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We were very pleased with the fine echo in this Veronese amphitheatre. The fortifications of the city are remarkably fine. Sanmicheli, the Italian engineer who planned them, was certainly a great architect; the Doric gate, Porta Strippa, Porta Nuova, and many of the buildings and palaces in Verona, were designed and built by him, and are good examples of his remarkable powers.
Verona is rich in tombs. From our windows in the Due Torri we looked across to the monument of Guglielmo del Castelbarco, a friend of the Delle Scale, whose massive sarcophagus stands beneath a high Gothic canopy over the gateway of a building which once formed part of the convent of Sta. Anastasia. As we gazed down into the square, with its fountain and groups of old women drawing water, and sometimes setting down their ewers to go and say a short prayer in the beautiful old church of Sta. Anastasia, we used to think that if this outlook were included in the charge for our rooms, we were not paying too much. Another fine monument, by the architect Sanmicheli, to two brothers who rejoiced in the surname of Verit
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.
Time would fail to tell of all the architects who crowd the first half of the sixteenth century of Antonio di San Gallo, famous for fortifications; of Baccio d'Agnolo, who raised the Campanile of S. Spirito at Florence; of Giovanni Maria Falconetto, to whose genius Padua owed so many princely edifices; of Michele Sanmicheli, the military architect of Verona, and the builder of five mighty palaces for the nobles of his native city.
It was made a Roman colony about the year B.C. 89. It has been the birthplace of many of Italy's brightest geniuses Catullus, the special poet of Verona, as Virgil was of Mantua, Cornelius Nepos, Æmilius Maca, Vitruvius, Pliny the younger, Scaliger, Sanmicheli, Paul Veronese; and it also possesses great historical interest, and many antiquities and remains of ancient buildings.
Not by rule, nor by study, can the gift of graceful proportionate design be obtained; only by the intuition of genius can so much as a single tier of facade be beautifully arranged; and the man has just cause for pride, as far as our gifts can ever be a cause for pride, who finds himself able, in a design of his own, to rival even the simplest arrangement of parts in one by Sanmicheli, Inigo Jones, or Christopher Wren.
We did not anchor but, slowing to half-speed, made the circuit of the little port, running close enough to the shore to obtain pictures of the famous Loggia built by Sanmicheli, the Fondazo, the ancient Venetian arsenal, and the crumbling Spanish fort, perched high on a crag above the town.
Its walls and gates, its ornate houses, its fort and Sanmicheli tower, all set like a mosaic of jewels in a ring of myrtles, oleanders, and laurels, delighted our eyes; and the farther we went on the way to Spalato, keeping always by the glittering sea, the more beautiful grew the scene. The walls along our road were well-nigh hidden with agaves and rosemary.
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