A Book of the Riviera/Chapter 17

by Sabine Baring-Gould

CHAPTER XVII

SAN REMO

Two San Remos—The Pinecone—Earthquakes—Matuta—Sold to the Genoese—Church of S. Syro—Domestic architecture unchanging—Narrow streets—Leprosy—San Romolo—Lampedusa—River names—Taggia—Doctor Antonio—Home of Ruffini—The Bresca family—Raising of the obelisk in the piazza of S. Peter—Palms—How bleached—The date-palm.

THERE are two San Remos, that of to-day, with its pretentious villas rivalling each other in ugliness, and the old San Remo. The former is clean with open spaces, a broad main street, and is dotted about with palms and agaves in sub-tropical gardens. The old San Remo is a network, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes. This old portion goes by the name of la Pigna, the Pinecone, because of the manner in which the ancient houses are grouped, pressed together one on another, rising towards a culminating conical point.

The old town is built upon a hill that descends gently to the sea, and whose summit is crowned by a sanctuary. The streets twist about, are steep, with steps, and paved with bricks or rolled stones. The old houses elbow one another away to get a little breath, or sustain themselves from falling by stretching out a flying buttress, each against its vis-à-vis like tipsy men with linked arms hoping to keep their feet by mutual support. For all this coast is liable to be shaken by earthquakes. Diano

A Street In Bordighera

Marina was the central point of one in February, 1887, that shook down half the village. Baiardo was completely ruined, and church and houses have all been rebuilt. Numerous lives were lost on this occasion. This portion of the Riviera, though more sheltered than the French Côte d'Azur, cannot boast the beauty of mountain outline. It is only when a river comes down from the Alps that a view of the snowy peaks is obtained up its course.

The rock is all limestone and conglomerate, and the slopes are terraced and studded with olives. The general tints have a sameness and dulness that is not found on the French Riviera. The hills seem to have been enveloped in sail-cloth and rolled in powdered sage-leaves. San Remo lies in the lap of a crescent bay, of which Cap Verde on the West and Cap Nera on the East are the two horns. It faces the South, and a double reef of mountains to the North arrests the winds from that cold quarter of the heavens. The shelter thus afforded, the focussing of the sun's rays on this spot, and the fertility of the soil, unite to make the vegetation luxuriant and varied.

By the shore we have orange and lemon groves, the delicious mandarin orange, and the pomegranate, tropic palms, agaves, and cactus mingled with cedars. Higher up are olive gardens, chestnuts. "Tenens media omnta silvæ," the pine woods stretch to the top of the hills that engirdle San Remo.

M. Reclus observes:—

"Strange to say, trees do not ascend to the same height on these slopes of the Apennines as on the Alps, though the mean temperature is far higher; and at an altitude at which the beech still attains noble proportions in Switzerland we find it here stunted in growth. Larches are hardly ever seen. The sea is as sterile as the land. There are neither shallows, islands, nor seaweed, affording shelter for fish. The cliffs descend precipitously to the sea, and the narrow strips of beach, extending from promontory to promontory, consist of sand only, without the admixture of a single shell."

The ancient name of the place was Matuta, but it had been destroyed again and again by the Saracens till the year 1038, when the Count of Ventimiglia made the place over to the Archbishop of Genoa; he disposed of it to two nobles, Doria and Mari. But the Dorias were Ghibelline and the Maris belonged to the opposed faction, leading to terrible broils. Finally, in 1361 the Genoese Republic became sole possessors. The town took the name of S. Romulus, as possessing the bones of that saint, and the old name of Matuta fell into desuetude. Saint Romulus has been altered and corrupted into San Remo. Doubtless whilst under the rule of the Archbishop of Genoa the interesting church of S. Syro was built. The style is Lombardic Romanesque. It was frightfully mutilated in or about 1620, when the apse was altered and lengthened, and a hideous baroque fagade was erected, like the canvas-painted frontage to a show in a fair. At the same time the interior features were disguised under plaster and paint. In 1745 an English fleet bombarded San Remo, and the spire was knocked to pieces and replaced by a hideous structure. But recently a complete restoration has been effected; the façade has been pulled down, revealing the original features, and the whole, externally and internally, treated with such scrupulous fidelity to what was the original style, that the result is that the church of S. Syro is now one of the finest monuments of Christian art on the Riviera.

Ceriana

The visitor from the north of Europe is perplexed how to determine approximately the dates of the domestic buildings in every one of these Ligurian towns and villages. The architecture has a modern look, and yet the houses are decrepit, ruinous, and shabby. The windows and doors are square-headed, with scarce a moulding to differentiate them, and the pointed arch is only seen in the bridges that tie the houses together.

Rarely, only in some palace or town hall, does the swallow-tail crenelation, or a feeble imitation of Gothic cornice, speak of the Middle Ages. The fact is that the streets are so narrow that there is no room for display of street architecture in these lanes, culs de sac, and thoroughfares, that allow no wheeled conveyance to pass up and down. The houses set their noses against each other and stare into each other's eyes. There is no privacy there, not even in smells. If a man eats garlic, every one sniffs it in the house opposite. If a woman administers a curtain lecture, all the occupants of the houses vis-à-vis prick up their ears, listen to every word, and mark every intonation of voice. Into no single room has the sun looked for a thousand years, and air has been but grudgingly admitted, and never allowed to circulate. The houses run up five, six, even seven storeys, and are tenanted by many families. Those nearest the pavement partake of the first whiff of the garbage of the street, the dejections of the tenants in the tenements above; and those in the topmost storey inhale the flavour of stale humanity ascending from all the flats below.

But to revert to the architecture. I do not suppose that it has altered since classic times. We know how it was in Rome among the insulæ, blocks of dwellings crowding the densely occupied lower parts of the town, running up to great heights, and swarming with people living on the several stages. The palaces of the nobility, where facing the street, looked like the fronts of modern factories. Happily, in Rome one such remains, in the wall of the church of SS. John and Paul, on the Monte Clivo. It is a lofty red-brick front, without an ornament, pierced formerly with square-headed windows or windows very slightly arched with bricks, precisely such a face as may be seen to a factory in a side lane of Manchester, Birmingham, or Leeds.

The Roman noble kept all his decoration for the inside of his house; his colonnade was towards his enclosed garden, his marbles about his atrium; externally his mansion was a barrack. Pointed architecture never was assimilated by the Italian. He endured it; he used it for churches, always with a difference. But for his home he would have none of it. He was surrounded by remains of the period of Roman domination over the world, vast structures, solid and enduring. Temples fell and were despoiled to decorate churches, but private dwellings, though they might be gutted, could not be

defaced, when they had no face to be mutilated. Vandal, Lombard, Saracen, swept over the land, burnt and pillaged, but left the solid walls standing to be re-roofed and re-occupied after they were gone. Nothing but the recurrent earthquake affected these structures. And when a house was shaken down it was rebuilt on the same lines. If a bit of ornament were desired it was copied, and badly copied, from some relic of classic times. Consequently there has been incessant reproduction of one type. Thus all these old Ligurian towns and villages appear as if built at one and the same time, in one and

Bussana

the same style, and all to have fallen simultaneously into the same disorder, dirt, and raggedness.

Near to S. Syro is a hospital for leprosy, a disease which long lingered on in San Remo. Happily it has disappeared—at all events from this town and in 1883 the building became the Civic Hospital. But leprosy is by no means extinct on the Ligurian coast;

"it is hopelessly incurable, the limbs and the faces of the lepers being gradually eaten away, so that with several, while you look upon one side of the face, and see it apparently in the bloom of health and youth, the other has already fallen away and ceased to exist. The disease is hereditary, having remained in certain families of this district almost from time immemorial. The members of these families are prohibited from intermarrying with those of others, or indeed from marrying at all, unless it is believed that they are free from any seeds of the fatal inheritance. Sometimes the marriages, when sanctioned by magistrates and clergy, are contracted in safety, but often, after a year or two of wedded life, the terrible enemy appears again, and existence becomes a curse; thus the fearful legacy is handed on."—Hare.

The marvel is that plague, leprosy, and typhoid fever are not endemic in these Ligurian towns. But the winter visitor to San Remo may be at ease, he will see no lepers in the place now. Should a case occur, it would at once be removed out of sight.

As already said, San Remo takes its name from S. Romulus, a bishop, whose festival is on October I3th. Almost nothing is certainly known of this Bishop of Genoa, who is thought to have died in the year 350. The story goes that in old age he retired from his charge to a cave or Barma in the mountains, about five miles from San Remo. Here formerly was a Benedictine convent, now the very modern building is occupied by sisters, and the cave of S. Romolo has been converted into a church with an ugly façade. On the fête day plenty of Sanremois visit the shrine, some out of devotion, some for the sake of a picnic, and many from mixed motives.

But the most delightful excursion that may be made from San Remo is to Lampedusa, above the Taggia. For that no better guide can be had than Ruffini's delightful novel, Dr. Antonio:—

"A broad, smooth road, opening from Castellaro northwards, and stretching over the side of the steep mountains in capricious zig-zags, now conceals, now gives to view, the front of the sanctuary, shaded by two oaks of enormous dimensions. The Castellini, who made this road in the sweat of their brows, point it out with pride, and well they may. They tell you with infinite complacency how every one of the pebbles with which it is paved was brought from the sea-shore, those who had mules using them for that purpose, those who had none bringing up loads on their own backs; how every one, gentleman and peasant, young and old, women and boys, worked day and night with no other inducement than the love of the Madonna. The Madonna of Lampedusa is their creed, their occupation, their pride, their carroccio their fixed idea.

"All that relates to the miraculous image, and the date and mode of its translation to Castellaro, is given at full length in two inscriptions, one in Latin, the other in bad Italian verses, which are to be seen in the interior of the little chapel of the sanctuary. Andrea Anfosso, a native of Castellaro, being the captain of a privateer, was one day attacked and defeated by the Turks, and carried to the Isle of Lampedusa. Here he succeeded in making his escape, and hiding himself until the Turkish vessel which had captured him left the island. Anfosso, being a man of expedients, set about building a boat, and finding himself in a great dilemma what to do for a sail, ventured on the bold and original step of taking from the altar of some church or chapel of the island a picture of the Madonna to serve as one; and so well did it answer his purpose, that he made a most prosperous voyage back to his native shores, and, in a fit of generosity, offered his holy sail to the worship of his fellow townsmen. The wonder of the affair does not stop here. A place was chosen by universal acclamation, two gun-shots in advance of the present sanctuary, and a chapel erected, in which the gift was deposited with all due honour. But the Madonna, as it would seem, had an insurmountable objection to the spot selected, for, every morning that God made, the picture was found in the exact spot where the actual church now stands. At length the Castellini came to understand that it was the Madonna's express wish that her headquarters should be shifted to where her resemblance betook itself every night; and though it had pleased her to make choice of the most abrupt and the steepest spot on the whole mountain, just where it was requisite to raise arches in order to lay a sure foundation for her sanctuary, the Castellini set themselves con amore to the task so clearly revealed to them, and this widely-renowned chapel was completed. This took place in 1619. In the course of time some wings were annexed for the accommodation of visitors and pilgrims, and a terrace built; for though the Castellini have but a small purse, theirs is the great lever which can remove all impediments—the faith that brought about the Crusades.

"To the north a long, long vista of deep, dark, frowning gorges, closed in the distance by a gigantic screen of snow-clad Alps—the glorious expanse of the Mediterranean to the south-east and west, range upon range of gently undulating hills, softly inclining towards the sea—in the plain below the fresh, cozy valley of Taggia, with its sparkling track of waters, and rich belt of gardens, looking like a perfect mosaic of every gradation of green, chequered with winding silver arabesques. Ever and anon a tardy pomegranate in full blossom spreads out its oriflamme of tulip-shaped dazzling red flowers, From the rising ground opposite frowns mediaeval Taggia, like a discontented guest at a splendid banquet. A little farther off westward, the eye takes in the campanile of the Dominican church, emerging from a group of cypresses, and farther still, on the extreme verge of the western cliff, the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Guardia shows its white silhouette against the dark blue sky."

The name of the river Taggia is synonymous with Tay, Taw, Tavy; as the Roya is akin to the Irish Rye, the Spanish Riga. The Neva that mingles its waters with the Arrosetta, has a cognate Neva in Russia, a Nahe in Germany, a Never in Wales, and a diminutive Nivelle in France, The brawling Loup does not take its name from a wolf. It is misspelled through a false etymology. It should be Lou, like the river that enters the Dordogne, and the Devon Lew, the Lee, and Lech by Ulm. Whence come the many similar river names of Europe? They are doubtless the most ancient designations we have, those that have least changed; they were given by the earliest inhabitants of Europe, and have adhered to these ever-flowing streams, modified here and there, but always showing how ancient and primeval they are. Adam named the beasts, but who—what race—named the rivers? It must have been a race that occupied almost the whole of Europe. Was it those mighty men of old, who lie smothered in red ochre in Barma Grande by Mentone, or was it the mysterious people who reared the rude stone monuments, and who have left scanty traces of their lost language embedded in Welsh and Irish?

Taggia itself surely deserves a visit from every one who has read and loved Dr. Antonio; for there lived the gifted author Giovanni Ruffini from 1875 to 1881, the year in which he died. The remains of his house are shown. The church also deserves a visit, on account of the paintings on wood by Brea and other artists of the fifteenth century. One painting on a gold ground by Brea, or a disciple, in the chapel of the tombs of the Curio family, is specially noticeable for its beauty. On the Piazza Umberto I. stands a monument erected in 1896 to the memory of the three Ruffini brothers, who strove for the unification of Italy.

The story of the Bresca family of San Remo acquiring the privilege of furnishing palms to Rome, granted by Sixtus V. in 1586, is well known, but must not be left unnoticed here.

An obelisk was being elevated in the piazza before S. Peter's. This obelisk had been brought to Rome from Heliopolis by Caligula, in a ship which Pliny describes as being "nearly as long as the left side of the port of Ostia." Sixtus V. was resolved on Christianising or demolishing the relics of pagan Rome. The obelisk, if set up before S. Peter's, might serve to support a cross. It was removed from its place in the Circus of Nero by 800 men and 150 horses, under the supervision of Domenico Fontana, who was threatened with death if he failed. When it was about to be reared, Sixtus threatened death to man, woman, or child who should speak whilst the huge mass was being elevated by means of forty-six cranes. The great stone was slowly rising to its base, when suddenly it ceased to move, and it was evident that the ropes were yielding. An awful moment of suspense ensued, when the dead silence was broken by a shout: "Acqua alle funi!" (Throw water on the ropes!) The workmen at once cast bucketfuls of the liquid over the cordage, that at once began to shrink, and raised the monstrous mass, and settled it upon its base.

The man who saved the obelisk was Bresca, a sea captain of a fishing smack at San Remo. Sixtus V. inquired after him, and promised him, what cost himself nothing, as a reward, that ever thenceforth his family and his native village should have the privilege of furnishing the palms for S. Peter's on Palm Sunday.

In order to bleach the leaves for this purpose they are tied up in a way very similar to that employed by market gardeners to obtain white centres to lettuces. It cannot be said that the leaves are made more beautiful by the process; on the contrary, they lose what little beauty they had. The branches are bound up so as to form a vertical roll, in the centre of which are the young leaves, that have to struggle up, shut off from light and air, with the result that sickly, ugly strips are produced, which are sent throughout the Catholic world for use on the Sunday before Easter. Ten thousand times preferable are our pretty "palms," the catkin-bearing willow twigs.

The date palm is not indigenous. It was probably introduced by the Crusaders. In an illustration to a MS. of the Geography of Strabo, presented by Guarini to King Rene, the king is shown seated with a full-grown palm tree in the background. Indeed, in the tympanum of the north doorway of S. Syro, at San Remo, is a representation of a male and a female palm tree with an Agnus Dei between them.

The date palm is multiplied by seed and by suckers. This last mode of propagation is the most advantageous, as all the plants so produced are females and fruit bearers; and they will bear at the age of five or six years, whereas those raised from seed produce dates only after they have attained an age of fifteen or twenty years.

But it is in a few nooks only of the Riviera that the date palm ripens its fruit, and that but occasionally, for the winter comes on before it has reached maturity, and it fails to acquire the flavour and sweetness which is attained in Africa. It cannot be said that the huge bunches of dates in their husks hanging on the trees, of a sickly yellow, are beautiful.