a market-town of Austrian Italy, among the Euganean hills, in the delegation of, and 12 miles south-west from, Padua. Pop. 1000. Here Petrarch resided during the latter years of his life, and here he died on the 19th July, 1374. "His ashes are preserved in the churchyard of the town, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an association with meaner tombs."

"They keep his dust in Arqua where he died; The mountain village where his latter days Were down in the vale of years; and 'tis their pride— An honest pride—to let it be their praise, To offer the passing stranger a gaze On his mansion and his sepulchre; plain plain And venerably simple, such as raise A feeling more accordant with his strain Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fame."

"The house in which Petrarch resided is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and commanding a view, not only of the glowing gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and willow, thickened into a dark mass by festoons of vines, tall single cypresses and the spires of towers are seen in the distance which stretches to the mouth of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The chair in which the poet breathed his last is still shown among the precious relics of Arqua." — Childe Harold, canto iv. st. 31, and note 9.