Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
I was sorry for what I had said, for I had put Betty, who was incapable of a lie, to great pain. We started at ten o'clock with three horses, and as a cool wind was blowing we had a pleasant drive, arriving at Radicofani at noon.
All of them wear such knives, and are very apt to use them on the slightest provocation. But their open attacks are not so formidable as their premeditated schemes of revenge; in the prosecution of which the Italians are equally treacherous and cruel. This night we passed at a place called Radicofani, a village and fort, situated on the top of a very high mountain.
The wind having risen, every door began to shake, and every board substituted for a window to clatter, as if the severe power who dwells on the topmost peak of Radicofani, according to its village mythologists, was about to visit his abode. My only spell to keep him at a distance was kindling an enormous fire, whose charitable gleams cheered my spirits, and gave them a quicker flow.
After glancing at these pleasant accommodations, my wife and I, with J , set out to ascend the hill and visit the town of Radicofani. It is not more than a quarter of a mile above our hotel, and is accessible by a good piece of road, though very steep.
The walls are flat and even, pierced at regular intervals with windows, except upon the south-west side, where the rectangular design is broken by a noble double Loggiata, gallery rising above gallery serene curves of arches, grandly proportioned columns, massive balustrades, a spacious corridor, a roomy vaulting opening out upon the palace garden, and offering fair prospect over the wooded heights of Castiglione and Rocca d'Orcia, up to Radicofani and shadowy Amiata.
Not staying long in the Duomo, we left Sienna in good time; and, after being shaken and tumbled in the worst roads that were ever pretended to be made use of, found ourselves beneath the rough mountains round Radicofani, about seven o'clock on a cold and dismal evening. Up we toiled a steep craggy ascent, and reached at length the inn upon its summit.
Having satisfied my curiosity at Rome, I prepared for my departure, and as the road between Radicofani and Montefiascone is very stony and disagreeable, I asked the banker Barazzi, if there was not a better way of returning to Florence, expressing a desire at the same time to see the cascade of Terni.
It was a death-in-life little place, a fossilized place, and yet the street was thronged, and had all the bustle of a city; even more noise than a city's street, because everybody in Radicofani knows everybody, and probably gossips with everybody, being everybody's blood relation, as they cannot fail to have become after they and their forefathers have been shut up together within the narrow walls for many hundred years.
In Tuscany, as at Radicofani, Viterbo, and Aquapendente, and in the Campagna di Roma, submarine volcanic tuffs are interstratified with the Older Pliocene strata of the Sub-apennine hills in such a manner as to leave no doubt that they were the products of eruptions which occurred when the shelly marls and sands of the Sub-appenine hills were in the course of deposition.
I went upstairs in my turn with my carpet bag, and supper was served directly, as we had to start very early the next morning if we wished to reach Radicofani before the noonday heat. We had an excellent supper, as the count had preceded us by six hours, and the landlord had had plenty of time to make his preparations.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking