. .
For the college, as befits its grave academic character, stands by
itself among fruitful fields and backed by a chestnut wood, at ten
minutes' walk from the crowded streets. It is an imposing edifice - the
Basilean convent of St. Adrian, with copious modern additions; the
founders may well have selected this particular site on account of its
fountain of fresh water, which flows on as in days of yore. One thinks
of those communities of monks in the Middle Ages, scattered over this
wild region and holding rare converse with one another by gloomy forest
paths - how remote their life and ideals! In the days of Fiore (1691) the
inmates of this convent still practised their old rites.
The nucleus of the building is the old chapel, containing a remarkable
font; two antique columns sawn up (apparently for purposes of
transportation from some pagan temple by the shore) - one of them being
of African marble and the other of grey granite; there is also a
tessellated pavement with beast-patterns of leopards and serpents akin
to those of Patir. Bertaux gives a reproduction of this serpent; he
assimilates it, as regards technique and age, to that which lies before
the altar of Monte Cassino and was wrought by Greek artisans of the
abbot Desiderius. The church itself is held to be two centuries older
than that of Patir.
The library, once celebrated, contains musty folios of classics and
their commentators, but nothing of value.
