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Updated: May 9, 2025
Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall block piled on block of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful waste.
On the great canal, which has a winding course between the two principal parts of the city, are situated the most magnificent of the great houses, or palaces as they are termed; some of them of a beautiful style of architecture, with fronts of Istrian marble, and containing valuable collections of pictures.
The roof is composed of a single block of Istrian limestone, scooped out like a shallow bowl inside; and, being the biggest roof-stone I ever saw, I will give you the dimensions. It is thirty-six feet in diameter, hollowed out to the depth of ten feet, four feet thick at the center, and two feet nine inches at the edges, and is estimated to weigh two hundred tons.
In 610 armed Byzantine soldiers entered the basilicas and dragged three Istrian bishops from the altars, with menaces and vituperation, compelling them to accompany them to Grado, where they were forced to bend to the Imperial commands and reconsecrate Candidiano patriarch.
The broad quays are thronged with people of many nationalities and varied costumes, from the ships which lie along them flaunting ensigns of all kinds red and white crosses, blue, yellow, and black stripes, moons and stars Italian, Norwegian, Greek, Turkish, French, and Montenegrin, as well as Istrian and Dalmatian.
Nor would it suit the manner of this medley to hunt the Lombardi through palaces and churches, pointing out their singularities of violet and yellow panellings in marble, the dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the delicacy of their shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white Istrian stone.
In 1550 Michele Sanmicheli, and subsequently his nephew Alvise Brignoli and others were sent by the senate to report, and finally the repair of the walls of many of the Istrian towns was committed to Constantine and Francesco Capi.
He pushed out upon the Grand Canal, where as yet there were few boats and no gondolas at all, and soon he turned the corner of the Salute and rowed out slowly upon the Giudecca, where the merchant vessels lay at anchor, large and small, galliots and feluccas and many a broad 'trabacolo' from the Istrian coast, with huge spreading bows, and hawse ports painted scarlet like great red eyes.
The mouth is known as Porto Torre, from a little place on the Parenzo side of the river. The city was a Roman colony with the name Æmonia, and the seat of an early Istrian bishop. A few years ago some seventy carved slabs of the eighth or ninth century were discovered face downwards in the pavement of the crypt of the basilica, which appear to have belonged to the font and choir enclosure.
Here are some very ancient stones with Mycenean whorls cut upon Istrian material, perhaps by some prisoner taken by Istrian pirates; also stones with these whorls half obliterated, and hollows sunk here and there, which, it is thought, were a kind of star map made by shepherds when Istria was wooded, to direct them in driving their flocks.
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