Identifier: brickmarbleinmid01stre (find matches)
Title: Brick and marble in the Middle Ages: notes of a tour in the north of Italy
Year: 1855 (1850s)
Authors: Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
Subjects: Architecture, Medieval Architecture Architecture, Gothic
Publisher: London, J. Murray
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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dresses, the rich tintsof stufis hung out for sale, the display of hair-pins andother ornaments in the innumerable silversmiths shops,and the noisy, laughing, talking people who animatedthe whole scene, made the narrow arcaded streets ofbusy Bergamo most amusing. After breakfast we started at once for the Citta, asthe old city of Bergamo is called. It stands on a steephill overlooking the Borgo di San Leonardo, withinwhose precincts we had slept, quite distinct from itand enclosed within its own walls. The a,scent wasboth steep and hot, but the view at the entrancegateway of the Citta over the great flat plain of Lom-bardy was very striking, and well repaid the labour ofthe ascent; a vast plain of bluish-green colour, inter-sected in all directions by rows of mulberry-trees, pop-lars, and vineyards, diversified only by the tall whitelines of the campaniles which mark every village inthis part of Lombardy, and stretching away in thesame endless level as far as the eye could reach, was
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I Chap. IV. THE BROLETTO. 53 grand if only on account of its simplicity, and liad forus all the charm of novelty. Through very narrow, dirty streets, which do littlecredit to the cleanly habits of the Bergamask nobihty,to whom it seems that the Citta is sacred, we reachedat last the Piazza Vecchia, around which is gatheredall that in my eyes gives interest to Bergamo. Across the upper end of the Piazza stretches theBroletto, or town-hall, supported on open arches,through which pleasant glimpses are obtained of thecathedral and church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, thelatter the great architectm-al feature of the city. But we must examine the Broletto before we gofarther. And first of all, its very position teachesa lesson. Forming on one side the boundary of thePiazza Publica, on the other it faces, within a few feetonly, the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, and abutsat one end upon the west front of the Duomo; and tothis singularly close—even huddled—grouping muchof the exquisite beauty o

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