rywhere paved
with flags. Before the first years of the fourteenth century the Italian
cities presented a spectacle of solid and substantial comfort, very
startling to northerners who travelled from the unpaved lanes of London
and the muddy labyrinths of Paris.

Sismondi remarks with just pride that these great works were Republican.
They were set on foot for the public use, and were constructed at the
expense of the commonwealths. It is, however, right to add that what the
communes had begun the princes continued. To the splendid taste of the
Visconti dynasty, for instance, Milan owed her wonderful Duomo and the
octagon bell-tower of S. Gottardo. The Certosas of Pavia and Chiaravalle,
the palace of Pavia, and a host of minor monuments remain in Milan and its
neighbourhood to prove how much a single family performed for the
adornment of the cities they had subjugated. And what is true of Milan
applies to Italy throughout its length and breadth. The Despots held their
power at the price of magnificence in schemes of public utility. So much
at least of the free spirit of the communes survived in them, that they
were always rivalling each other in great works of architecture. Italian
tyranny implied aesthetic taste and liberality of expenditure.

In no way is the characteristic diversity of the Italian communities so
noticeable as in their buildings. Each district, each town, has a
well-defined peculiarity, reflecting the specific qualities of the
inhabitants and the conditions under which they grew in culture. In some
cases we may refer this local character to nationality and geographical
position. Thus the name of the Lombards has been given to a style of
Romanesque, which prevailed through Northern and Central Italy during the
period of Lombard ascendency.[10] The Tuscans never forgot the domes of
their remote ancestors; the Romans adhered closely to Latin traditions;
the Southerners were affected by Byzantine and Saracenic models. In many
instances the geology of the neighbourhood determined the picturesque
features of its architecture. The clay-fields of the valley of the Po
produced the brickwork of Cremona, Pavia, Crema, Chiaravalle, and
Vercelli. To their quarries of _mandorlato_ the Veronese builders owed the
peach-bloom colours of their columned aisles. Carrara provided the Pisans
with mellow marble for their Baptistery and Cathedral; Monte Ferrato
supplied Pistoja and Prato with green serpentine; while the _piet