THERE are few places in Italy more deserving the admiration, or more calculated to rivet the attention, of the tourist than Terni and its romantic neighbourhood. Situated in the centre of a plain, to which the wild, murmuring, and picturesque Nera imparts fertility and beauty, encompassed by mountains clothed to the summit in continual verdure, and abounding in objects rendered interesting by their antiquity or beauty, the environs of Terni may justly be allowed pre-eminence, even in a country so renowned for its magnificent scenery, and the surpassing interest created by its monumental remains. The inhabitants of Terni claim for their city the distinction of high antiquity, dating its foundation from the latter end of the reign of Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome. The Romans sent a colony thither in the year U. C. 441, and called the city Interamna, from the circumstance of its being situated between two branches of the Nera or Nar, a river of considerable beauty and importance, which rises in the Apennine mountains, and discharges itself into the Tibur a little above Rome. It must have been originally a place of some importance, if an opinion may be formed from the appearance of its ruins, and the mention made of it by the earlier historians. There are now, however, but few traces of its former splendour. Its extent and situation are alone marked by a few mouldering remains which time has yet spared from destruction. In one part of the town there are some old walls and a few arches, which are partly stopped up, forming part of what is supposed to have been an ancient temple to Hercules. Among these ruins may be still distinctly traced in very large characters the following inscription: Domus Herculi Sacra, a house consecrated to Hercules. In other parts of the town there are various antique marbles, let into the walls to preserve them from farther injury, bearing curious inscriptions, one of which is the basis of a statue erected by L. Licinius, in honour of Aulus Pompeius, for his having extricated this municipal city from some pressing danger. There is also a fine pedestal, which anciently supported a statue of Titus Flaminius. Near the cathedral is an antique marble, with a mutilated inscription, from which may be gathered that the inhabitants of Terni, wishing to compliment Tiberius, caused this inscription to be set up after he had destroyed his insolent favourite Sejanus. The ruins of the amphitheatre are still shown in the gardens of the episcopal palace; they only consist of some vaults and other trifling remains, from which not enough can be traced of its former proportions to convey the slightest interest. |