This chapter is not so much about a location in Italy but about the extremes of "magnificence and misery" found here. He is particularly critical of Florence and the Medici family. And, again he criticizes to "old masters". "... but I keep on protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those masters to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such monsters as the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and three hundred years ago, all the same.

Mark Twain travels through Bolognia, Pistoia, and into Florence. Because of the fatigue from the journey as well as the distain he feels for Florence's treatment of Galileo and Dante, he does not speak highly of Florence. Apparently, some years in the future he does change his mind about the place as he chooses to live there for some time, at least circa 1902. He writes of the mosaics and the maltreatment received by the artists, or "pensioners". He then travels to Pisa and climbs the Leaning Tower. Twain writes of the "old original patriarchal Pendulum--the Abraham Pendulum of the world".

In this chapter we learn more about Venice, it's gondolas and it's art, "The Old Masters" and that of the Renaissance. Twain weighs in as an art critique. One area of particular interest to me is his revisiting the characteristics of what might be called the "Ugly American". "It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite Frenchman!"

Much like chapter 11, where we visit the dungeons of France, here we visit the chambers of the Council of Three and the Bridge of Sighs. Twain is not timid about demonstrating man's inhumanity to man. Again Mark Twain is disappointed to learn his preconceived ideas of Venice are not realized. Nighttime, however, returns some of the glamour he expected.