About the same time that the cathedrals were being built, the nobles
filled the towns with fortresses. These at first were gaunt and unsightly;
how overcrowded with tall bare towers a mediaeval Italian city could be, is
still shown by San Gemignano, the only existing instance where the
_torroni_ have been left untouched.[15] In course of time, when the
aristocracy came to be fused with the burghers, and public order was
maintained by law in the great cities, these forts made way for spacious
palaces. The temper of the citizens in each place and the local character
of artistic taste determined the specific features of domestic as of
ecclesiastical architecture. Though it is hard to define what are the
social differences expressed by the large quadrangles of Francesco
Sforza's hospital at Milan, and the heavy cube of the Riccardi palace at
Florence, we feel that the _genius loci_ has in each case controlled the
architect. The sunny spaces of the one building, with its terra-cotta
traceries of birds and grapes and Cupids, contrast with the stern brown
mouldings and impenetrable solidity of the other. That the one was raised
by the munificence of a sovereign in his capital, while the other was the
dwelling of a burgher in a city proud of its antique sobriety, goes some
way to explain the difference. In like manner the court-life of a dynastic
principality produced the castle of Urbino, so diverse in its style and
adaptation from the ostentatious mansions of the Genoese merchants. It is
not fanciful to say that the civic life of a free and factious republic is
represented by the heavy walls and narrow windows of Florentine
dwelling-places. In their rings of iron, welded between rock and rock
about the basement, as though for the beginning of a barricade--in their
torch-rests of wrought metal, gloomy portals and dimly-lighted courts, we
trace the habits of caution and reserve that marked the men who led the
parties of Uberti and Albizzi. The Sienese palaces are lighter and more
elegant in style, as belonging to a people proverbially pleasure-loving;