A Few Kilometres Farther On And Sight Is Caught
Of A Beautiful Green Hill With A Few Natural Terraces Upon It And A
Flat Top - Rising From Amid Pastures, And Backed By Higher Hills As
Green As Itself.
On the top of this hill there stands a white
church with an elegant Lombard campanile - the campanile left
unwhitewashed.
The whole forms a lovely little bit of landscape
such as some old Venetian painter might have chosen as a background
for a Madonna.
This place is called Prato. After it is passed the road enters at
once upon the Monte Piottino gorge, which is better than the
Devil's Bridge, but not so much to my taste as the auriculas and
rhododendrons which grow upon the rocks that flank it. The peep,
however, at the hamlet of Vigera, caught through the opening of the
gorge, is very nice. Soon after crossing the second of the Monte
Piottino bridges the first chestnuts are reached, or rather were so
till a year ago, when they were all cut down to make room for some
construction in connection with the railway. A couple of
kilometres farther on and mulberries and occasional fig-trees begin
to appear. On this we find ourselves at Faido, the first place
upon the Italian side which can be called a town, but which after
all is hardly more than a village.
Faido is a picturesque old place. It has several houses dated the
middle of the sixteenth century; and there is one, formerly a
convent, close to the Hotel dell' Angelo, which must be still
older.
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