(Cadore is in the Italian part of the Dolomites)]

[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, VENICE]

[Illustration: TOMB OF THE SCALIGERS AT VERONA]

[Illustration: MILAN CATHEDRAL
(See Vol. VII for article on Milan Cathedral)]

[Illustration: BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
(See Vol. VII for article on Pisa)]

IV

THREE FAMOUS CITIES

IN THE STREETS OF GENOA[1]

BY CHARLES DICKENS

The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare can
well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to live and
walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or
breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of
colors, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of
repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses
in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris....

When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the
Strada Baldi! The endless details of these rich palaces; the walls of
some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,
heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier; with here
and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up--a huge marble
platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows,
immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like
arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers; among which the
eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by
another--the terrace gardens between house and house, with green arches
of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full
bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street--the painted halls,
moldering and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still
shining out in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where the walls
are dry--the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding
wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and standing in
niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than
elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who on a more
recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what seems
to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial--the steep,
steep, up-hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all
that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways--the
magnificent and innum