15B THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
belong to a later period. The exception is the Sponza1 or custom house, a large part of which was built in the early fourteenth century. It stands at the end of the Stradone, opposite the Piazza and the church of San Biagio, and consists of three stories built round a courtyard. The ground floor and first floor were probably built in the first years of the thirteenth century.2 The top story, the façade, and the portico belong to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The oblong courtyard is surrounded on the lower story by vaulted arcades of round arches with square soffits supported on short plain solid octagonal columns, without bases (like those of the Ducal Palace at Venice), and short capitals opening out into square abaci. The second story is also arcaded, and has twice as many window openings as the lower story has arches, round at the two ends and pointed on the sides, with square piers over the columns below and round columns over the centres of the arches ; their capitals are adorned with foliage, some à crochet, and some with deflected leaves at the angles. According to Jackson, all this part is of the same period, in spite of the fact that some of the openings are round and some pointed. The general effect is one of extreme simplicity and sobriety ; it is, as Jackson says truly, “an admirable piece of plain, useful, and not ungraceful architecture, not too showy for the commonplace purposes of the building,
   1	The word sponza was also applied to open loggie, built on the borders of the Republic as resting-places for the caravans. One of these existed at S. Michele della Cresta (1356), and another by the Canale di Narenta (Gelcich, p. 73).
   2	De Diversissays it was enlarged in 1312.