hes, two to
a bay, with alternate piers and columns, the end having circular
arches above the broader arch below. The second story is lighted by four
little square windows, and above are three quatrefoils to give air to
the roof timbers. On the end wall are two angels in relief, holding
"I.H.S." within a garland. The two arcades are vaulted simply, the caps
on the first floor have good foliage, and the stories are divided by
moulded string-courses. Names of saints are inscribed over the doors of
the warehouses opening from the lower cloister.

[Illustration: LA SPONZA AND ONOFRIO'S FOUNTAIN, RAGUSA

_To face page 359_]

The facade terminates with a fantastic cresting above the roof cornice.
In the centre of the second story is a niche with a figure of S. Blaise,
flanked by two rectangular windows on each side. The _piano nobile_ has
two ogee-headed windows with geometric tracery, flat decorated
archivolt, and slender shafts on the outer and inner surface of the
jamb, and a three-light window in the centre, made up to a square head
with quatrefoils in the fashion of the Ca d'Oro at Venice. On the ground
floor there is a graceful round-arched portico resting on columns with
Renaissance caps; beneath it are the windows and entrance door of the
custom-house. The building is still used for its original purpose, and
Albanian and Herzegovinian porters lounge about it in strange costumes.
The clock-tower was built in 1480, and altered in 1781. There is a bell
in it founded by Battista of Arbe. Opposite is the Roland column.
Affixed to a pilaster is a symbolic statue typifying freedom of
jurisdiction and commerce. It was replaced there in 1878 after a
prolonged sojourn in the Rector's Palace, having been thrown down by a
storm in 1825, when a brass plate was found with an inscription of the
beginning of the fifteenth century, stating that here was the place of
the standard of the Republic. It is not a work of any artistic merit.

A little way outside Porta Pile (thought to be a corruption of the Greek
word [Greek: phyle], a gate) is the cemetery church "alle Dance,"
overlooking a bay beneath the Lapad promontory. It was begun in 1457 for
the poor of the city, and contains a fine picture. The west door is
elaborately carved with somewhat confused ornament, and in the pointed
tympanum is a Madonna and Child flanked by two standing angels, which do
not fit in quite comfortably. By the door is a holy-water niche of still
strange