Grand Tour

There was one fashion in particular that caught on among Grand Tourists, especially those who came from Great Britain: a stay in Tuscany, especially at Pisa, as a cure for a wide range of illnesses. Whole colonies of the British, for example, thronged Pisa and its environs, extolling the climatic conditions as ideal for poeple suffering from consumption. This tradition was part of a widespread belief in the healthiness of the “air” in Tuscan cities, which have gone down in history as salubrious places. And yet opinions varied greatly in the accounts of travelers, changing from century to century, even with regard to the same site. Berkeley (1720), jingoist enough to declare, after visiting Tuscany, that he had seen «nothing that could make me wish to spend my life outside England and Ireland,»also said that «the only advantage in Italy is the air which, as you know, is warmer and less damp than at home» (but he then added «although I doubt that it is at bottom any healthier...»!).

For Deseine (1699), Florence had a «very fine and very healthy» air, and it was precisely this quality that had given rise to the ingenuity and artistic spirit of its citizens, who numbered among them «the best painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, poets, orators, historians and philosophers in Italy.» He thought Pisa less healthy, an opinion that was the opposite of the later view taken of these cities, which led to the desertion of the former in favor of the latter. Different, and typically extreme, was the marquis de Sade’s verdict on the same subject (1776). The city’s air was bad and insalubrious, since it was traversed by a river that almost ran dry in the summer and surrounded by mountains. It was particularly odious from October onward, a period in which he went so far as to call it lethal, judging by the continual sudden deaths from apoplexy and by the legend, to which he tended to lend credence, that if you left a piece of bread out at night to soak up the deadly air from the Apennines and then gave it to a dog, the animal would inevitably die. According to de Sade, the constitution of the inhabitants, for the most part skinny, pale and with bad teeth and very poor eyesight, provided confirmation of this fact.

Pisa prompted no less contradictory judgments, tending to cancel each other out. There were the enthusiasts, like Boyle, who spoke of an excellent position with an air «as salubrious and warm as Naples,» but among those who went on the tour in the same years, around the middle of the 18th century, there were also detractors like Grosley (1758), who described the air in Pisa as «damp, heavy and sickly.» Finally, there was a substantial group of travelers who were inclined to favor one city or the other at different times of year: «the temperature in the city of Pisa is so mild and pleasant in winter that one is hardly aware of the rigors of the season, especially when it rains. Foreigners who are convalescent, who suffer from chest ailments or rheumatism, find sure relief here, but as soon as the heat begins to make itself felt it is necessary to leave the city and retire to Florence or the mountains. The air becomes unhealthy» (Richard, 1761).

The high regard for the free port of Livorno, prosperous trading center and cosmopolitan city, extended to its climate as well. In fact the city, whose site had been considered an unhealthy place in ancient times, where the air was vitiated by the surrounding swamps and marshes, came to be seen as an extremely pleasant place. According to John Ray (1663-1666) the reason for this was, «[Before these privileges granted to Ligorn,] when it was thin of Inhabitants, it was accounted a very bad air and an unhealthful place, by reason of the sens and marshes adjoyning: but now since it is become populous, the multitude of fires (as is supposed) hath so corrected the air, that people enjoy their health as well and live as long heer as in any other Town or City of Italy». Charles Marie de la Condamine (1754) also spoke of Livorno, wrested from a deserted, swampy and unhealthy coast, as one of the best examples of a hard-won salubrity. The merit for this lay with the shrewd policy of the government, differentiating the cities of Tuscany from those of the Papal States, which had remained uninhabitable. But here too there was the other side of the coin, with Misson (1688) declaring not only that Livorno lacked good water (which had to be brought from Pisa), but that its air was said not to be of great quality.

On Lucca we have the view of Gorani: speaking of the baths set on the banks of a navigable canal coming from the Serchio River, he claimed that the agreeableness of the place was enhanced by the salubrity of the air and the waters.

From this perspective, the city which carried off the palm for the salubriousness of its air, something which was added to, and often confused with, its other virtues (the purity of the language, the friendliness of the society), was the “delight of Italy” (Lalande, 1765), “the Orlèans of Italy” (Lassels, 1670), the much loved Siena. In fact the city was often appreciated for its therapeutic properties: «a much sought-after place to stay in the summer, with the connotations of a genuine spa» (Brilli, 1986a). The excellent position, indeed the «extremely salubrious position for its air and its soil» as Lassels, one of the fathers of the Grand Tour, described it, the mildness of the climate and its healthiness in every season were the reasons used to justify this preference. Thus Peter Beckford (1787) asserted: «there is no more pleasant way of spending the summer than to stay in Siena.» The custom of the summer vacation in Siena endured among the British until after the middle of the 19th century, and was then passed on to American travelers.