Ch. 21: Angera and Arona - Page 2

up to the castle, which I have now visited off and on for many years, and like always better and better each time I go there. I know no place comparable to it in its own way. I know no place so pathetic, and yet so impressive, in its decay. It is not a ruin--all ruins are frauds--it is only decayed. It is a kind of Stokesay or Ightham Mote, better preserved than the first, and less furnished than the second, but on a grander scale than either, and set in incomparably finer surroundings. The path towards it passes the church, which has been spoiled. Outside this there are parts of old Roman columns from some temple, stuck in the ground; inside are two statues called St. Peter and St. Paul, but evidently effigies of some magistrates in the Roman times. If the traveller likes to continue the road past the church for three- quarters of a mile or so, he will get a fine view of the castle, and if he goes up to the little chapel of S. Quirico on the top of the hill on his right hand, he will look down upon it and upon Arona. We will suppose, however, that he goes straight for the castle itself; every moment as he approaches it, it will seem finer and finer; presently he will turn into a vineyard on his left, and at once begin to climb.

Passing under the old gateway--with its portcullis still ready to be dropped, if need be, and with the iron plates that sheathe it pierced with bullets--as at S. Michele, the visitor enters at once upon a terrace from which the two foregoing illustrations were taken. I know nothing like this terrace. On a summer's afternoon and evening it is fully shaded, the sun being behind the castle. The lake and town below are still in sunlight. This, I think, is about the best time to see the castle--say from six to eight on a July evening, or at any hour on a gray day.

Count Borromeo, to whom the castle belongs, allows it to be shown, and visitors are numerous. There is very little furniture inside the rooms, and the little there is is decaying; the walls are covered with pictures, mostly copies, and none of them of any great merit, but the rooms themselves are lovely. Here is a sketch of the one in which San Carlo Borromeo was born, but the one on the floor beneath is better still. The whole of this part was built about the year 1350, and inside, where the weather has not reached, the stones are as sharp as if they had been cut yesterday. It was in the great Sala of this castle that the rising against the Austrians in 1848 was planned; then there is the Sala di Giustizia, a fine room, with the remains of frescoes; the roof and the tower should also certainly be visited. All is solid and real, yet it is like an Italian opera in actual life. Lastly, there is the kitchen, where the wheel still remains in which a turnspit dog used to be put to turn it and roast the meat; but this room is not shown to strangers.

The inner court of the castle is as beautiful as the outer one. Through the open door one