INEXHAUSTIBLE ITALY 



345 



The town is full of dark, narrow, 

 crooked, very medieval-looking streets — 

 just the ideal place to stimulate the 

 imagination and fire the talents of its 

 greatest son, Raphael, the greatest 

 painter who ever set brush to canvas. 



Not far away, on the Adriatic, is the 

 birthplace of the composer Rossini, the 

 town of Pesaro ; and then, farther along- 

 shore, between two brawling streams, 

 Rimini the beautiful and historic, termi- 

 nus of the Roman Via Flaminia. Here, 

 too, the Via Emilia starts to the north- 

 west. The pedestal commemorating 

 Caesar's passage of the near-by Rubicon, 

 the great and elegant triumphal arch of 

 Augustus, and his superb, five-arched 

 bridge over the Marecchia — one of the 

 noblest Avorks of its class in the Roman 

 world — still remain to give us the flavor 

 of the brilliant and constructive Roman 

 era. 



RIMINI'S ARCHITECTURAL GEM 



But Rimini's grip upon the imagina- 

 tion is due to a love story that came 

 much later, as the beautiful Church of 

 San Francesco so eloquently testifies. It 

 is an astonishing little gem of an unfin- 

 ished Renaissance temple, built in the 

 middle of the fifteenth century around a 

 Gothic church two centuries older, by the 

 tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta, a great 

 prince, a great patron of the arts and 

 letters — himself no mean poet — a great 

 warrior, and a man of wild passions who 

 loved fiercely and often. 



His church was built ostensibly as a 

 thank offering for his safety during a 

 dangerous campaign, but it actually cele- 

 brates his mad love for the beautiful 

 Isotta degli Atti. The architect gave ex- 

 pression to his patron's passion by vari- 

 ous ingenious and effective devices : the 

 ceaseless repetition of the initial mono- 

 gram / S, the arms of the pair — an 

 elephant and a rose — and the figure 

 of the archangel upon the altar — a por- 

 trait of the lovely Isotta. Six years 

 after the strangling of his second wife, 

 Sigismondo leisurely made Isotta his new 

 consort. 



The story of Erancesa da Rimini, one 

 of the tragedies of the ill-starred house, 

 so many of whose members perished by 



violence, was immortalized by Dante in 

 his Inferno. 



RAVENNA OF THE BYZANTINE 

 ARCHITECTURE 



Originally "a city in the sea," like 

 Venice, and well-nigh impregnable, Ra- 

 venna stands today in a marshy plain six 

 miles away from the coastline. Once a 

 mighty capital, the city also maintained 

 a commanding position in art and letters 

 during the Middle Ages. According to 

 Professor Ricci, Italian Director General 

 of Fine Arts, "the most beautiful, the 

 most complete, and the least impaired 

 monuments of so-called Byzantine art are 

 preserved" here. 



Mosaics might be called Ravenna's dis- 

 tinguishing feature. In one of the city's 

 earliest and most interesting buildings, 

 the fifth century tomb of the Empress 

 Galla Placidia, they stand sharply out 

 from a wonderfully blue background. 

 They are still more beautiful in the 

 cathedral's baptistery of the Orthodox, 

 and full of a clearly Roman spirit of 

 stateliness and unaffected simplicity, 

 while in the handsome octagonal Church 

 of San Vitale they glow with a superbly 

 rich and gorgeous coloring, especially of 

 the costumes. 



Church after church is adorned with 

 them, and with exquisitely translucent ala- 

 baster — behind which lamps were set — 

 rare cipollino columns, and panels, statues, 

 and screens of other precious marbles. 



Ravenna itself has been stripped of 

 much of its beauty and importance by the 

 withdrawal of the sea, but none of its 

 significance, for its grand and stately 

 buildings link the Roman and Byzantine 

 styles of architecture perfectly and give 

 the art-lover of the present both inspira- 

 tion and delight. 



A ROAD 2,100 YEARS IN USE 



Exactly 2,103 years ago Marcus iEmil- 

 ius Lepidus assured his fame forever by 

 building the long, broad, straight road 

 from Rimini through the cities that are 

 now called Bologna, Modena, Reggio, 

 Parma, and Piacenza. The road was 

 named for him, and it still traverses the 

 district of .-Emilia, a favored region of 

 natural fertility of land and intelligence 



