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Updated: June 15, 2025
Across the lagoon to the west, the Euganean hills stood out, sharp-cut in their pointed outlines as if carved in stone, as indeed they doubtless are, while to the northward, looking back across the domes and spires of the receding city, could be seen the distant snow-capped range of the Tyrolese Alps, so gracious in its undulating curves, as to make an impression almost of warmth and tenderness.
Yes indeed, if we had lived in Venice in early days, as islet after islet was built upon, we should have grudged it but little, I think, though we had been merchants and rich men, that the Greek shafted work, and the carving of the Lombards was drawn nearer and nearer to us and blocked us out a little from the sight of the blue Euganean hills or the Northern mountains.
These observations have value, but cannot be considered as seriously impairing the multiplied evidences of plant adaptation to insect life. Mr. Camus has shown that the flora of a small group of hills, the Euganean Mountains, west of the Apennines and south of the Alps, has a peculiar flora, forming an island in the midst of a contrasted flora existing about it.
The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids, Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. Then, at last, we see the first lamps glitter on the Zattere. The quiet of the night has come.
But on either side, into the defiles of the Euganean hills to the north, into the widening torrent valleys of the Modenese Apennines to the south, the Marquisate of Este stretches up into feudalism, into chivalry, into the imaginative kingdom of the Middle Ages.
Of all the days in the year I would have chosen this to go pilgrim to the house of Petrarch. The Euganean Hills, on one of which the poet's house is built, are those mellow heights which you see when you look southwest across the lagoon at Venice. In misty weather they are blue, and in clear weather silver, and the October sunset loves them.
We are among the Euganean Hills, a group of little humps, shaped like sugar loaves, which rise out of the dead level of the Venetian Plain, south-west of Padua. Here Shelley wrote a famous and beautiful poem, and Venice, on a clear day, is visible in the distance from a monastery perched among trees upon one of the loftiest humps.
Often did they seem to rise purple-coloured from the sea, wearing "the likeness of a clump of peaked isles," as Shelley says of the Euganean hills seen from Venice.
The Cascine of Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above San Guiliano, and the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed the creation of his loveliest lyrics; and his last great poem, the "Triumph of Life", was transferred to paper in his boat upon the Bay of Spezia.
They were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seem from Lido through the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles And then, as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent.
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