Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes Read online

  The city is the shape of a chlamys or military cloak. The sides are surrounded by water, and are about thirty stadia in extent; but the isthmuses, which determine the breadth of the sides, are each of seven or eight stadia, bounded on one side by the sea, and on the other by the lake. The whole city is intersected by roads; two of these are very broad and cut one another at right angles. It contains also very beautiful public grounds and royal palaces, which occupy a quarter or even a third of its whole extent.

  A part belonging to the palaces consists of that called Sema, an enclosure, which contained the tombs of the kings and that of Alexander the Great. For Ptolemy the son of Lagus took the body of Alexander from Perdiccas, as he was conveying it down from Babylon.… Ptolemy deposited the body at Alexandria in the place where it now lies; not indeed in the same coffin, for the present one is of alabaster whereas Ptolemy had deposited it in one of gold: it was plundered by Ptolemy Cocce’s son and Pareisactus. The Museum is also a part of the palaces. It has a public walk and a place furnished with seats, and a large hall, in which the men of learning, who belong to the Museum, take their common meal.…

  Above this is the theatre, then the Poseidium, a kind of elbow projecting from the Emporium, as it is called, with a temple of Neptune upon it. To this Antony added a mound, projecting into the middle of the harbour, and built at the extremity a royal mansion, which he called Timonium. This was his last act, when, deserted by his partisans, he retired to Alexandria after his defeat at Actium, and intended, being forsaken by so many friends, to lead the solitary life for the rest of his days.

  c.1150 AL-IDRISI

  Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100–1165) was a North African-born geographer and map-maker who lived in Norman Sicily. His Book of Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands was a compilation of his academic knowledge with information from his personal travels.

  Alexandria was built by Alexander, who gave his name to it. It is situated on the Mediterranean coast, and there are a remarkable number of monuments and remains surviving which bear witness to the authority and power of him who raised them, and to his foresight and wisdom. This town is surrounded by strong walls and fine orchards. It is large, very populous, commercial and full of high buildings; its streets are wide and its buildings solid; the houses are of marble and the vaults supported by strong columns. Its markets are large and its surrounding countryside productive.

  The waters of the western branch of the Nile, which run to this city, pass below the vaults of its houses, and these vaults are cheek by jowl with one another. The town itself is light and finely built. Here we find the famous lighthouse which has not equal in the entire world for its structure and its solidity; for as well as that which is made in fine stones called caddzan, the beddings of these stones are sealed together with lead and other adhesive materials such that it is unmovable, despite the waves that crash onto it continually from the north.… There is a wide interior staircase like those one ordinarily sees in the towers of mosques. The first staircase ends around the middle of the lighthouse, where the structure becomes narrower on all four sides.… From this gallery one continues to the top by means of a smaller staircase. On all sides it is pierced by windows that light the way to those inside and help them place their feet safely.

  This building is unique, as much for its height as its solidity; it is very useful for the fire that burns day and night to serve as a signal for navigators; it is visible 100 miles away. At night it seems like a bright star; by day one can see the plume of smoke. Alexandria is surrounded by plains and great deserts, where there are no mountains or any other object that can be used for reconnaissance. Were it not for the lighthouse, most of the vessels that come here would not find their way.

  The lighthouse is said to have been built by the same man as built the pyramids of Al-Fustat, to the west of the Nile. Others though claim that this building was one of several erected by Alexander when the city was founded. Only God knows the truth of it.

  1225 ZHAO RUGUA

  Zhao Rugua (1170–1228) was a Chinese government official whose book Zhu Fan Zhi was a compilation of Chinese knowledge of the world before their borders, including South East Asia, the Silk Route and the eastern Mediterranean. Inevitably, some of the information was gathered from hearsay, and was unreliable.

  The country of O-kön-t’o [Alexandria] belongs to Wu-ssï-li [Egypt]. According to tradition, in olden times a stranger, Tsu-ko-ni [Alexander the Great] by name, built on the shore of the sea a great tower under which the earth was dug out and two rooms were made, well connected and very well secreted. In one vault was grain, in the other were arms. The tower was two hundred chang high. Four horses abreast could ascend to two-thirds of its height. In the centre of the building was a great well connecting with the big river. To protect it from surprise by troops of other lands, the whole country guarded this tower that warded off the foes. In the upper and lower parts of it 20,000 men could readily be stationed to guard, and to sally forth to fight. On the summit there was a wondrous great mirror; if war-ships of other countries made a sudden attack, the mirror detected them beforehand, and the troops were ready in time for duty.

  In recent years there came a foreigner who asked to be given work in the guardhouse of the tower; he was employed to sprinkle and sweep. For years no one entertained any suspicion of him, when suddenly one day he found an opportunity to steal the mirror and throw it into the sea, after which he made off.

  1798 VIVANT DENON

  In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt in order to cut off the British route to India, but his respect for the ancient civilization led him to take scholars and archaeologists with him. Prominent among them was French diplomat and artist Vivant Denon (1747–1825), who, the evening before disembarking at Alexandria, mused on what he would find, as he recorded in his Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt (1803).

  By the help of our glasses we saw the tricolour flag displayed over our consul’s house. I figured to myself the surprise he was about to feel, and that which we were preparing against the following day for the sheik of Alexandria.

  When the long shadows of evening had marked the outlines of the city, I distinguished the two ports, the lofty walls flanked by numerous towers, no longer enclosing anything but heaps of sand, and a few gardens, the pale green of whose palm trees scarcely tempered the ardent whiteness of the soil; the Turkish castle, the mosques, their minarets; the celebrated pillar of Pompey; and my imagination went back to the past. I saw art triumph over nature; the genius of Alexandria employ the active hands of commerce, to lay, on a barren coast, the foundations of a magnificent city and select that city as the depository of the trophies of the conquest of a world; I saw the Ptolemies invite the arts and sciences, and collect that library which it took barbarism so many years to consume; it was there, said I, thinking of Cleopatra, Caesar and Anthony, that the empire of glory was sacrificed to the empire of voluptuousness! After this, I saw stern ignorance establish itself on the ruins of the masterpieces of the arts, labouring to destroy them, but unable, notwithstanding, even yet to have disfigured utterly those beautiful fragments which display the noble principles of their first design.

  From this preoccupation, from this happiness of meditating in view of great objects, I was roused by a gun fired from our frigate, to bring too a vessel which had set all her sails to get into the port of Alexandria in spite of us, and without doubt to carry thither the tidings of the arrival of our fleet.

  1849 JAMES LAIRD PATTERSON

  James Laird Patterson (1822–1902) was a British Catholic clergyman who later served as Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster. As a young man, and before his ordination in 1855, he visited the Holy Land and the eastern Mediterranean, a journey he described in the well-known account Journal of a Tour in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece (1849). For him, as for many Western travellers in the 19th century, Alexandria represented his first encounter with the ‘Orient’ and Islam, both of which he observed through his strongly British and Christian lens.
r />   4 December Hotel d’Orient We were pleasantly awoke this morning by an announcement that our pilot was come on board, and shortly after found ourselves gliding in between Ottoman, Austrian, French and English men of war and merchantmen in this fine harbour. A letter to the agent of the transit administration procured us a speedy and easy landing, and we were driven rapidly through the narrow and crowded half-oriental streets to this hotel in the great Frank Piazza. The tall camels, the thousandfold orientals on foot and donkeys, the veiled women, the cross-legged shopkeepers, the latticed houses and occasional minarets, quite gave one the ‘Arabian Night’ feeling I had anticipated. But this came in fuller force at the baths, whither of course we went as soon as we were established in our rooms. I will not rewrite the thousand-times-written ceremonies of the oriental bath; suffice it to say that we were duly conducted from one room to another, scrubbed and shampooed, rubbed, patted, parboiled with hot water, cooled with cold water, attired in a variety of linen robes and turbans, and finally found ourselves, exhausted with the fatigues of bathing, and above all of laughing at each other, reclining on divans in an outer apartment, with long pipes in our hands, and silent attendants presenting small cups of coffee every other minute.… After a short rest at home, we again went out on donkeys, attended by our little Nubian, Hassan, to make purchases in the bazaars. The European quarter of Alexandria is much like other seaports in the West; but our shopping led us into the Turkish quarter, where we were duly edified by the sight of long narrow streets, the houses with overhanging windows of latticed woodwork painted and gilt, small shops, in which the wrangling of oriental bargains was vociferously carried on by merchant and purchaser, etc. The great wonder seemed, how on earth our donkeys, careering along at a fearful pace, managed to elude the long strings of camels and other obstacles which blocked the way.… We bought some red fezzes and sashes, which are de rigeur for eastern travellers, and then threaded our way out of the city towards the old harbour, to see Pompey’s Pillar (or, ‘Bombey’s Billar’, as the natives call it) and Cleopatra’s Needles. The former is a truly noble monument – a single granite shaft, with a lofty base and Corinthian capital; the whole being about ninety-five feet in height, and appearing even higher, from its elevated position.… The entourage of this column is wretched; the ground is squalid and broken; and by way of giving a lesson in civilization to its semi-barbarous possessors, sundry European worthies have scrawled their names all over the base. The great Mr Thompson, and the equally famous Mr Button, have respectively inscribed their ample names on it, at an evident sacrifice of several bottles of Day and Martin – a proceeding which leaves it next to an impossibility for posterity further to blacken those illustrious names. This pillar was, in fact, erected by the Alexandrians…as a propitiatory offering to their conqueror, Diocletian (as an inscription, now nearly effaced by the noble enthusiasm of successive Thompsons and Buttons, testifies); and the sockets to receive his statue, on the summit, still remain.

  Cleopatra’s Needles are on the shore, at the east point of the old harbour. To arrive at them we passed close to a very handsome mosque, in which I saw many Mussulmans at their devotions, one of whom insulted us elaborately (as Christians); and we remarked that several people, especially women, either spat or muttered some words of contempt or malediction, as we went by.

  It is very striking to see persons in the midst of occupations, at their shops, or on the house-tops, spread out their praying carpets, perform their ablutions (of face, arms and legs), and then prostrate themselves towards Mecca, at the stated times of prayer. I understand, too, that they observe the fast of the Ramadan very strictly here; and I confess these public and ordinary recognitions of religion, however false it be, go far with me to excuse the exhibition by individuals of fanaticism and hatred towards Christians. But what a frightful and diabolical parody of Christian practices are these! The immorality and uncharitableness of these poor people are a striking sight, when coupled to, and the result of, their very religion.

  The sadness of seeing so many thousands held in the bonds of the devil, with many lawful things forbidden them, and many most unlawful permitted and enjoined, would be intolerable, were one not to call to mind the Christian verity of the death of our Blessed Lord for all mankind, even for those who know Him not.

  AMSTERDAM

  Amsterdam developed as a fishing village in the early Middle Ages, and had become a significant city by the late 15th century. In 1578 it joined the ‘revolt of the Netherlands’ against Spanish rule (1568–1648) and grew to supersede Antwerp as the main city of the Low Countries.

  The 17th century represented Holland’s golden age, with Amsterdam at the heart of a worldwide trading empire, as well as a cultural hub. Artists such as Rembrandt were in high demand to provide paintings to hang on the walls of the homes of the city’s many wealthy burghers. By the 18th century, however, Amsterdam had lost much of its commercial pre-eminence, and in 1787 it was occupied by the Prussians, then liberated by the Revolutionary French in 1795 and incorporated in the Napoleonic empire (until 1813).

  Amsterdam has been the capital of the Kingdom of the Netherlands since 1814, even though its trade had suffered badly during the Napoleonic Wars, not recovering fully until the 1850s. It was, however, increasingly recognized as a destination for tourists. Occupied by Germany in the Second World War (1940–45), in post-war years it has become a commercial and financial centre as well as a much-loved place to live and visit.

  1592 FYNES MORYSON

  Fynes Moryson (1566–1630) was an English gentleman who travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East with the intention of recording local conditions, customs and institutions. He published three volumes of An Itinerary Containing his Ten Yeeres Travell through the Twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, France, England, Scotland & Ireland (1617), writing a fourth in the 1620s. Moryson visited Amsterdam during the long war with Spain; an English army led by the Earl of Leicester to support the revolt had arrived in 1584 but achieved little.

  Five streets of this city are divided with water. The River Tay [IJ] flows like a large and calm sea on the north side, where is a safe port…. Upon the haven lies a field or marketplace, where the citizens use to behold their friends going to sea and returning home. From this place towards the south lies Warmoesstraat, a long and large street between two rivers, which part of the city is called, the new ditch. The merchants in summer meet upon the bridge, and in winter they meet in the New Church [Nieuwe Kerk], in very great number, where they walk in two ranks by couples, one rank going up, and another going down, and there is no way to get out of the church except they slip out of the doors, when in one of those ranks they pass by them. On the east side of the city there is a wall of stone, higher than the city, having a pleasant walk upon it.…

  The city hath five gates, which are shut at dinners and suppers, though the danger of the war be far from them. There be two churches in which they have two sermons each second day, and four on Sunday.… They have two almshouses (called Gasthausen, that is, houses for strangers) which were of old monasteries. One of these houses built round, was a cloister for nuns, wherein 60 beds were made for poor women diseased, and in another chamber thereof were 52 beds made for the auxiliary soldiers of England, being hurt or sick, and in the third room were 81 beds made for the hurt and sick soldiers of other nations: to which soldiers and sick women they gave clean sheets, a good diet and necessary clothes, with great cleanliness, and allow them physicians and surgeons to cure them.

  1640 PETER MUNDY

  Peter Mundy (c. 1596–1667) was a Cornish-born British trader who travelled in Europe, Russia and India, and as far afield as China. He visited Amsterdam during its commercial and cultural golden age. He wrote and illustrated an account of his travels, but it was not published until the 20th century.

  14 April In the morning we came to Amsterdam, and there I took a lodging in the Nieuw Markt.…

  For the b
uilding of a house, they must drive in certain timbers or masts 42 or 43 foot deep before they meet with any fast ground, which is a sand at last, on which is laid the foundation. These timbers are said to continue hundreds of years sound, as long as they lie in the moist earth. They are forced in by a certain engine, being a great weight, whereunto is fastened a main rope, and unto that again about 40 other smaller, there being so many several men which pull at them in the same manner and with the same action, as sometimes many men do at the ringing of some great bell. The weight, by the help of a large pulley, is forced up, and with his fall drives the piles till they meet with the sand.

  I have seen a whole house of brick, etc., sundry storeys high, standing altogether upon screws, as on stilts, the foundation being clean taken away. With these, by report, they will remove large buildings from one place to another. Also sundry other ingenious devices with which they abound, as wind sawing-mills, windmills for draining of water, etc.…

  As for the art of painting and the affection of the people to pictures, I think none other go beyond them, there having been in this country many excellent men in that faculty, some at present, as Rembrandt, etc. All in general striving to adorn their houses, especially the outer or street room, with costly pieces; butchers and bakers not much inferior in their shops, which are fairly set forth, yea many times blacksmiths, cobblers, etc. will have some picture or other by their forge and in their stall. Such is the general notion, inclination and delight that these country natives have to paintings. Also their other furniture and ornaments of their dwellings very costly and curious, full of pleasure and home contentment, as rich cupboards, cabinets, etc., imagery, porcelain, costly fine cages with birds, etc.; all these commonly in any house of indifferent quality; wonderful neat and clean, as well in their houses and furniture, service, etc. within doors, as in their streets.…