Sismondi remarks with just pride that these great works were Republican.  They were set on foot for the public use, and were constructed at the expense of the commonwealths.  It is, however, right to add that what the communes had begun the princes continued.  To the splendid taste of the Visconti dynasty, for instance, Milan owed her wonderful Duomo and the octagon bell-tower of S. Gottardo.  The Certosas of Pavia and Chiaravalle, the palace of Pavia, and a host of minor monuments remain in Milan and its neighbourhood to prove how much a single family performed for the adornment of the cities they had subjugated.  And what is true of Milan applies to Italy throughout its length and breadth.  The Despots held their power at the price of magnificence in schemes of public utility.  So much at least of the free spirit of the communes survived in them, that they were always rivalling each other in great works of architecture.  Italian tyranny implied aesthetic taste and liberality of expenditure.

In no way is the characteristic diversity of the Italian communities so noticeable as in their buildings.  Each district, each town, has a well-defined peculiarity, reflecting the specific qualities of the inhabitants and the conditions under which they grew in culture.  In some cases we may refer this local character to nationality and geographical position.  Thus the name of the Lombards has been given to a style of Romanesque, which prevailed through Northern and Central Italy during the period of Lombard ascendency.[10] The Tuscans never forgot the domes of their remote ancestors; the Romans adhered closely to Latin traditions; the Southerners were affected by Byzantine and Saracenic models.  In many instances the geology of the neighbourhood determined the picturesque features of its architecture.  The clay-fields of the valley of the Po produced the brickwork of Cremona, Pavia, Crema, Chiaravalle, and Vercelli.  To their quarries of mandorlato the Veronese builders owed the peach-bloom colours of their columned aisles.  Carrara provided the Pisans with mellow marble for their Baptistery and Cathedral; Monte Ferrato supplied Pistoja and Prato with green serpentine; while the pietra serena of the Apennines added austerity to the interior of Florentine buildings.  Again, in other instances, we detect the influence of commerce or of conquest.  The intercourse of Venice with Alexandria determined the unique architecture of S. Mark’s.  The Arabs and the Normans left ineffaceable traces of their sojourn on Palermo.  Naples and Messina still bear marks upon their churches of French workmen.  All along the coasts we here and there find evidences of Oriental style imported into mediaeval Italy, while the impress of the Spaniard is no less manifest in edifices of a later period.