Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a passable place, but as to Alatri "You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." "Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other citizens like yourself "
I was nine times in Rome, twice in Florence and Viareggio and Olevano and Anticoli and Alatri and Licenza and Soriano, five times at Valmontone, thrice at Orvinio; and if I did not go a second time to Scanno and other places, there may be a reason for it. Why this perpetual revisiting? How many new and interesting sites might have been explored during that period!
It is a non-Latin face, with sparkling eyes, brown hair, rounded forehead and crisply curling beard; a legendary face. How came Odysseus to Alatri? Not far from this homestead where I have spent sundry pleasant hours there is a fountain gushing out of a hollow. In olden days it would have been hung with votive offerings to the nymphs, and rightly. One appreciates this nature-cult in a dry land.
Two days' rest is working wonders.... I profit by the occasion of this slight indisposition to glance backwards and forwards. I am here, at Alatri, on the 22 June: so much is beyond contestation. A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I remember the hot walk to Palombara!
The new continuous city-wall began at the river below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been brought to light recently at two different places, the one on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications portions of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height emerging as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose buildings subsist imperishably in these walls of rock, and whose intellectual achievements will continue to exercise an influence more lasting even than these.
A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for, being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded with suspicion.
We were visited by Signor Scala and Signor Samuel Alatri, a deputation from Rome. Their account was very unfavourable as to the opinion of the Papal Government, and murmurs, not loud but deep, were heard in Rome. They strongly recommended our going from Malta in an English steamboat to Egypt. They related an incident which had taken place a few days previously, and caused them much uneasiness.
I obeyed the summons and turned to rouse my slumbering companion, to whom I announced my inspiration. His remarks, on that occasion, were well worth listening to. Next evening found us at Alatri.
These Alatri remains are wonderful more so than many of the sites which old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual?
One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow that verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking