File:Italian cities (1903) (14774308124).jpg

Identifier: italiancities01blas (find matches)
Title: Italian cities
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Blashfield, Edwin Howland, 1848-1936 Blashfield, Evangeline Wilbour, d. 1918
Subjects: Art -- Italy Cities and towns -- Italy Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Scribner's
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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a kind of SantaBarbara to the tower of Or San Michele. For inearly times, when the microcosmic republic notonly furnished manufactures to the world, but madeits own bread to feed its own soldiers, the captainsof Or San Michele mounted the tower yearly and,looking out upon the fields, decided by their appear-ance what should be the current price of wheat.The goddess is gone, column and all, but plenty stillreigns below in the market — and what a place itis! A wide rectangle, its centre unpaved; thehouses, tall and short, crowded with windows, andbelow, about three sides of the piazza, a noisy,smoking, unfragrant medley of shops ; a constantpush and shouting; a crossing of handcarts; a fizz-^ ing of spiders as the fat drips from polenta browningnicely and eaten hot, a crackling of charcoal underthe chestnut braziers and open-air cooking of everysort and kind. If Tito, after his nap, had found buta grosso or so in his pocket, he would have taken 210 FLORENCE PIAZZA DEL MERCATO VECCHIO
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IN FLORENCE WITH ROMOLA pretty Tessas kiss and cup of milk as dessert andgone for his meal to one of those tempting al frescocook-shops, with its large, clear fire, its rows ofneatly dressed fowls and joints turning on theirspits, the hot cakes of chestnut-flour and crisp slicesof polenta fizzling in their pans, and its brass plattersand porringers engraved with quaint old patterns,gleaming in the firelight. Here Tessa might findher herlingozzi to-day or Baldassarre his bread andmeat; and we may see their modern counterparts —shabby men in long cloaks and slouched felt hats,pretty girls in serge dresses and gay headkerchiefs— see them best of all after nightfall, when thebrazier-fires seem to leap up higher and make wildEembrandt effects upon the faces of BersaglierivavincX\mg polenta under their waving cocks feathers,or brown peasants looking curiously at the rudewoodcuts heading the penny ballads that line thewalls. There is less amateur fighting on thesquare than in the old tim

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