Fiesole

“ There are no more views of populous Fiesole; we are in a new world, over which Mr. Ruskin feels justified in making lament. After expanding with his customary word-painting upon the view from Fiesole over Val d'Arno, he continues thus: "The traveller passes the Fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. The country is on a sudden lonely. Here and there, indeed, are scattered houses of a farm grouped gracefully upon the hillsides; here and there the fragment of a tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens nor flowers nor glittering palaces exist." ”

“ Fiesole, with its tower and Acropolis, stood out brightly from the blue background, and the hill of San Miniato lay with its cypress groves in the softest morning light. The Contadini were driving into the city in their basket wagons, and there were some fair young faces among them, that made us think Italian beauty was not altogether in the imagination. ”

“ The afternoon lights rest on them as if to thank them for not being worse, and their vistas are liberal where they look toward the hills. They carry you close to these admirable elevations, which hang over Florence on all sides, and if in the foreground your sense is a trifle perplexed by the white pavements dotted here and there with a policeman or a nursemaid, you have only to reach beyond and see Fiesole turn to violet, on its ample eminence, from the effect of the opposite sunset. ”

“ He gave the name—the name which I heard at Fiesole from Miss Bell, and he added: 'Everybody knows about that.'
"So you loved him. You love him still! He is near you, doubtless. He goes every year to the Dinard races. I have been told so. I see him. I see everything. If you knew the images that worry me, you would say, 'He is mad,' and you would take pity on me. Oh, how I should like to forget you and everything! But I can not. You know very well I can not forget you except with you. I see you incessantly with him. It is torture. I thought I was unfortunate that night on the banks of the Arno. ”

“ The azure of the frescoes of Fiesole had furnished the blue of his eyes; his hairs, of the blond of an aureole, seemed painted one by one, with the gold of the illuminators of the Middle Ages. . . . One would have said, that from the height of his Gothic pinnacle Célestin Nanteuil overlooked the actual town, hovering above the sea of roofs, regarding the eddying blue smoke, perceiving the city squares like a checkerboard, the streets like the notches of a saw in a stone bench, the passers-by like mice ”

“ Fiesole, the cradle of Florence, is visible among the heights at the east, and San Miniato, with its grove of cypresses, is farther off to the south. There is no end of beauty and interest, and the view becomes ideal and poetic the moment the sun begins its decline; for then the rose and purple mists drape the hills, and mountains—the common earth—turn to amethysts, topazes, and sapphires, and words can never convey an idea of the opaline heavens, which seem to have illimitable abysses of a penetrable substance, made up of the light of pearls. ”

“ Even the very back streets of Florence recall at every step its mediæval magnificence. But when from Florence itself one turns to Fiesole, the city by the Arno sinks at once by a sudden revulsion into a mere thing of yesterday by the side of the city on the Etruscan hill-top. Fiesole was a town of immemorial antiquity while Florence was still, what perhaps its poetical name imports, a field of flowers. ”

“ Fancy yourself lifted to the summit of a high hill, whose base slopes down to the valley of the Arno, and looking northward. Behind you is a confusion of hill and valley, growing gradually dimmer away to the horizon. Before and below you is a vale, with Florence and her great domes and towers in its lap, and across its breadth of five miles the mountain of Fiesole. To the west it stretches away unbroken for twenty miles, covered thickly with white villas—like a meadow of daisies, magnified. ”

“ We took up our quarters at the Pension Suisse, and on the first evening we took the most agreeable drive to be had round Florence—the drive to Fiesole. It is in this view that the eye takes in the greatest extent of green, billowy hills, besprinkled with white houses, looking almost like flocks of sheep; the great, silent, uninhabited mountains lie chiefly behind; the plain of the Arno stretches far to the right. ”

“ In the afternoon we drove to Fiesole.
Thursday, April 8th.
Housman is not coming back. He is obliged to go to Paris and he will go straight to London from there.
We drove to Fiesole in the morning. Had luncheon with some Italian friends of Mrs Campion, Count and Countess Alberti. Nobody there except the host and hostess and their three children. A fine villa and no garden. Countess Alberti said it was no use having a garden if one lived here in summer, as everything dried up. She is a charming woman, natural and unpretentious, and talks English like an Englishwoman. ”

“ Here sits on her hill the weird old Etrurian nurse of Florence, withered, superannuated, feeble, warming her palsied limbs in the sun, and looking vacantly down upon the beautiful child whose cradle she rocked. Fiesole is perhaps the oldest Italian city. The inhabitants of middle and lower Italy were Pelasgians by origin, like the earlier races of Greece. The Etrurians were an aboriginal stock,—that is to say, as far as anything can be definitely stated regarding their original establishment in the peninsula; for they, too, doubtless came, at some remote epoch, from beyond the Altai mountains. ”

“ In crowded Fiesole, I saw the regular Tuscan country type, brown eyes, yellow or clear, white skin, thin, longish face, brown or fair, but never black hair, strong, healthy bodies. The masculine type with which I was acquainted from the soldiers, was undeniably handsomer than our own, in particular, was more intelligent; the young women were modest, reserved in their manner, seldom entered into conversation with the men, and despite the fire in their eyes, manifested a certain peasant bashfulness, which seems to be the same everywhere. ”

“ Coming out from Florence by another gateway, through the Porta San Gallo, runs the Fiesole highway. A landmark, which can be readily pointed out by anyone, is the villa once possessed by Walter Savage Landor and inhabited by him for nearly thirty years. Here the famous men of letters of the middle years of the last century visited him. Here he revelled amid memories of Boccaccio and wrote the Pentameron. There is talk of buying the place and consecrating it to his memory.
All the way from Florence to Fiesole the roads are lined with typical Florentine villas and country houses. ”

“ In such a stream trough, on a spur of the Hill of Fiesole, grow the most beautiful poet's laurels I can think of. The place is one of those hollowings out of a hillside which, revealing how high they lie only by the sky-lines of distant hills, always feel so pleasantly remote. And the peace and austerity of this little valley are heightened by the dove-cot of a farm invisible in the olive-yards, and looking like a hermitage's belfry. The olives are scant and wan in the fields all round, with here and there the blossom of an almond ”

“ Sometimes as I take tea in their beautiful grounds I hear, over the wall, the electric tram squealing up the new road with its loads of hot, dusty, unintelligent tourists who are going to ‘do’ Fiesole in an hour in order that they may say they have been there, and I think—think—I think how little they think what lies so near them. ”

“ At the east side of the town, by the Via Alfieri or Pinti, is the Protestant cemetery, between the Boulevards Eugenio and Amedeo, the latter leading northwards to the Piazza Cavour with the Porta S. Gallo. From this Porta commences the road to the Etrurian city of Faesula, the modern Fiesole, 3 miles from Florence, and about 600 feet above it, on the summit of a ridge composed of a dark-coloured sandstone. Rail to Fiesole. Carriage there and back, 8 to 10 fr. From the Porta S. Gallo it is an easy walk of about 21⁄2 miles. ”

“ The city of Fiesole being destroyed save the fortress of the citadel, as has been aforesaid, many Fiesolans came thence to dwell in Florence and made one people with the Florentines, and by reason of their coming it behoved to increase the walls and the circuit of the city of Florence, as hereafter shall be narrated. ”

“ It is stated in the text of Hakewill’s book that the view of Florence from Fiesole was “taken from the garden of the Franciscan convent at Fiesole,” but Mr. Ruskin has pointed out that the little bend of wall within which some monks are standing in the foreground on the left is not really a part of the Franciscan garden, but is one of the turns of the road in the ascent to Fiesole.
Mr. Ruskin regarded the Turin, from the Superga as one of his “very chiefly valued possessions.” And well he might. It is indeed a most exquisite and delightful piece of work. ”

“ In the year of Christ 1125, the Florentines came with an army to the fortress of Fiesole, which was still standing and very strong, and it was held by certain gentlemen Cattani, which had been of the city of Fiesole, and thither resorted highwaymen and refugees and evil men, which sometimes infested the roads and country of Florence ”

“ Doria called from every part of Italy the most famous architects to embellish this palace. The sculptures of Montorsoli and of Giovanni and Silvio Corsini da Fiesole, the paintings of Pierin del Vaga, Pordenone, Gerolamo da Trevigi, Giulio Romano and Beccafumi rendered this residence famous throughout Italy. Here he was surrounded by his own soldiers, and received, writes Mascardi, [21] not as a simple citizen, but as a proud grandee. The same author ascribes to this luxury of life the origin of the conspiracy of Fieschi ”

“ El. i. 8: 11-13. human beings, and searching by the aid of astronomy through all the confines of Europe for the most healthy and best situated place which could be chosen by him, he took up his abode on the mount of Fiesole, which seemed to him strong in position and well situated. And upon that rock he began and built the city of Fiesole, by the counsel of the said Apollinus, who found out by astronomical arts that Fiesole Inf. xv. 61-63. Par. xv. 126. was in the best and most healthy place that there was in the said third part of the world called Europe. ”

“ On the site of this camp, as we are also assured by Villani, was erected the city of Florence, after the capture of Fiesole by Pompey, Cæsar, and Martius; but Leonardo Aretino, following Malespini, asserts that it was the work of Sylla's legions, who were already in possession of Fiesole. ... The variety of opinions almost equals the number of authors. ... It may be reasonably concluded that Florence, springing originally from Fiesole, finally rose to the rank of a Roman colony and the seat of provincial government ”

“ FAESULAE (mod. Fiesole, q.v.) , an ancient city of Etruria, on the height 3 m. to the N.E. of Florentia, 970 ft. above sea-level. Remains of its walls are preserved on all sides, especially on the N.E., in one place to a height of 12 to 14 courses. The blocks are often not quite rectangular, and the courses sometimes change; but the general tendency is horizontal and the walls are not of remote antiquity, the irregularities in them being rather due to the hardness of the material employed, the rock of the hill itself. ”

“ The great alluvial plain lies north of the river; the three streams whose silt contributes to form it flow into the main channel from Pistoja and Prato. To live across the river on the south bank would have been absolutely impossible for the owners of the plain. But Fiesole occupies a central spur of the northern heights, overlooking the valley to east and west, and must therefore have been always the natural place from which to command the plain of Arno. A little above and a little below Florence gorges once more hem the river in. ”

“ The harvest of that agricultural operation was reaped by Florence; for the conqueror immediately afterwards, by command of the Roman Senate, converted a little suburb at the bottom of the hill into a city. Into this the Fiesolans removed at once, and found themselves very comfortable there; being saved the trouble of going up and down a mountain every time they came out and went home again. Florence took its name from one Fiorino, marshal of the camp, in the Roman army, who was killed in the battle of Fiesole. ”

“ A body of two thousand men were destined to approach by different routes towards Florence, so as to be in readiness at the time appointed for striking the blow.
'Shortly afterwards the Archbishop requested the presence of the Cardinal at Florence, where he immediately repaired, and took up his residence at a seat of the Pazzi, about a mile from the city. It seems to have been the intention of the conspirators to have effected their purpose at Fiesole, where Lorenzo then had his country [124] residence, to which they supposed he would invite the Cardinal and his attendants. ”

“ JULIA (stops him) . Stay! art thou mad? Must I, then, declare a passion which the whole race of men, upon their knees, should not extort from my inflexible pride? Alas! in vain the darkness strives to hide the blushes which betray my guilt. Fiesco—I wound the pride of all my sex—my sex will all detest me—Fiesco—I adore thee— (falls at his feet) .
FIESCO (steps back without raising her, laughing with exultation) . That I am sorry for, signora— (rings the bell—draws the tapestry, and discovers LEONORA) . Here is my wife—an angel of a woman! (Embracing her.) ”