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Updated: June 17, 2025
Basle was reached in the early morning, and the pretty city was flushed with rose, and the newly risen sun was sparkling on the variegated roofs and cupolas as he drove across the bridge to the Baden station.
At the right, gleaming in the sun, were the five golden cupolas of a splendid church, whose bells rang out, as if they would summon people from all corners of the earth to come and behold the wonder. Now, though the King would much rather have seen his future son-in-law tarred, feathered, and burnt at the stake, he remembered his royal oath, and had to make the best of a bad business.
The city spread out around the Cathedral, the houses disappearing in the crowd of towers, cupolas and absides. It was impossible to look on any side without meeting with chapels, churches, convents and ancient hospitals. Religion had absorbed the industrious Toledo of old, and still guarded the dead city beneath its hood of stone.
Not far from the column is a neat little mosque, whose countless towers and cupolas are ornamented with gilt metal balls, which glitter and glisten like so many stars in the heavens. It is surrounded by a pretty court-yard, at the entrance of which those who wish to enter the mosque are obliged to leave their shoes.
For one day you will see Gâo gleaming on the horizon, no longer a servile Gâo reduced to the rank of a little Negro town, but the splendid Gâo of other days, the great capital of the country of the blacks, Gâo reborn, with its mosque of seven towers and fourteen cupolas of turquoise, with its houses with cool courts, its fountains, its watered gardens, all blooming with great red and white flowers.... That will be for you the hour of deliverance and of royalty."
John the Baptist, the Convent of the Immaculate Conception, and next, the Latin cross of the Chapel of Santa Cruz, whose beautiful fagade lay soft in shadow; the huge arrogant bulk of the Alcazar loomed squarely before me, hiding half the view; to the left glittered the slender spire of the Cathedral, holding up in the pure air that emblem of august resignation, the triple crown of thorns; then a crowd of cupolas, ending at last near the river-banks with the sharp angular mass of San Cristobal.
Around this inclosure could be seen three distinct towns: Kitai-Gorod, Beloi-Gorod, Zemlianai-Gorod European, Tartar, and Chinese quarters of great extent, commanded by towers, belfries, minarets, and the cupolas of three hundred churches, with green domes, surmounted by the silver cross. A little winding river, here and there reflected the rays of the moon.
I penetrated far and wide, through forest and swamp, in order to discover the ruins. I was successful; but how meagre and wretched they were! The most important were those of two common city-gates, built of sandstone and ornamented with a few handsome sculptures, but without any arches or cupolas.
In Spain Christianity grappled with the Islam faith and sent it bleeding back to the wilds of Africa; in Spain the polygon, circle, and square struggled for supremacy and lost their personality in the complex blending of the one with the other, and minarets, cupolas, and spires combined in bizarre fantasy and richness of decoration to serve the ambitions of mighty prelates, fanatic kings, and death-fearing noblemen.
She pointed to the great works near the river, the famous Saguntine potteries, which revealed, between clay walls, the cupolas of its ovens like enormous red bee-hives. From one side of the road among the trees, sounded mellow notes, wild and joyous flute-tones, and Actæon saw a boy spring into the highway.
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