CASTLE VECCHIO AT FERRARA.]

The Marchese Niccolo, owing to an uprising of the citizens began Castle
Vecchio in the year 1385, and his successor completed it and decorated
the interior. It is connected by covered passage-ways with the palace
opposite the church. Before Ercole extended Ferrara on the north, the
castle marked the boundary of the city. One of the towers, called the
Tower of the Lions, protected the city gate. A branch of the Po, which
at that time flowed near by, supplied the moat--over which there were
several drawbridges--with water.

In Lucretia's time only the main features of the stronghold were the
same as they are now; the cornices of the towers are of a later date,
and the towers themselves were somewhat lower; the walls were embattled
like those of the Gonzaga castle in Mantua. Cannon, cast under the
direction of Alfonso, were placed at various points. There is an
interior quadrangular court with arcades, and there Lucretia was shown
the place where Niccolo II had caused his son Ugo and his stepmother,
the beautiful Parisina, to be beheaded. This gruesome deed was a warning
to Alexander's daughter to be true to her husband.

A wide marble stairway led to the two upper stories of the castle, one
of which, the lower, consisting of a series of chambers and salons, was
set aside for the princes. In the course of time this has suffered so
many changes that even those most thoroughly acquainted with Ferrara do
not know just where Lucretia's apartments were.[177] Very few of the
paintings with which the Este adorned the castle are left. There are
still some frescoes by Dossi and another unknown master.

The castle was always a gloomy and oppressive residence. It was in
perfect accord with the character of Ferrara, which even now is
forbidding. Standing on the battlements, and looking across the broad,
highly cultivated, but monotonous fields, whose horizon is not
attractive, because the Veronese Alps are too far distant, and the
Apennines, which are closer, are not clearly defined; and gazing down
upon the black mass of the city itself, one wonders how Ariosto's
exuberant creation could have been produced here. Greater inspiration
would be found in the sky, the land, and the sea of idyllic Sorrento,
which was Tasso's birthplace, but this is only another proof of the
theory that the poet's fancy is independent of his environment.

Ferrara is situated in an unhealthful plain which is traversed by a
br