Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

t out into a vague mystery of silhouetted outline, whether viewed by daylight or moonlight. The great gates of the ramparts still guard the approach

y the Piazza; and the picture is true to-day, in a different sense. In former days it was a bloody "mis-en-scène" for intrigue and jealou

ella Sign

y a halo of magnificent feudal pal

ling, spouting fountains, many of them artistically and monumenta

to be equalled in any other city of Siena's class. Leaving that "noble extravagance in marble," Siena's Cat

s choice was horse racing. And each year, "Il Palio," on July the 2nd and on August the 16th, becomes a great popular amusement of the Sienese. It is most interesting, and still picturesquely medi?val in costuming and setting; and is a civic function and fête a great deal more artistically done-as g

nd the gay so far as manners and customs and conditions of life go. On the north are the charming, smiling hills and vales, bright with villas, groves and vines; whilst to the sout

baldi was arrested by government spies, by the order of the monarch to whom he had presented the sovereignty of Napl

y to the left. The towns bearing the same names are charming enough from

l of an unspoiled medi?val town, with a half dozen palazzo fa?ades, which mig

than a glorified graveyard, but is unique in its class. Lars Porsena of Clusium comes down to us as a memory of school-tim

ugh they are to all, but only the antiquary will have any real passion for them, so mos

bit of roadway up which the Popes fled in the middle ages when hard pressed by their enemies. Clement VII, one of the unhappy

ch in the grandeur of its monuments as in their character. The cathedral is reckoned one of the great Gothic shrines of Italy, and that, indeed, is the chief reason

vi

g travellers, of a decade or a generation ago, of being a broken-down palace and a worse hotel. If one wants to dwell

, it is a progressive, busy place, of something like twenty thousand souls, most of whom, appear to be engaged in the wine industry. On the Piazza Fontana is a magnifi

ch of Renaissance times; and all the master minds and hands of the builders of the day seem to have had more or less to do with it. These Italians of the Renaissance were inventors of nothing; but their daring and ingenuity in combining ideas taken, bodily, from those of antiquity, made more successful and happy combinations than those of the architects of to-day, who bu

y to Rome, skirts the lapping waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Off shore is Elba, with its Napoleonic memories, and the Island of Monte Cristo which is considered usually a myth, but which exists in the real to-

anks are here, and garage accommodations as well. The Italian mail boats for Sardinia leave daily, if one is inclined to make a

Porta Cavalleggeri and crosses the

Minerve are vouched for by the Touring Club, and the former has garage accommodation. At either of these modern establishments you get the fare of Paris, Vienna, Londo

e which stood at the southeast corner of the Square Saint Eustace. It was the resort

e class, the common people, were for the "Italians." Traditions die hard in Rome, and many an old resident will tell tales to-day of the blessings of a Papal Government, which formerly forbade the discussion of religion or politics in public

angers; there is no doubt about that; that is almost its sole industry. As Henri Taine said: "Rome is nothing but a

scany or Lombardy; their physiognomies have become the same. The monks and seminarists and priests and prelates are still there, but only by sufferance, like ourselves. They are no more Romans than are we. Tourists i

he Coliseum, Ro

e Coliseum, R

ome falls-

many of its monuments, fr

ence of from sixty to seventy feet, may still be expected to give up finds to the industrious pick and

here will be the Rome of the C?sars? "Rome, Unhappy City!" some one has said, and truly; not for its past, but for its present. Whatever the fascination of Rome may be it is not born of first impressions; the new quarters are painfully new and the streets are unpicturesque and the Tiber is d

Sant'Ang

'Angelo is Rome's most popular monument. It has been a fortress for a th

delivered himself in Latin of the words: "Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," gave up his life in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, "on the last day of June when the people of Rome were celebrating the festivity of the decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle." This was fo

was imprisoned the unnatural Catherine Sforz

alled in honour of an Angel who descended before Saint Gregory the

Gandia and Lucrezia Borgia. She was an inn-keeper of repute, according to history, and her career was most momentus. The automobilist wonders if this i

gia Win

ourists usually do as a morning's sight seeing. They do too much! Anyway one doesn't need to take

antiquity the site was known as the Collis Hortorum, the Hillside of Gardens. Lucullus, Prince of Voluptuousness, and Messaline, the Emp

me into the hands of Cardinal Alessandro di Medici. The Tuscan Grand Dukes owned it a century or so la

Medici

nearest of the great country houses to the centre of Rome. Many have tried to do so, but few have succeeded. Better far

oll about the Forum, no matter how often he may have been here before, though its palaces

ibed stone tablet, which, owing to the archaic Latin it contained, he found it impossible to read

U

ELA

LIA

ription must be incomplete, others asserted that the word was an abbreviation of "queo,

He approached and asked the reason of the crowd. He was told, a

li asini" ("This is

s crept quietly away, while the Commendatore in good, mode