DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0309
TERNI.
249
Terni, insignificant as it now assuredly is, has the honour
of being the birth-place of the Emperors Tacitus and Flo-
rian, and likewise of Tacitus the historian. Their names
are inscribed over the gate known by the name of Spoleto.
We are assured, by the guides of Terni, that, formerly,
three monuments attested the claims of the city to the
honour of having produced such illustrious citizens, but
that during a violent storm they were destroyed by light-
ning, and the fragments having, from time to time, been
purloined by travelling virtuosi, nothing now remains but
faith in the traditionary intelligence of the natives to
determine the exact site, or whether indeed they ever
existed.
The city, however, shorn as it is of grandeur, still
boasts of some handsome palaces, and, still better, of
what time cannot deprive it—a most enchanting situa-
tion. The necessaries, and even luxuries of life, are
likewise abundant ; the wines are good and the fertility
of its soil was so remarkable, in ancient times, that
Pliny boasts of the turnips of Interamna weighing be-
tween thirty and forty pounds 1 He adds, likewise, that
the meadows were so luxuriant that four crops of grass
could be obtained from them within the year.
But the object from which Terni derives its principal
reputation, and to which the visits of travellers are chiefly
directed, is the beautiful and celebrated cascade in its
vicinity. Though generally known by the name of the
Cascade of Terni, its more classical appellation is that of
“ La cascata delle marmore," so called from the mountain
and rock over which the water is precipitated being chiefly
composed of a kind of yellow marble. The river Velino,
249
Terni, insignificant as it now assuredly is, has the honour
of being the birth-place of the Emperors Tacitus and Flo-
rian, and likewise of Tacitus the historian. Their names
are inscribed over the gate known by the name of Spoleto.
We are assured, by the guides of Terni, that, formerly,
three monuments attested the claims of the city to the
honour of having produced such illustrious citizens, but
that during a violent storm they were destroyed by light-
ning, and the fragments having, from time to time, been
purloined by travelling virtuosi, nothing now remains but
faith in the traditionary intelligence of the natives to
determine the exact site, or whether indeed they ever
existed.
The city, however, shorn as it is of grandeur, still
boasts of some handsome palaces, and, still better, of
what time cannot deprive it—a most enchanting situa-
tion. The necessaries, and even luxuries of life, are
likewise abundant ; the wines are good and the fertility
of its soil was so remarkable, in ancient times, that
Pliny boasts of the turnips of Interamna weighing be-
tween thirty and forty pounds 1 He adds, likewise, that
the meadows were so luxuriant that four crops of grass
could be obtained from them within the year.
But the object from which Terni derives its principal
reputation, and to which the visits of travellers are chiefly
directed, is the beautiful and celebrated cascade in its
vicinity. Though generally known by the name of the
Cascade of Terni, its more classical appellation is that of
“ La cascata delle marmore," so called from the mountain
and rock over which the water is precipitated being chiefly
composed of a kind of yellow marble. The river Velino,