th have to be looked for. The church of Saint Justus at
Trieste crowns the hill as well as the church of Saint Cyriacus at
Ancona; but it does not in the same way proclaim its presence. The
castle, with its ugly modern fortifications, rises again above the
church; and the duomo of Trieste, with its shapeless outline and its
low, heavy, unsightly campanile, does not catch the eyes like the Greek
cross and cupola of Ancona.
Again at Trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have been a
rival to the arch at Ancona; and now either we have to hunt it out by an
effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it does, at the
head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. Of a truth it can
not compete with Ancona or with Rimini, with Orange[6] or with Aosta.
But the duomo, utterly unsightly as it is in a general view, puts on
quite a new character when we first see the remains of pagan times
imprisoned in the lower stage of the heavy campanile, still more so when
we take our first glance of its wonderful interior. At the first glimpse
we see that here there is a mystery to be unraveled; and as we gradually
find the clue to the marvelous changes which it has undergone, we
feel that outside show is not everything, and that, in point both
of antiquity and of interest, tho' not of actual beauty, the double
basilica of Trieste may claim no mean place among buildings of its own
type. Even after the glories of Rome and Ravenna, the Tergestine church
may be studied with no small pleasure and profit, as an example of a
kind of transformation of which neither Rome nor Ravenna can supply
another example....
The other ancient relic at Trieste is the small triumphal arch. On one
side it keeps its Corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded
in a house. The arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close
together, and touch in the keystone. The Roman date of this arch can not
be doubted; but legends connect it both with Charles the Great and with
Richard of Poitou and of England, a prince about whom Tergestine fancy
has been very busy. The popular name of the arch is Arco Riccardo.
Such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that the
antiquary will find in Trieste; not much in point of number, but, in the
case of the duomo at least, of surpassing interest in their own way. But
the true merit of Trieste is not in anything that it has itself, its
church, its arch, its noble site. P
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