from Notes sur Rome et l'Italie par Louis Teste, 1873

Novembre, 1872. Je n'ai eu que le temps d'entrevoir Plaisance et je l'ai vu trop peu pour vous parler des impressions que j'y ai à peine ébauchées. S'il me fallait visiter minutieusement chaque ville, contempler chaque monument, braquer mes yeux sur chaque fresque, je ne reviendrais probablement pas d'Italie, ce dont je me concolerais, à la rigueur. Plaisance n'a pas d'ailleurs une physionomie très-engageante; ses remparts ruinés, ses palais et ses églises en briques sales, ses maisons délabrés, ses voies désertes, bien que ce soit aujourd'hui jour de marché, m'ont fait prendre la fuite aussi vite que mes occupations l'exigeaient. Il n'y avait plus de neige dans les champs, meme avant Plaisance. La pluie avait cessé en meme temps; et, soit satisfaction de ne plus me croire au Groenland, soit que la campagne fut plus belle, j'y promenais ma lorgnette avec un plus vif intérèt.

from Notes of a journey through France and Italy by William Hazlitt, 1826

This became more remarkably the case, as we entered the territories of Maria-Louisa (the little States of Parma and Placentia) when, for two whole days, we literally travelled through an uninterrupted succession of cornfields, vineyards and orchards, all in the highest state of cultivation, with the hedges neatly clipped into a kind of trellis-work, and the vines hanging in festoons from tree to tree, or clinging "with marriageable arms"¹ round the branches of each regularly planted and friendly support. It was more like passing through a number of orchard-plots or garden-grounds in the neighbourhood of some great city (such as London) than making a journey through a wide and extensive tract of country. Not a common came in sight, nor a single foot of waste or indifferent ground. It became tedious at last from the richness, the neatness, and the uniformity ; for the whole was worked up to an ideal model, and so exactly a counterpart of itself, that it was like looking out of a window at the same identical spot, instead of passing on to new objects every instant. We were saturated even with beauty and comfort, and were disposed to repeat the wish "To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new."² A white square villa, or better sort of farm-house, sometimes stared on us from the end of a long, strait avenue of poplars, standing in ostentatious, unadorned nakedness, and in a stiff, meagre, and very singular taste. What is the cause of the predilection of the Italians for straight lines and unsheltered walls ? Is it for the sake of security or vanity ? The desire of seeing everything or of being seen by every one? The only thing that broke the uniformity of the scene, or gave an appearance of wretchedness or neglect to the country, was the number of dry beds of the torrents of melted snow and ice that came down from the mountains in the breaking up of the winter, and that stretched their wide, comfortless, unprofitable length across these valleys in their progress to the Adriatic. Some of them were half a mile in breadth, and had stately bridges over them, with innumerable arches (the work, it seems, of Maria Louisa) some of which we crossed over, others we rode under. We approached the first of them by moonlight, arid the effect of the long, white, glimmering, sepulchral arches was as ghastly then as it is dreary in the day-time. There is something almost preternatural in the sensation they excite, particularly when your nerves have been agitated and harassed during several days' journey, and you are disposed to startle at everything in a questionable shape. You do not know what to make of them. They seem like the skeletons of bridges over the dry bones and dusty relics of rivers. It is as if some mighty concussion of the earth had swept away the water, and left the bridge standing in stiffened horror over it. It is a new species of desolation, as flat, dull, disheartening, and hopeless as can be imagined. Mr. Crabbe should travel post to Italy on purpose to describe it, and to add it to his list of prosaic horrors. While here, he might also try his hand upon an Italian vintage, and if he does not squeeze the juice and spirit out of it, and leave nothing but the husk and stalks, I am much mistaken. As we groped our way under the stony ribs of the first of these structures that we came to, one of the arches within which the moonlight fell, presented a momentary appearance of a woman in a white dress and hood, stooping to gather stones. I wish I had the petrific pencil of the ingenious artist above-named, that I might imbody this flitting shadow in a permanent form.

Notes:

1. From John Milton's Paradise Lost

2. From John Milton's poem Lycidas

from Letters from France and Italy by P. Pounden, letter XV, 1830

Placentia is the capital belonging to the ex-Empress Maria Louisa ; she arrived in it on the same day as we. The city was illuminated on the occasion, and the Duchess at evening went in procession through the town, affording a lesson for ambition to muse upon ; and realizing to our view, the sad features of splendid misery. Her dignity degraded by an alliance she disdained ; or her wodded heart for ever bleeding, while she thinks upon her hope, less separation from the man she loves.

from Travels of the late Charles Thompson esq., Vol. I, 1744

From Cremona we had fifteen Miles to Piacenza, or Placentia, fo call'd from its pleafant Situation, in a fruitful Plain, about half a Mile from the Po. It is a Bifhop's See, and has an ancient Cathedral, the Infide of which is well adorn'd. The Streets are broad, the Buildings regular, and the Squares fpacious; particularly that which has an Equeftrian Statue of Alexander I, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, in the Middle of it. We fee here a Fountain, which is much admir'd for its Antiquity, fuppofed to have been erected by Augustus Caesar. Here is alfo a Palace belonging to the Dukes of Parma. The City is wall'd round, has a ftrong Citadel, and other Fortifications. It is not populous; and its Trade confifts chiefly in Cheefe, being furrounded with the richeft Paftures, water'd with numerous Rivulets.

from Memories of my exile by Lajos Kossuth, june 1859

No railway runs beyond Stradella. I started at ten o'clock at night by carriage, and reached Piacenza at two o'clock in the morning. In the night at the post stations in the villages the intelligence as to who the traveller was died away. I arrived unknown at Piacenza ; we could scarcely awake the gatekeeper of the fortress to let us pass in. We had to knock loudly, and he received us with a ' Che diavolo fate cosi tardi ?' I alighted at the St. Marco Hotel, where nobody knew me, and went to bed.
Piacenza, as you know, is a border fortress of Parma, which the Austrians, after having garrisoned it by virtue of the Treaty of Vienna of 1815, therefore for forty-four years, left seventeen days ago, after having blown up many fortifications, and with wanton cruelty cut down the mulberry-trees standing along their route. Seventeen days ago the headquarters of three Austrian army corps were there : Culoz and Benedek stayed there too.
I slept peacefully, and at eight o'clock sat down to breakfast still unrecognised. At this moment the waiter brought in the visitors' list. Nicholas Kiss entered my name; the waiter says, ' Grazie ' and goes. At the door he cast a look over the names, and looked back to us with eyes that can only be compared to the first eruptions of fire from a volcano. He ran like mad down the steps, and before five minutes no, scarcely three minutes had passed by, the 30,000 inhabitants knew it they rushed into the streets as if the alarm-bell called them ; they were coming from all directions, and stood underneath my window and shouted, ' Evviva ! ' as if they intended to bring down the firmament of heaven by their voices. The mayor and all the municipal officers came into my room to pay their respects to me, to offer their services, to beg my commands; the venerable Montanelli, a late Minister of Tuscany, who lost his left arm at Curtatone, where he fought as a volunteer in 1848, came accompanied by many officers of the civil guard, but he himself dressed like a private soldier ; in a word, everybody came. Half an hour afterwards, when I was stepping into a carriage, everybody who could come near me kissed my hands and clothes. We moved along with great difficulty, and had scarcely reached the street when the people unharnessed the horses and themselves drew us through the town, while crowds streamed towards me from every street, thousands followed me, flowers were thrown from the windows, and the people honoured the poor homeless traveller with the perfect frenzy of young liberty's first intoxication. And why? Because they identify his name with that of liberty, the perception of which runs like a current of electricity through the nerves of humanity.
And still how much servitude ! How much oppression there is in this world ! And for how long has it existed, and how long will it last !
It was a scene such as you saw in Vienna in 1848. But here the five minutes were the ' marvel ' the clue to which I cannot find. Perhaps souls, too, have telegraphs which work more quickly than the electricity running along the wires.

from Memorials of John Mackintosh by Norman MacLeod, 1849

Sept. 8. (On the road near Piacenza.) I started from Lodi at five A.M. on foot ; passed the Austrian frontier about eight. Soon after a turn in the road brought me in presence of a scene which I would find it difficult to convey by words. Immediately before me the broad full-shining Po, one of the four or five monarchs of European rivers, which the fancy is prepared to welcome with a thrill of emotion. On its southern bank, a little to the eastward of where I was standing, Piacenza, most picturesquely situated, with an unusual abundance of minaret, dome, and tower for a Lombard city ; the dark stone spire of the Cathedral, in particular, gave character to the pictorial effect of the town. Lastly, behind the town, and skirting the whole southern horizon from east to west, the beautiful outline of the Apennines, ridge over ridge, fold within fold, here a peak, there a dome, with soft but variegated lights on their various parts, as you see on many of the bonny hills of Scotland. This association, their intrinsic beauty, together with the surprise of coming upon mountains after the dreary plains of Lombardy, filled me with delight, I may say intoxicated me.
I lingered long and drank the spectacle ; the desolate beauty of Placentia, which seemed as if it had lost its way upon those forlorn banks ; the river itself, fringed with willows and sand, rolling on its dreary channel - a waste though fertilizing all around - smote my soul with one of those notes of melancholy which are profound but not unpleasing. I followed its "wild and willowy shore" for a considerable way beyond Placentia, until I reached the appropriately forlorn and rickety bridge of boats by which the highroad crosses it. Nothing, in truth, could be more in keeping or more significant of the departed grandeur of Placentia. With such emotions I entered the town, and found my way to the hotel.
* Sunday , Sept. 9. To-day I had the rampart with its promenade entirely to myself. I tried to retrace, realize, and re-people the history of Placentia. Visions of Roman greatness rose before my eyes, her haughty senators, dames, patricians ; her stern, stately soldiers ; her worship, in so far as I could make it out j and while I regretted that in former days I had learned those details so much by rote as to have now forgotten much which I would wish to have recalled, I was still able to make the picture complete enough to please myself. How singular the contrast between their civilisation on the one hand, and their religious darkness on the other ! while those two things to our minds must ever go together. It is like a dark cloud tinged by the moon shining behind, which is at once beautiful and the re verse. I cannot help thinking that, for character and mode of life, the transition between later Rome and Italy of the middle ages was not so great or so sudden as we sometimes imagine. Those lovers of luxury, those patrons of art, those monsters of tyranny and cruelty, might belong to one or other epoch ; the later, whom we have accurately sketched to the life, were the lineal inheritors of the names and nature of the former.
Thus then I passed to Placentia of the middle ages, and endeavoured to collect all I had gathered in history or romance of their glory, their splendour, and their shame. Finally, I passed on to more recent times ; the universal revolutions effected by Napoleon, the long peace that followed, and the poets who have visited and sung these lands from my own and other countries. I know not which of all these phases seemed endowed to my mind with the richest halo. All are equally blended with my youthful dreams in that season when the cold reason is allowed to slumber, and Imagination is lord of the ascendant.
*I entered the Cathedral towards dusk. There is frothing in it particularly to arrest the attention or elevate the thoughts; but mine were for the moment independent of outward aids, and sitting down with my book of Psalms in hand, I turned my soul towards Him, the events of whose marvellous life, from the cradle to the tomb, were portrayed around me. I cannot say that in general those pictures or frescoes, however good, awake devotion in my mind. This may be the defect of habit, or that the aesthetic predominates in regarding them ; or that, among so many, the soul has not time for an operation so absorbing and profound as that of devotion. Be this as it may, excepting by the Supper of a Leonardo, or the Crucifixion of a Guido for which, besides their being masterpieces, you give yourself time and scope for religious musings I have rarely felt myself sanctified in Italian churches. To night, however, all was dim excepting to the spiritual eye ; and the marvellous love and work of Him who Himself purged our sins, and wrought out a righteous ness for His people, shone out with peculiar lustre. No wonder that, when the tide of genius first flowed in its various channels since the conversion of the world to Christianity, this should be the all-absorbing topic of its efforts, whether on canvas or in verse. My Saviour, I am Thine, and I desire to appropriate the prayer, "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to in quire in His temple."* Under many aspects, there is much to be said in favour of these solemn cathedrals calm retreats for the thirsty soul amid the bustle of the world, and using them as Oratoires or places of meditation. I have often of late felt their power, and been greatly indebted to them. O that error could be kept apart from good, so that good might not have to be sacrificed to error !

____

* Psalm 27:4

from The Works of Orville Dewey, D.D. ... by Rev. Orville Dewey, 1833

PARMA, October 14. — I left Milan on the twelfth, with vetturino, for Florence, and reached Placentia for the night, entering it by passing on a bridge of boats over the Po. It is a broad and noble river, and like every stream that comes from the high ground of the Alps, as this partly does, hurries in its course to the sea. The largest portion of the waters, however, comes from the region of the Apennines. In the morning, as we left Placentia, we crossed the river Trebia, on whose left bank was fought the battle between Hannibal and Sempronius.

from Andanças e viajes de un hidalgo español por Pero Tafur (1436-1439) [transl.]

I departed from Ferrara and passed through the March to a city called Parma, which is on the river Po and belongs to the Duke of Milan. There, passing the river, I found Nicolao Picherino, the Duke's captain-general, with 20,000 horsemen, the finest body of men I have ever seen. They say that he was going to take Bologna, which belongs to the Pope. I remained three days at Parma to see them pass, and it was a most remarkable thing to see a body of men so finely armed and mounted, and so well found in everything necessary for war, and, what was best of all, with such a discreet and able captain at their head. In this city are the finest cherries I have ever seen. From there I went to Piacenza, a city belonging to the same Duke, which is likewise a great city of 7000 or 8000 inhabitants. From there, the next day, I went to Milan, an immense city, and one of the greatest in Christendom.

from Dyott's Diary by William Dyott, 1802

June 23. Left Parma at four o'clock and arrived at Milan by half-past six, eighty miles ; breakfasted at Piacenza. Four posts from Parma. It is a large town, long narrow streets, in the centre of which there are flagstones for the wheels of the carriages. The square or Piazza has two fine equestrian statues in bronze. Leaving Piacenza, across the Po in a ferry, from thence to Milan, the finest road I ever travelled. Passed through Lodi, a neat town, remarkable for the famous action fought at the bridge. Country from Piacenza to Lodi rich with corn and vineyards, from Lodi with meadows and full of cattle for making the famous Parmazan cheese (very good at the hotel of Parma).

from Voyage de France, d'Espagne, de Portugal et d'Italie, par M. S***, du 22 avril 1729 au 6 février 1730, par Étienne de Silhouette

Plaifance eft fituée à cinq ou fix cens pas du Po dans une plaine très-fertile & très-agréable: ceux qui fe plaifent à marquer les étimologies difent que le nom de Plaifance a été donné à cette Ville à caufe des charmes de fa fituation. Les fortifications de Plaifance font modernes, revétues de briques: d'ailleurs d'une force médiocre.
J'étois recommandé au Pere Bellati, homme d'efprit & de littérature: comme je ne reftai à Plaifance que le tems néceffaire pour voir cette Ville, le Pere Bellati voulut m'accompagner, & il envoya dans l'inftant chercher chez un Gentil-homme une carroffe avec lequel nous nous parcurumes toute la Ville. La Statue équeftre en bronze d'Alexandre Farneze, Gouverneur des Pays, & celle de Rainuce, fon fils, ornent la plus grande Place. Le Palais où loge la Ducheffe douairiere de Parme, mere de la Reine d'Efpagne, eft de briques: s'il étoit achevé & orné des embelliffemens d'architecture, dont il devoit etre accompagné, ce feroit un de plus magnifiques Palais de toute l'Italie. Vignole en fut l'Architecte. J'entrai dans la Cour précifément lorfque la Ducheffe montoit en carroffe. Elle ètoit accompagnée de plufieurs Dames qui forment une Cour affez brillante.
La Cour d'Efpagne donne à cette Ducheffe une penfion de cinq cens piftoles par mois. Les appartamens du Palais font fort beaux & fort richement meublés. Je ne parle point des èglifes. Quand in a les idées remplies des temples magnifiques de Rome & de Naples, on ne s'arrete pas beaucoup à confidérer ceux de Plaifance.

from Voiage d'Italie, par Lyon, Turin, Milan, Bologne, Florence, Rome, Naples. [Manuscrit] par M. de Saint-Quentin (XVIIIe siècle)

La douanne à Plaisance est très rigide, ils font tout detruire les paquets et regardent à tout, je crois plus par curiosité, qu'autrement il faut tacher de n'y pas coucher, et de ne faire que le traverser, alors ils sont moins rigider; jamais ils ne veulent visiter a la poste ils ménent toujours a la Douane.

from Lettres sur l'Italie par Noel Le Mire, 1855

Enfin, tantbien que malreconfortés , nous montons dans notre équipage avec bagages dans le dos, bagages fur les jambes & faifons notre féconde entrée dans les murs de Plaifance, à la grande joie des paffants , à la non moins grande fatisfaction des douaniers & gens de police qui ne voient dans nos infortunes qu'une occafion de plus de faire délier les cordons d'une bourfe étrangère.
Telle eft la partie de mon voyage que , par une étrange dérifion du fort, je me vois contraint d'intituler voyage de Plaifance.

from Le voyageur françois, ou Le connoissance de l'Ancien et du Nouveau monde par Joseph de La Porte, 1765

Plaifance eft une grande ville, paffablement fortifiée, & munie d'une affez bonne citadelle; mais la difette d'habitans lui ôte la premiere beauté à laquelle une ville mufle prétendre , la population. A peine y compte-t on vingt mille ames ; fon étendue morure tout ce qu'elle a perdu; & les arts fur-tout, fe reffentent de cette perte, Les amateurs de tableaux n'y trouvent point cette multitude de chefs-d'œuvre qu'ils admirent dans la plupart des églifes d'Italie. On vante cependant ceux de la cathédrale , dont la coupole, peinte par le Guerchin, eft digne de l'attention des artiftes.

from Mélanges tirés d'une grande bibliothèque ... par Marc-Antoine-René de Voyer Argenson, 1779

Plaifance eft digne de fon nom par les agrémens de fa fituation ; elle n'eft qu'à cent pas du fleuve du Pô. Ce que l'on voit d'antiquités dans la ville, eft une fontaine d'architecture antique , avec quelques reftes de bas-reliefs & d'infcriptions ; on dit qu'elle eft du temps de Céfar-Augufte. On prétend que la ville a cinq milles de circuit ; elle contenoit, au commencement de ce fiecle, vingt-huit mille habitans, dont deux mille Eccléfiaftiques ; à préfent elle ne paroît pas être fi peuplée , car fes places , qui font vaftes & belles , paroiffent dénuées d'habitans.