DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.786#0096
80 LUNI. [chap. xxxv.
proud headlands—foam-fretted islets—dark heights, pro-
digal of wine and oil—purple mountains behind,—and
naked marble-peaked Apennines over all,
" Islanded in immeasurable air."
About three miles from Sarzana, on the high-road to
Lucca and Pisa, and just before reaching the modern
frontier of Carrara, the traveller will have on his right a
strip of low grassy land, intervening between him and the
sea. Here stood the ancient city. Let him turn out of
the high-road, opposite the Farm of the Iron Hand—
Casino di Man di Ferro—and after a mile or more he will
reach the site. There is little enough to see. Beyond a
few crumbling tombs, and a fragment or two of Roman
ruin, nothing remains of Luna. The fairy scene, described
by Rutilius,7 so appropriate to a spot which bore the name
of the virgin-queen of heaven—"the fair white walls,"
shaming with their brightness the untrodden snow—the
smooth, many-tinted rocks, over-run with " laughing lilies"
—if not the pure creation of the poet, have now vanished
from the sight. Vestiges of an amphitheatre, of a semi-
circular building, which may be a theatre, of a circus, a
piscina, and fragments of columns, pedestals for statues,
blocks of pavement, and inscriptions, are all that Luna has
now to show. The walls, from Rutilius' description, are
supposed to have been of marble; indeed, Ciriacus of
Ancona tells us that what remained of them in the middle
of the fifteenth century, were of that material;s but not
a block is now left to determine the point.
1 Rutil. Itiner. II. 63— Et larri radiat picta nitore silex.
Advehimur celeri candentia mcenia Dives marmoribus tellus, quse luce
lapsu, colons
Nominis est auctor Sole corusca Provocat intactas luxuriosa nives.
soror. 8 Ciriacus, who wrote in 1442, is the
Indigenis superat ridentia lilia saxis, earliest antiquary who gives us an
proud headlands—foam-fretted islets—dark heights, pro-
digal of wine and oil—purple mountains behind,—and
naked marble-peaked Apennines over all,
" Islanded in immeasurable air."
About three miles from Sarzana, on the high-road to
Lucca and Pisa, and just before reaching the modern
frontier of Carrara, the traveller will have on his right a
strip of low grassy land, intervening between him and the
sea. Here stood the ancient city. Let him turn out of
the high-road, opposite the Farm of the Iron Hand—
Casino di Man di Ferro—and after a mile or more he will
reach the site. There is little enough to see. Beyond a
few crumbling tombs, and a fragment or two of Roman
ruin, nothing remains of Luna. The fairy scene, described
by Rutilius,7 so appropriate to a spot which bore the name
of the virgin-queen of heaven—"the fair white walls,"
shaming with their brightness the untrodden snow—the
smooth, many-tinted rocks, over-run with " laughing lilies"
—if not the pure creation of the poet, have now vanished
from the sight. Vestiges of an amphitheatre, of a semi-
circular building, which may be a theatre, of a circus, a
piscina, and fragments of columns, pedestals for statues,
blocks of pavement, and inscriptions, are all that Luna has
now to show. The walls, from Rutilius' description, are
supposed to have been of marble; indeed, Ciriacus of
Ancona tells us that what remained of them in the middle
of the fifteenth century, were of that material;s but not
a block is now left to determine the point.
1 Rutil. Itiner. II. 63— Et larri radiat picta nitore silex.
Advehimur celeri candentia mcenia Dives marmoribus tellus, quse luce
lapsu, colons
Nominis est auctor Sole corusca Provocat intactas luxuriosa nives.
soror. 8 Ciriacus, who wrote in 1442, is the
Indigenis superat ridentia lilia saxis, earliest antiquary who gives us an