Grand Tour

Making the journey in a vehicle of one's own was the privilege of a few. If the traveler did not wish to rely on mail coaches but could not afford the cheaper option was to make the journey by the system known in Italy as cambiatura, or “changing horses.” This entailed leasing a carriage from a coachbuilder and then hiring sufficient horses from the minister of each post house to cope with the number of passengers and the weight of their baggage, with the assistance of one or more postilions (usually one for every pair of horses) when the company of travelers had no coachman of their own. The cost of this operation, although varying greatly owing to the difference in charges from one country to another, was much more reasonable. For example de Brosses (1740) tells us that the prices «are low in the Papal States and exorbitant in Lombardy and Piedmont. In general you need to have your own carriage and get hold of a post book to avoid the rascally tricks of the ministers who cheat foreigners whenever they can».

But the most common and cheapest way of making the journey was to hire your means of conveyance from a vetturino or coachman, a trade so widely practiced that competition kept the prices down, so long as one was prepared to travel at a very slow pace (something imposed by the regulations of various states, in order to limit the damage caused by competition with the postal services). A contract with a coachman, which certainly guaranteed greater freedom of movement and independence, usually covered not just the transport but also board (with a “set menu”) and lodging, and established the number of stages. The main drawback of this solution lay in the coachmen's inveterate habit of not sticking to agreements and offering services of inferior quality. Frequently this led to bitter disappointments: additional payments would be demanded; another coachman would be subcontracted along the way (and being paid less, stint on the passengers' provisions); the coachman would sign the agreement despite knowing that the road to be taken was interrupted at a certain point, and then consider himself exempt from repayment of the money that had been paid on the grounds of force majeure , and other tricks with which the pages of travelers' accounts are filled (Astengo, 1992). Mariana Starke, for instance, with her characteristic mistrust, took pleasure in speaking at length of the frequency of theft in Italy. James Paul Cobbett (1821), on the other hand, showed a great appreciation for the solution of traveling with a coachman, enthusiastic above all about its economic advantages.