Beautiful Lombard work
which makes so much impression upon one in the church on the Monte
Pirchiriano; the architecture is late, and barocco, not to say
rococo, reigns everywhere; nevertheless the effect of the church is
good. The visitor should get the sacristan to show him a very fine
pagliotto or altar cloth of raised embroidery, worked in the
thirteenth century. He will also do well to walk some little
distance behind the town on the way to S. Maria dei fiori (St. Mary
of the flowers) and look down upon the town and Lombardy. I do not
think he need go much higher than this, unless he has a fancy for
climbing.
The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville Gardens,
eminently the place to spend a happy day. We happened by good luck
to be there during one of the great feste of the year, and saw I am
afraid to say how many thousands of pilgrims go up and down. They
were admirably behaved, and not one of them tipsy. There was an
old English gentleman at the Hotel Riposo who told us that there
had been another such festa not many weeks previously, and that he
had seen one drunken man there - an Englishman - who kept abusing all
he saw and crying out, "Manchester's the place for me."
The processions were best at the last part of the ascent; there
were pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers, and priests
and banners and music and crimson and gold and white and glittering
brass against the cloudless blue sky.
