Cathedral of all Christendom as it stands. Then far away, on
Saint Peter's evening, when it is dusk, the great dome, and the small
domes, and the colonnades, and the broad facade are traced in silver
lights that shine out quietly as the air darkens. The solemn bells toll
the first hour of the June night; the city is hushed, and all at once
the silver lines are turned to gold, as the red flame runs in magic
change from the topmost cross down the dome, in rivers, to the roof, and
the pillars and the columns of the square below--the grandest
illumination of the grandest church the world has ever seen.

[Illustration]

REGION V PONTE

The Region of Ponte, 'the Bridge,' takes its name from the ancient
Triumphal Bridge which led from the city to the Vatican Fields, and at
low water some fragments of the original piers may be seen in the river
at the bend just below Ponte Sant' Angelo, between the Church of Saint
John of the Florentines on the one bank, and the Hospital of Santo
Spirito on the other. In the Middle Age, according to Baracconi and
others, the broken arches still extended into the stream, and upon them
was built a small fortress, the outpost of the Orsini on that side. The
device, however, appears to represent a portion of the later Bridge of
Sant' Angelo, built upon the foundations of the AElian Bridge of
Hadrian, which connected his tomb with the Campus Martius. The Region
consists of the northwest point of the city, bounded by the Tiber, from
Monte Brianzo round the bend, and down stream to the new Lungara bridge,
and on the land side by a very irregular line running across the Corso
Vittorio Emanuele, close to the Chiesa Nuova, and then eastward and
northward in a zigzag, so as to take in most of the fortresses of the
Orsini family, Monte Giordano, Tor Millina, Tor Sanguigna, and the now
demolished Torre di Nona. The Sixth and Seventh Regions adjacent to the
Fifth and to each other would have to be included in order to take in
all that part of Rome once held by the only family that rivalled, and
sometimes surpassed, the Colonna in power.

As has been said before, the original difference between the two was
that the Colonna were Ghibellines and for the Emperors, while the Orsini
were Guelphs and generally adhered to the Popes. In the violent changes
of the Middle Age, it happened indeed that the Colonna had at least one
Pope of their own, and that more than one, such as Nicholas the Fourth,
favour