The seventeenth-century painting of the dome is almost impressive.
But one can forget and forgive all the church's gaudiness and floridity when the choir is in good voice and the strings play Palestrina as they did last Easter Sunday.

The Annunziata is famous for its music, and on the great occasions people crowd there as nowhere else.

At High Mass the singing was fine but the instrumental music finer.

One is accustomed to seeing vicarious worship in Italy; but never was there so vicarious a congregation as ours, and indeed if it had not been for the sight of the busy celibates at the altar one would not have known that one was worshipping at all.

The culmination of detachment came when a family of Siamese or Burmese children, in native dress, entered.