UNIQUE AND EXTRAORDINARY COLLECTION OF PRACTICAL TRAVEL GUIDES, ITINERARIES FOR ITALY SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF REAL TRAVELERS.

“Italy, this beautiful Peninsula rightly praised by its inhabitants as one of the most notable regions of Europe, and which cannot be denied the glory of having been the cradle of Letters and Sciences, has always been the object of curiosity and admiration of foreigners, who flock from all parts to visit it. Many of the most learned Travellers who have travelled there, not content with paying a kind of veneration to the ashes of those great men (…) vied with each other to communicate to civilized nations with Reports of their travels and Descriptions of Italy published in various languages, all that they found interesting, marvelous, and rare. But in the multitude of such Works it is not easy to find one which contains precisely what a Traveller needs.”


Thus begins the Warning of the Guide by Lorenzo Baroni ( Italian Itinerary , Florence, 1803 – Third edition), which in 5 pages contains the meaning of these practical travel manuals, collected here with passion and love by a sensitive collector. Sensitive because it takes the right sensitivity to understand the value of these practical works, intended for the use and consumption of those who travel for pleasure, for consultation often quick and precarious that compromises their integrity and editorial beauty, but which are able to convey to us the profound meaning of travel, even in remote times. They are not aesthetically beautiful books to browse, (some are, but that is by chance) but rather reference works that were meant to help the traveler on his journey, and therefore conceived to be practical to use, comfortable, small in size, resistant, full of useful information. “For this reason, it was thought to compile an ITINERARY that would be, so to speak, a pocket manual for Travellers, in which the most notable and worthy things to be seen on the roads, in the Lands, in the Villages, and in the Cities, through which one passes, and in which some stop, would be mentioned. (…) The aim that the Author has proposed is to publish a Description of Italy, in which the personal details of Travellers, aided by local Works… will find the indications they need set out exactly and clearly.” And so, once again if there was ever a need, the practical and effective value of the guide is underlined, intended for REAL travellers, not for those passionate about the beauties of Italy from the drawing room. And in this perspective, these Guides/Itineraries are a very precious mine of socio-economic information, if one wants to read them and contextualise them in the era. “The comforts and economy of the traveler have not been lost sight of: for we have mentioned the good and bad hotels not only of the large cities, but also of the lands, villages, and other smaller places. (…) The numbering of the Post Offices, the distance in miles, the time required for each journey (Note: It should be noted that only the time of the journey has been indicated, without considering the time spent changing horses at the post office, which can vary according to the circumstances), the nature of the countries, the quality of the roads, the character of the different populations, and other similar information (…).” A wonderful summary of the purpose of these guides, that of providing valid support to the traveler especially for the practical and daily problems he finds himself facing every day during the journey. All enriched also with Tables: "The Tables prefixed to this Itinerary expressing the expenses in detail, the price of the post horses, the Ratio of the coins, the Ratio of the Itinerary measures, the heights measured with the barometer from various points above the level of the Mediterranean sea, the surface area of the various Countries of Italy in square geographical miles, can be of great use especially for foreigners. (...) But there is even more, something that makes this guide (and many of the others presented in the lot) precious and useful: "What makes this ITINERARY of Italy especially advantageous to Travellers, and increases its value, are the Travel Maps drawn with precision by skilled Geographers and engraved with the greatest possible clarity. In them you can see at a glance the postal roads, the postal signs, the secondary main roads, the names and the position of the Cities, the Lands, the Villages, the Castles, the Lakes, the Rivers, the Torrents, and everything else that can be desired in a good topographical map. These alone would be sufficient in themselves to guide the foreigner on the main roads of Italy.”
This is one of the many Guides contained in the lot, the other 79 do nothing but resume amplifying, reducing, modifying, the different entries contained in this introduction: each author, at his pleasure, emphasizes the historical-artistic aspects, the political ones, the practical ones, the illustration of the different cities or the descriptions of the population, diversifying the product often also for marketing needs. But a common denominator can certainly be identified: they are guides and itineraries REALLY used for traveling, used and crumpled by the hands of those who traveled those roads, in the impervious and difficult ways of traveling at that time. They are therefore not perfect, immaculate or complete copies, because depending on the use that the travelers of that time made of them they can bear signs of the wayfarer, gaps, omissions but often annotations and additions. Like the one that appears in the little book that has acted as our guide up to now: "God accompany the illustrious Traveler, such being the most fervent wish of PC who offers this book as a memorial". The wish for a journey "blessed" by God, whose viaticum was to be this little book offered to the traveler, as a sign of good luck. The same wish to you readers curious to discover the world contained in these Guides; in every era, travel has always been a topical theme and even today each of us often dreams of going somewhere far away, but sometimes you don't need trains or planes, a nice (used) guide that smells of times gone by and a little imagination is enough.