But here the prince glanced at Rome and stopped: Before him, in a marvelous, shining panorama, the eternal city appeared. The whole bright heap of houses, churches, domes, and sharp spires was powerfully illuminated by the brilliance of the sinking sun. In groups and singly, the houses, roofs, statues, airy terraces, and galleries emerged out from behind one another; over there was the motley mass of bell towers and domes with their delicate tops, playing in the patterned caprice of the lamps; over there a dark palace emerged in its entirety; over there was the flat dome of the Pantheon; over there was the ornamented top of the Antonino column with its capital and the statue of the apostle Paul; over to the right rose the tops of the Capitoline buildings, with horses and statues; even farther to the right, over the brilliant crowd of houses and roofs, the dark breadth of the Colosseum’s bulk rose majestically and austerely; over there was again a playful crowd of walls, terraces, and domes, covered in the blinding brilliance of the sun.47 And over this whole sparkling mass, the tops of the holm oaks from the villas of the Ludovisi and the Medici showed darkly in the distance with their black foliage, and above them in the air the dome-shaped crowns of the Roman stone pines, raised on their slender trunks, stood in a whole flock. And along the whole length of the picture towered the light-blue, transparent hills, as light as air, embraced by a kind of phosphorescent light. Neither word nor brush would be able to convey the marvelous harmony and the combination of all the levels of this picture. The air was so pure and transparent that the tiniest little feature of the distant buildings was clear, and everything seemed so close that you could grab it with your hand. The last petty architectural ornament, the patterned decoration of the cornice—everything was marked out with an incomprehensible purity. At that moment the shot of a cannon and the distant merged shout of the mass of people resounded—the sign that the riderless horses had already run by, marking the end of the Carnival day.48 The sun was sinking lower toward the earth; its brilliance showed a brighter scarlet on the whole architectural mass; the city became more vivid and closer; the stone pines became a darker black; the hills became even bluer and more phosphorescent; the heavenly air, ready to be extinguished, became more solemn and beautiful… My God, what a view! The prince, in its embrace, forgot himself, and the beauty of Annunziata, and the mysterious fate of his people, and everything that exists in the world.