Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
To taste in all their fulness his first impressions of Venice, the traveler should arrive there by sea, at mid-day, when the sun is high. By degrees, as the ship which carries him enters the channels, he will see the unparalleled city emerging from the lap of the lagoon, with its proud campaniles, its golden spires, its gray or silvery domes and cupolas.
He saw cupolas, spires, terraces, even houses and gardens, houses bright with flowers, the residences of the workmen who live atop of the Basilica, which is ever and ever requiring repair. A little population here bestirs itself, labours, loves, eats, and sleeps.
It is in the building with the cupolas. The congregation consists of five on a full Sunday." His laugh broke out again. "I hope the day after to-morrow you and your husband will make it seven. But, as I was saying, the sun teaches one a lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa in the midst of the sand-rascals eh; Madame!
The court is surrounded by the usual tiled verandah, supported by one hundred and twenty-two light and elegant white marble pillars, the arches between which show some eleven different forms. At each end is a portico jutting out from the verandahs, and four cupolas add to the appearance of the roofs.
Especial care should be taken that the joints at the eaves of the house are tightly fitted. The object of ventilating a chicken-house is to supply a reasonable amount of fresh air, and, equally important, to keep the house dry. Ventilation should not be by cracks or open cupolas. Direct drafts of air are injurious, and ventilation by such means is always the greatest when the least needed.
On one side you survey the famous tower, as perfectly awry as I expected; on the other the baptistery, a circular edifice distinct from the church and right opposite its principal entrance, crowded with sculptures and topped by the strangest of cupolas.
And in the centre of the plain rose a city, a mighty group of all that was beautiful in form and costly in materials, bridges and palaces and triumphal gates of cedar and of marble, columns and minarets of gold, and cupolas and domes of ivory; and ever and anon appeared delicious gardens, raised on the terraces of the houses; and groups of palm trees with their tall, thin stems, and quivering and languid crests, rose amid the splendid masonry.
And as the huge mountains shut out the setting sun, and the valleys filled with bluish shadow and mist, only a band of threatening smoke-red remaining behind the towers and cupolas of the city on its mountain-top, and the sound of church bells floated across the precipice from Urbania, I almost expected, at every turning of the road, that a troop of horsemen, with beaked helmets and clawed shoes, would emerge, with armor glittering and pennons waving in the sunset.
The rough stone, handled without art, rendered clumsy pillars and thick walls necessary, in which the windows, like embrasures, are cut narrow and deep. The brightest light falls through the windows in the thinner wall which supports the cupolas. Nearly all churches are higher than they are long and wide. The clumsy tetragonal pillars contract the already narrow space.
All is profoundly impressive: the procession of priests, with their burning tapers; the drapery of black on the horses; the coffin with its dead; the weeping mourners; the sepulchral chant; the sudden cessation of all the business of life, and the rapt attention of the multitude; the deep, grand, death-knell of the bells; the glitter of domes and cupolas on every side; the green-roofed sea of houses; the winding streets, and the costumes of the people form a spectacle wonderfully wild, strange, and mournful.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking