DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0219
chap, vi.] BEAUTY AND ANTIQUITY OF THE SITE. 117
What traveller who has visited Rome, has not passed
through Civita Castellana % There is scarcely any object
in Italy better known than its bridge—none assuredly is
more certain to find a place in every tourist's sketch-book;
and well does it merit it. Though little more than a century
old, this bridge or viaduct is worthy of the magnificence of
Imperial Home; and combines with the ravine, the town
on its verge, the distant Campagna, Soracte, and the
Apennines, to form one of the choicest unions of nature
and art to be found in that land where, above all others,
their beauties seem most closely wedded. Yet beyond
this, little or nothing is known of Civita Castellana. Not
one in five hundred who passes through it, and halts
awhile to admire the superb view from the bridge, or
even descends from his carriage to transfer it to his
sketch-book, ever visits the tombs by the Ponte Terrano.
Still fewer descend to the Ponte di Treia; and not one in
a thousand makes the tour of the ravines, or thinks of this
as a site abounding in Etruscan antiquities. My aim is to
direct attention to the objects of antiquarian interest with
which Civita Castellana is surrounded.
Very near the bridge, and on the verge of the cliff on
which the town is built, is a portion of the ancient walls,
of tufo, in emplecton, seventeen courses in height, and
precisely similar in the size and arrangement of its blocks,
to the walls of Sutri and Nepi, already described. It forms
an angle at the verge of the precipice, and is nothing more
than an embankment, or revetement, to the ground within.
. If you here enter the town, and continue down the long
street on the left, you will arrive at the nunnery of St.
Agata, at the north-east angle of the plateau, on which
Civita is built. By its side is a road cut in the rock,
which a very little experience will tell you is Etruscan. It
has on one side a water-course or gutter sunk in the tufo,
What traveller who has visited Rome, has not passed
through Civita Castellana % There is scarcely any object
in Italy better known than its bridge—none assuredly is
more certain to find a place in every tourist's sketch-book;
and well does it merit it. Though little more than a century
old, this bridge or viaduct is worthy of the magnificence of
Imperial Home; and combines with the ravine, the town
on its verge, the distant Campagna, Soracte, and the
Apennines, to form one of the choicest unions of nature
and art to be found in that land where, above all others,
their beauties seem most closely wedded. Yet beyond
this, little or nothing is known of Civita Castellana. Not
one in five hundred who passes through it, and halts
awhile to admire the superb view from the bridge, or
even descends from his carriage to transfer it to his
sketch-book, ever visits the tombs by the Ponte Terrano.
Still fewer descend to the Ponte di Treia; and not one in
a thousand makes the tour of the ravines, or thinks of this
as a site abounding in Etruscan antiquities. My aim is to
direct attention to the objects of antiquarian interest with
which Civita Castellana is surrounded.
Very near the bridge, and on the verge of the cliff on
which the town is built, is a portion of the ancient walls,
of tufo, in emplecton, seventeen courses in height, and
precisely similar in the size and arrangement of its blocks,
to the walls of Sutri and Nepi, already described. It forms
an angle at the verge of the precipice, and is nothing more
than an embankment, or revetement, to the ground within.
. If you here enter the town, and continue down the long
street on the left, you will arrive at the nunnery of St.
Agata, at the north-east angle of the plateau, on which
Civita is built. By its side is a road cut in the rock,
which a very little experience will tell you is Etruscan. It
has on one side a water-course or gutter sunk in the tufo,