Hotel in Rome: history of tourism in the capital of Italy
Englishmen in Rome in the Middle Ages
The offers of lodgings in Rome hotel have an old history. The Anglican king Ina who settled down in Rome after having abdicated, founded the Schola Saxonum in the place of S. María de Saxia, later S. Spirito in Sassia, to increase the offer of rooms to reserve for pilgrims.
Especially in the 1300 the “English nation” was present reorganizing its Roman institutes which worked as simple hotels, as well as the hotel is the heir of inns and mail posts.
More than 600 years ago, in 1396, a hospice-hotel for English sailors was founded in S. Edmondo in Trastevere (it doesn't exist nowadays). Evidently English ships arrived to the Tiber’s outlet and they navigated the river up until inner Rome, harboring at Ripa Grande port. In the court of Elizabeth I Italian was spoken and Italian artists were well welcomed in their holiday trips to Great Britain.
Under Charles I reign it was confirmed the ideal and Italian classic in the will of shaping large artistic collections and of transporting marbles and antiques to England. Besides the king, the Earl of Arundel gathered an important collection of marbles and for him made acquisitions in Rome the first great English architect of the new era, Inigo Jones (1573-1652).
In the 1600 the lodging offers in hotel in Rome allowed the birth of the first travelers given to cultural vacations, people who traveled for intellectual curiosity. The first of all in 1644 was John Evelyn who wrote his famous Diary, a custom of the "Guides" that will have greater development from here on. He wrote in it everything he did, saw, and what interested him during his vacations in a hotel of Rome. It is glimpsed in his pages the admiration for Rafael and Miguel Ángel, for the monuments, the ruins, and an admiration for Bernini's universality. Evelyn admired the Roman villages particularly Borghese village. He visited the Academy of Humorists, he met Atanasio Kircher, and he did not only restrained himself to write down these facts. He was much interested for the social show he observed in the Roman hotels, embassies, and ceremonies; he objectively praised the Mount of Pity and the Roman hospitals he found better than those in London.
In 1718 Giacomo III Stuart settled down in Rome, son of the dethroned GiacomoIl (m. 1701). Clemente XI helped him as much he could, not wanting him to rent a room in a hotel, he donated him the palace Muti Papazzurri in Santos Apostles square, an offer the Scotsman had undoubtedly appreciated. In 1719, a year later having been established in Rome, Giacomo married María Clementine Sobieski, in a great ceremony at Montefiascone.
Of this marriage with the Polish princess were born Carlos Eduardo who unsuccessfully struggle for the reconquest of the throne and Enrico, future cardinal from York, made in 1761 bishop of Frascati (patron, protective of Taddeo Kuntze, rented and he restructured the Tuscan seminar and created, to increase the cultural offer, the important library, still existent whose volumes date as far as the last war in the Vatican). In the Rome of 1600 the Stuart's family was one of the most conspicuous. Giacomo III died in the year 1766 and his grave is one of the most beautiful monuments in Canova.
The hotel offers in Rome in the 1700
In Rome were created congress centers for foreigners on vacations who had rented a room in hotel of Rome. Half of the Square of Spain, already belonged to France, as a matter of fact its own embassy was there, it was invaded by tourists on vacations by its little traffic, arrival place from the town gate until downtown.
In the first place we should say about hotels, where it was possible to rent rooms, largely prepared around the square which was called "the ghetto of Englishmen". But more important meeting places for foreigners on vacations were the cafes, created in year 1600. The oldest was the Café of the Venetian founded in 1725 inSciarra Square, in the place where later was built the Saving Bank; it was frequented by high society, writers, and artists who increased the cultural offers. Very famous was the Café of the Englishmen in the Square of Spain on the corner of the Coaches street whose interiors were decorated with designs of Piranesi himself (there’s only a memory in the prints that reproduce, from engravings of Piranesi himself, the portraits with archaeological abstract fantasies). We must also mention the Café Ruspoli in the Corsican and many others until the famous Greco Cafe, founded in the year 1760.
The Embassies were naturally with their parties and greetings the rendezvous points for foreigners on vacations who had rented a room in a hotel in Rome. All aristocratic houses, Borghese, Barberini, Albani were welcoming with the “curious” foreigners on vacations, putting to their disposition several, to avoid them the renting in a hotel.
The artist who in Rome exercised the biggest influence on the English atmosphere was Piranesi. He was the top interpreter of the ruins and monuments of Rome, he recreated them with a romantic sensibility, perfectly adjust to the pleasure, of markedly English origin, for the picturesque and sublime, distinctive of whom rented a room in a hotel in Rome, and which was part of its prints, offered in sale in the Pope's city. The influence of the more romantic and picturesque Pinaresi’s aspect is evident for the visitor at Soane Museum of London, where old marbles and fragments are exposed in an ideal disorder, in groups accidentally arranged, with prevalence of the cultural offers whose roots are found in the Roman robinia tradition and in the Pinaresi’s influence in particular. It was a fashion to decorate apartments with views of Rome painted by Piranesi, and this was also worth for those who had not still come on vacations to Rome. The English Café in The Square of Spain was decorated by gouaches of Piranesi and these, with his art, made evident the offer of a key to make Rome understandable for those who visited it for the first time back then, after having seen the marvels of spending the night in the hotels.
The pure and simple tourism existed, that of Englishmen who rented a room in a Rome hotel for delight and joy, only moved by the desire of enjoying some vacations. We have many memories of this society in the same names of cafes or hotels. The Cafe of Englishmen in the Square of Spain decorated by the Piranesi was one of the most ancient. Many of the travelers on vacations also frequented the Café Greco.
Another meeting place in Rome was obviously, besides the Academies, the hotel rooms rented by the artists. In general the studies of the foreigners on vacations were in the street Margate, Bambino, in the street Candiotti, in Barberini Square. Germans preferred the street Sistine, here many travelers coming from Germany rented hotel rooms.
Especially in Germany the attraction for Rome was parallelly manifested to the consecration of the classic aspect. The roots of this attraction are very deep in the grounds of the Sturm und Drang. It was the need to escape restlessness toward a world characterized by the offer of a balance of peace and harmony, a world where art and nature reconcile, and spontaneity dominated, where tourists could take advantage of the hotel offers in Rome.
The ancient, before a "group of rules", was the center of enjoyment and ecstasy.
What motivates the renting of a hotel room in Rome is the art and nature together, the freedom and beauty. The peasants from Rome are like pagans, hostels become old caves and a hotel room in Emperor Nerón's room. In the light and colors, everywhere, there’s a Dionysiuslike sense. The love offer is fully and entirety lived, it’s a love for ideal, physical, moral and sensual beauty.
In Rome the person on vacations feels in harmony with the universe, because Rome is the center of the world, the place of ideas and universal things, with the offer of a perfect balance between the body and the soul, man and God.
Stendhal from 1800 to 1828 spent nearly ten years in Rome studying people more than monuments and museums that also covers a great part of his book. He believed to have found in the modern Romans, the two aspects of Rome, the offer of a harmonic balance between body and soul, between life and art, between happiness of living and truth. This is how he idealizes the leisure of the Roman people seen from the viewpoint of someone on vacation. The foreigners lodged in hotels saw the parties transformed in orgies, Frascati cave into a sacred place in Bacco, the ciociare in pagan matrons, the hotel rooms into the triclinio of Seneca, and the entire reality dissolved in the offer of a classic tradition or in the sense of an innate and equally millennial Christian devotion.
SEE ALSO:
Rome cheap Flights
Youth Hostels in Rome
Hotel deals in Rome |
