not attract tourists or business people or new residents, and for that reason it keeps much of its original character. Except for a large and almost untenanted hotel, and come of the shipping, its appearance belongs more to Italy before the liberation than to the new kingdom. The most casual observer could hardly avoid being struck by the difference between the older parts of this town and such living towns aa Venice, or PlorI ence. or Turin, where everything old has been made a spectacle for tourists, where there is little or nothing left to discover. You feel yourself being always conducted and led about, with even your emotions prescribed for you by the beet authorities. Compared to the beautiful cities farther north— Genoa, Venice, or even to Aitjodna — Brindisi is not picturesquely situated. There is » general flatness, of effect. There is a flat strip of shore along the harbour, the Strada Marina, the most active part of Brindisi by day. This is naturally the most modern part of the town, and here are the shipping offices, Cook's office, and the bank and. the "International." From the Strada Marina you look across the water, to the pleasant gardens of two villas on the opposite side, whose trees and palme give the last touch of the picturesque to the scene. There are two harbours, an outer and an inner, divided by a long mole, and #t the end of the mole is another picturesque object, the Castello Alf onsino, rasing like a rock above the waves. Above the Strada. Marina is a slight ridge, on which is built the older town. The point or projection of land beyond a bare and filtby plateau terminates the town, the inner harbour, and with them the Strada Marina, and on this point is seen the ancient Casfcle of Barbaro&sa and of ChaTles V — Castello Federigo Barbaroesa — so that each end of the inner harbour is guarded by a fortress. Following the Strada Marina in the opposite direction from the Castello Barbarossa, towai'ds the railway_, you come to the old city wall, much of which still remains. The top has crumbled away, but the moss stands like solid and indestructible rock, with curious old gates and towers. One of these gates i$ the Porta Mesagne, the other the Porta Leeoe. To build the Porta Lecoe, the hill seems to have been, cut in two, or else two neighbouring; hilA6 have had their opposite sides levelled and built up with stone, and the igreat and eolid archway erected from one to the other. The road beneath tlie archway is still in common use, leading from the hai-boirr upwards to the old town. The Porta Lecce ie said to have been erected by order of ChaTles V, whose coat of arms is engraved in the stones on its seaward side. If the- traveller is not too fastidious, he or she will find the old town well worth exploring ; with its short and narrow paved streets and lanes, and it.s paved piazzas swarming with diseased beggars and ragamuffins, its dark, halflit interiors open to the public view, its cobblers mending and making shoes not in, but in front of, their houses ; it& public fountains, its surviving palaces reduced to squalid circumstances, its mediaeval churches, ite flights of stone steps, and its old Roman columns. Churches are, as a rule, the most valuable monuments of antiquity. I have already glanced at those of BTindisi. But the town possesses a more unusual relic in its two Roman columns. The salite or flight of j etone steps leads up to those from the flat Strada Marina. They are placed on a paved enclosure in an exceedingly fine position, looking over the harbour, and forming a fitting approach to the old town. They are of Greek marble ; brought here probably in the days -when the Romane had dominion over Greece. One of the columns is preserved almost entire, a straight round shaft, no lonejer smooth, but wrinkled and worn with years, and a flowering capital above, and on the base a still half legible Roman inscription standing like a lofty and solitary palm with ite crowj? gone from it. The other ie only a fraigment, the pediment and a small portion, of stone above. These tws colunrns are said to have marked the termination of the great Appian Way. Another antiquity of Brindisi is, or

1 was, the Casa di Virgilio, supposed to have been the house in which Virgil died, though whether that is only a legend or not I could not undertake to say. It- is certainly ancient, very likely Roman, and if so, it «aght to -be preset-ved, for,_ there are not mwf EQ^&hfrt^^restdrifeaor' not, that *&nain at^Se^rtfeifei" dS-jC Pic-^ tures of it-Tare siflL-soMpfiirtr.it dS£..6e&n" t so suiro"unjdied*'-.^^ : sH?uees^r,ffie .wiflspofi . which jar^bHilt^Si&a Tife^-wglls, th^JNg i were told 'it wou^fi^^W o^^^*^®*^ ; it. Many Tnedri&^'^oxtses anffißbaSSyr palaces are mixed" with mor© -modern buildings. One waneS" quite" unexpectedly upon a sculptured- doorway with sphinxes,,, or bearing coats of arms, whose "history r remains to^ be^ written. Climbing up- the salite a short distance: beyond the -Roman columns,- after passing under «, picturesque archway i& the walls, the traveller oomes upon the Palazzo Baieomo,' or Casadeh Slndico, once -a- palace, afterwards * residence or "mansion house" for the .Mayor of Brindisi. The lower part is now turnedinfco a low cafe, and when. ire inquired. of Cook's interpreter about it, he said,' ; wiffe the unreserved naivete common in Italy on such topics, "It is \ bad house; I don't know how to express my sentiments about it." The sculpture has been, partially worn away, but enough remaine to make it both curious and interesting. One special feature, of these Brindisi palaces is the projecting stone balcony with carved supports, • here and in one or two other cases, in the form of a succession of arches. Three arches, like those generally found above porches, the 1 one joining the other, have apparently been filled ~ in with stones in later times, and altogether it is plain that the house must have been once much more beautiful than it is now. The same kind of balconies appear in the old houses now used as toe consulates of Germany, of the Netherlands and of Belgium, all forming one block. An inscription, not easily legible, runs along them to -the effect that a wise man built this house and a fool destroyed it — "Sapiens aedifioavit domum, iasipieiis exstructam destruxit, quad prodest shulte haben . , . gui prius reponet aedificet." '