Grand Tour

After the carriage, the inn was the microcosm par excellence where distances were forgotten and differences of class and purse ironed out. The roles and activities of daily life seemed to be put into temporary suspension, people talked to each other more easily than was permitted under normal circumstances and the convivial table provided the opportunity for meetings of new kinds.

There is ample testimony to the poor reputation of Italian stagecoach inns, although some dissenting voices were raised.

Generally speaking, the level of comfort was higher in Northern Italy, and in particular along the busier routes, than it was in the remote parts of the South. During his stay at Rovereto, for instance, Montaigne (1581) missed the cleanliness of the Germans but appreciated the curtains on the beds and drew some interesting distinctions, such as those between the Northern European civilization of the quilt and the Italian one of the woolen blanket, or between beer-drinking areas and wine-drinking ones (the Mediterranean), where drunkenness was unknown. At Levanella – between Florence and Arezzo – he praised the luxury of a small eating place where the food was served on pewter dishes, just as in the most sumptuous of Parisian hotels.

Particularly ill-famed, on the other hand, were the inns of Radicofani on the Via Francigena after Siena (to whose somewhat romanticized description considerable space is devoted), Pietramala (Apennines) and Camicia (Trasimeno). In the South of Italy, in 1777, Roland de la Platière «observes that the inn is reduced to an enormous stable at whose ends fires are burning and people cooking without hearth or stove, where one eats and lies down on plank beds resting on rows of bricks set on their ends in the middle of the stable, behind the horses, or in the manger when there is room» (Brilli, 2004).

The huge yard of the post house was a teeming world in miniature onto which faced, along with the inn, the stables, the farrier’s workshop, the ticket office, the baggage room and the coach houses. The proximity of the animals imparted an unmistakable stench of dung to the longed-for place of rest, as Howells said on his visit to Italy in 1640 (an odor that was rivaled, according to Lady Blessington in 1826, by the stink of boiled cauliflower in Florence’s most luxurious hotels). The structure of the premises, initially a single room used for both board and lodging, rendered them smoky and dirty and condemned the guests to promiscuity (you shared a table with your own servants). Furnishings were minimal. Travelers grumbled about windows with no glass in rooms without fireplaces, doors without locks, bed linen that was dirty but sprinkled with water (and therefore damp) to give the impression that it was fresh from the washhouse, precarious sanitary conditions in general and the absence of lavatories: thus Samuel Sharp (1766) complained of having to put up, under his very eyes and nose, and right through the night, with what ought to have been «removed and consigned to oblivion» (Brilli, 2004).

Many remedies were suggested. The main one, which was also a luxury, was that of bringing your own bed. Such a bedstead could be dismantled and folded up so that it occupied little space. However, it was still necessary to air the room, immerse the legs of the bed in dilute vitriol to avoid attack by unwelcome insects, take down the testers to avoid the incursions of disagreeable quadrupeds and sprinkle everything with lavender or tablets of camphor to keep away a variety of flying creatures. Another always valid piece of advice was to bring with one an iron contrivance with which to close the door from the inside, a lock for the room that was recommended by Evelyn in 1644 and by Mariana Starke two centuries later.

The other subject closely connected with the accounts of these stays, that of food, is less alarming in character, with the most unpleasant surprises limited to out-of-the-way inns and those of the smaller towns.

Then there is a whole vein of stories of secret agreements between innkeepers and brigands, something for which the inns of the Papal and Bourbon States were sadly famous.

A case apart is that of the hospices in the passes, where the stay usually turned out to be a pleasant one. Assistance at the Great St. Bernard Pass, for instance, was free to all, without distinction. It was sufficient to write your name in the visitors’ book and leave a tip for the monks who, if need be, even rescued those who went astray and revived them by rubbing them with snow. Guests of any consequence might even find themselves provided with stoves. Beds were plentiful and the food wholesome and good. Nothing to make the traveler miss the hotels of the big cities (Astengo, 1992).