[Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. ZENO, VERONA]
The interior is very striking, not only in its good proportions but in its simplicity, which no side-altars mar. As in the cathedral at Chester, one enters from the west down a flight of steps, held a moment in admiration by the solemn grandeur of this fine church. The beautiful larch roof soars away far above the mellowed floor, the warm colour of the walls and depth of shadow through the arches of the crypt below the choir, create a harmony of colour from our point of vantage not often met with in Italy's churches. The aisles are divided from the nave by alternate piers and red marble pillars, the former with ascending Doric pilasters, two of which, near the west end, support a flying arch beneath the roof and are evident traces of an early vaulting. At the end of the nave, and occupying its last three bays, is the raised choir reached by two flights of marble steps on either side of those leading down into the crypt. On the red marble balustrade of the choir are figures of Christ and the twelve apostles. In a niche on the south side is a forbidding looking figure of S. Zeno, the patron saint of the city, who, being an African, is represented with a black face. The apse at the east end was rebuilt in the fifteenth century and has Gothic windows.
The old Benedictine cloisters of the once attached monastery stand on the north, and contain amongst other tombs twenty-nine of the Della Scalas. The cloisters and tombs are admirably preserved. The former consists of brick arches, pointed on the east and west, and round on the north and south, supported by coupled columns of red marble. Of Verona's forty churches these three are the most typical and interesting, and San Zenone, with its great architectural simplicity and wonderful _campanile_, holds the palm.
It is a city of shapely bell-towers; every church has one. Some are high, others low and unpretending; some are flat topped, others embattled or crowned by the red brick spire which greets one further west in the lake country. But the most beautiful of all is that which stands at a corner of the Piazza dei Signori, adjoining the Palazzo della Ragione, and rears its head over two hundred and fifty feet from the pavement below. Like a queen, this graceful Campanile del Municipio stands, dominating her subjects the other towers, with all the tinkling bells they contain. Across the river from the vantage-ground of the terrace on the hill beneath the Castello S. Pietro, Verona lies mapped out. Her dull red and brown roofs remind one of the harmonious colours of a Bokharan rug. Immediately below, at the foot of the hill, are the ruins of the Roman theatre, and the green waters of the Adige, rushing under the arches of the old stone bridge close by. Straight as a line ran the Roman street to the Porta dei Borsari, erected under the Emperor Gallienus in 265, and out into the country beyond. Between this old gateway, which stands athwart the street almost blocking it, and the river, is mediæval Verona, intersected and crossed by hundreds of _vicoli_, or lanes, and full of subjects for a painter's brush in the _cortili_ that fringe them. At the corner of the Vicola Pigna and the "Alley of the Jutting Stone," is a low marble column with a huge fir-cone on the top, a reminiscence of Roman days. Near at hand is the fine palace that Sanmicheli erected for the Miniscalchi family, and in a lane a few steps away, a crumbling remnant of another fine house with a beautiful portal and row of windows. These are but a few things in the secluded byways of old Verona, where one's feet continually led one on journeys of discovery. Many a silent and deserted courtyard I found, where the grass shyly thrust its head between the cobblestones, and where creepers came wantonly trailing down over old walls in a sweet endeavour to hide the decay of man's handiwork.