ver dare to build a fortress again at Fiesole."[130]

Now whether Villani is strictly right in his chronicle matters little
or nothing. We know that Fiesole was an Etruscan city, that with the
rise of Rome, like the rest, she became a Roman colony; all this too her
ruins confirm. With the fall of Rome, and the barbarian invasions, she
was perfectly suited to the needs of the Teutonic invader. What hatred
Florence had for her was probably due to the fact that she was a
stronghold of the barbarian nobles, and the fact that in 1010, as
Villani says, the Fiesolani were content to leave the city and descend
to Florence, while the citadel held out and had to be dealt with later,
goes to prove that the fight was rather between the Latin commune of
Florence and the pirate nobles of Fiesole than between Florence and
Fiesole itself. Certainly with the destruction of the alien power at
Fiesole the city of Florence gained every immediate security; the last
great fortress in her neighbourhood was destroyed.

To-day Fiesole consists of a windy Piazza, in which a campanile towers
between two hills covered with houses and churches and a host of narrow
lanes. In the Piazza stands the Duomo, founded in 1028 by Bishop Jacopo
Bavaro, who no doubt wished to bring his throne up the hill from the
Badia, where of old it was established. Restored though it is, the
church keeps something of its old severity and beauty, standing there
like a fortress between the hills and between the valleys. It is of
basilica form, with a nave and aisles flanked by sixteen columns of
sandstone. As at S. Miniato, the choir is raised over a lofty crypt.
There is not perhaps much of interest in the church, but over the west
door you may see a statue of S. Romolo, while in the choir in the
Salutati Chapel there is the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole, the tomb of
Bishop Salutati, who died in 1465, and opposite a marble reredos of
Madonna between S. Antonio and S. Leonardo, by the same master. The
beautiful bust of Bishop Leonardo over his tomb is an early work, and
the tomb itself is certainly among the most original and charming works
of the master. If the reredos is not so fine, it is perhaps only that
with so splendid a work before us we are content only with the best of
all.

But it is not to see a church that we have wandered up to Fiesole, for
in the country certainly the churches are less than an olive garden, and
the pictures are shamed by the flowers that r