EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
about six guineas a month."[1] The tourist who went to Naples was informed that "the Cardinal's Hat and the Three Kings are reckoned the best inns in Naples,[2] at which houses the English gentlemen commonly lodge. The apartments are indifferent, but the accommodations extremely good, and the cooks generally excellent. The following are some precautions that may be of service to travellers. If any gentleman intends to make a considerable stay here, the best way will be to take a ready-furnished lodging in or near the Piazzo[3] de Castello, from whence there is a beautiful prospect of the sea. It is a fine open place, with several good inns near it, from whence provisions may be had well dressed, and sent hot at any time. As to wine, there are many eminent merchants who have noble cellars, and very cool, where variety of wines may be had exceedingly cheap: for three shillings and three-pence a barrel of excellent wine, containing nine gallons, may be bought. This hint will be of service to those who chuse a private apartment of their own, rather than a public inn. Strangers should be very careful in their transactions with the lower class of people, who have the art of deceiving in a superlative degree. Here are also a parcel of fellows who speak a little broken English, and will offer their services as guides, or valets; but the Neapolitans of this class exceed their fraternity in all other places in knavery."[4]
At Venice, too, Nugent advises "those who intend to spend some months" there "to hire a furnished house. There are always some apartments to be let in the Procuratie, which indeed is the dearest, but at the same time the finest, part of the town."[5] In general, he recommends taking furnished apartments in "most other places."
As already observed, the food to be obtained at wayside inns was, to English travelers, almost uneatable. Generally the kitchen was the least inviting part of the inn — dirty, ill-kept, and ill-supplied.[6] Burnet's remarks[7] late in the seventeenth century, held true in many districts until the end of the eighteenth: "A traveller in many places finds almost nothing, and is so ill furnished that if he does not
92
- ↑ Grand Tour, iii, 291.
- ↑ Nugent counts the best inns at Naples Li tre Re, La Croce d'Oro, and Alle Colombe. "You may board and lodge in these inns for ten carlini a day, and for twelve carlini a day you may have a coach." Grand Tour, iii, 401. (A carlin was a silver coin worth about eight cents.)
- ↑ English-Italian for Piazza.
- ↑ Northall, Travels through Italy, pp. 196, 197.
- ↑ Grand Tour, iii, 92.
- ↑ But even Sharp admits that not every district was hopelessly bad. "In Savoy, amongst the Alps, we were often astonished at the excellence of their diet; so great is the disparity betwixt French and Italian cooks, on the Savoy and the Loretto roads." Letters from Italy, p. 46.
- ↑ Burnet, Travels, p. 85.
