Pisa and Leghorn, Italy

scott 27 November 2021

Enroute to Leghorn, Twain spent several hours in Pisa, visiting the Leaning Tower and the Duomo and Baptistery. He revisited Pisa in 1892 with his family. Leghorn (Livorno), a port o'call for the Quaker City, where Twain rejoined the ship. He missed an opportunity to visit Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was on a nearby island.  Twain's party boards the Quaker City but they do not depart Leghorn aboard her.

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Florence, Italy

scott 27 November 2021
Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great figure of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the Rape of the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of paintings and statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make that statement in self-defense; there let it stop. I could not rest under the imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles of picture galleries.

Enroute: From Venice to Florence

scott 27 November 2021

Some of the Quaker City’s passengers had arrived in Venice from Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were expected every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no sickness.

We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through a good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes. I find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we arrived there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the place is so justly celebrated. Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.

Art Appreciation

scott 27 November 2021

We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at them and refuse to find interest in them any longer. And what wonder, when there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there are Titians and the works of other artists in proportion. We have seen Titian’s celebrated Cain and Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham’s Sacrifice. We have seen Tintoretto’s monster picture, which is seventy-four feet long and I do not know how many feet high, and thought it a very commodious picture.

Milan, Italy

scott 27 November 2021

16 July, 1867 Twain and 5 companions departed Genoa by train, arriving in Milan that evening. The capital of Lombardy, Milan united with Italy in 1861. Twain spent two days touring the city. He returned, with his family for a week in September of 1878. Twain devotes much of chapter 18 of The Innocents Abroad on the Cathedral of Milan. ""Everything about the huge edifice impressed Mark Twain." (Mark Twain A to Z) See:

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