Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/373

Rh Bk. VIII Ch. IV. CIVIC BUILDINGS. 357 and its colors so fascinating that it pleases in spite of all its de- fects of design, and is more characteristic of the truly native feeling shown in the treatment of the pointed style of architecture than the more ambitious examples which were erected under direct foreign influence. Civic Buildings. The free towns of Italy required civic buildings almost to the same extent as the contemporary cities in Belgium, though not quite of the same class. Their commerce, for instance, did not require trade-halls, but no town was without its town-hall, or palazzo pubblico^ and belfry. The intrinsic difficulty of the designing of buildings of this class, as compared with churches, has already been pointed out. It cannot therefore be expected that the Italians, who failed in the easier task, should have succeeded in the harder. The town-hall at Siena is perhaps the best existing example, most of the others having been so altered that it is difficult to judge of their original effect. This must be pronounced to be a very poor architectural performance, flat and unmeaning, and without any lines or style of ornament to group the windows together into one composition, so that they are mere scat- tered openings in the wall. That at Perugfa seems originally to have been better, though now greatly disfigured. At Florence the Palazzo Vecchio is more of a feudal fortalice (required, it must be confessed, to keep the turbulent citizens in order) than the municipal palace of a peaceful community. In Ferrara and other cities the palazzo pubblico is really and virtually a fortress and nothing else. At Piacenza it consists of a range of bold pointed stone arches, su])porting an upper story of brick, adorned with a range of circular-headed windows, richly ornamented, and a pleasing specimen of the mode in which the Italians avoided the difficulty of filling the upper parts of their windows with tracery (which they never liked), and at the same time rendered them ornamental exter- nally. At Padua and Vicenza are two great halls supported on arcades, in intention like that of Piacenza, but far from possessing its beauty. That at Padua remains in all its pristine ugliness, as hideous an erection as any perpetrated in the Middle Ages. The hall is one of the largest in Europe, measuring 240 ft. in length by 84 in width (Westminster Hall is 238 X 67), but wholly without ornament or beauty of proportion. Externally the arcades that are stuck to its sides do not relieve its mass, and are not beautiful in themselves. That at Vicenza, though originally very similar, has been fortunate in having its outside clothed in one of Palladio's most successful