Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 10, No 5
Articles in this issue
- Minutes of the Touring Club Italiano's ordinary general assembly of 10 April 1904, held in the Salone della Borsa in Milan before 318 members, with ing. cav. Carlo Vanzetti of the Chamber of Commerce elected chairman. It opens with rag. Alberto Fortini's motion demanding that the debate be taken down in shorthand — rejected all but four votes — and a long footnote on Luigi Broggi's Borsa palace, inaugurated in the presence of the Royal family on 8 October 1901.
- The annual report read to the assembly by vice-director ing. Alberto Riva: membership rose from 31,920 at the start of 1903 to 37,467 at its close and about 40,000 by April, spread over 2,500 Italian communes and 600 foreign localities. It reviews the Lombardy guide, the 1:500,000 frontier maps, the signpost commission, the switch from Touring benzina depots to affiliated dealers, hotel affiliation, customs triptychs and the accounts — L. 314,254 income against L. 290,694 expenditure — and is signed by Johnson, Riva, Vigliardi Paravia and Zaffaroni.
- Members' speeches on the report: dott. Ercole Bassi complains that the Rivista attends more to 2,000 motorists than to the Kingdom's 200,000 cyclists and asks about the movable bicycle plate; avv. Felice Pizzagalli attacks the upkeep of provincial side roads and wants affiliated hotels to provide sheds for motorcycles; avv. Mildmay asks why the Touring keeps moving house instead of buying its own; and Fortini reads a long memorandum against centralisation, the suppressed Milan consulate and the 1,560-page Annuario.
- Ing. Riva and councillor L. V. Bertarelli reply: the via Monte Napoleone lease runs to September 1912 and a L. 23,000 surplus is far too slender to risk on a building, since a single circular to 40,000 members costs L. 2,000. Bertarelli explains that metric-office officials resist the movable cycle plate because fixed plates earn some offices L. 2,000 a year, and that the delayed Lombardy guide needed 1,700 informants, 10,000 record cards, 12,000 index names and ten lithographers at the Istituto Geografico Militare.
- The assembly unanimously carries ing. Emilio Beretta's motion asking the Council to lay a memorandum on road surveillance and maintenance before the government during the reform of the public works law, and accepts Antonino Mistretta's plea against the wearing of club badges by ex-members. Fortini's order of the day attracts a single vote and is rejected; dott. Candiani's motion of confidence in the Direzione passes unanimously.
- Debate on the 1903 accounts, in which Fortini calls the 50 per cent write-down on some L. 23,000 of furniture and the 15 per cent write-down on publications excessive, and Augusto Bontempelli asks about a lawsuit brought by a benzina supplier. Riva and Bertarelli answer, rag. Turrini confirms the auditors' finding of full regularity, the balance sheet is approved unanimously and the sitting closes at 18.00.
- Illustrated excursion by Francesco Damiani Almeyda of Palermo from Cefalù up the two-and-a-half-hour mule track to the Capuchin sanctuary of Gibilmanna (800 m) and on to Pizzo S. Angelo (1,081 m), describing the giant oaks of the Suro, Pianetti and Comune woods, the sixteenth-century Gagini-school marble Madonna and the peasant caravans that come for the feast of 8 September. It ends with the only cycling or motoring circuit possible in the district — Campofelice-Collesano-Isnello-Castelbuono-Cefalù, about 55 km.
- L. V. Bertarelli presents the Touring's new pocket railway guides — Milano-Bologna, Milano-Verona and Milano-Torino, of 40, 40 and 32 pages with 32, 32 and 21 engravings, a coloured cover and a chorographic map, at 50 centesimi each — with text by prof. Ottone Brentari telling the traveller what he is looking at from the carriage window. He urges members to buy them so the series can extend to Milano-Genova, Genova-Ventimiglia-Nizza, Genova-Spezia-Pisa, Verona-Venezia-Bologna-Firenze and Firenze-Roma.
- Standing department on exhibitions, opening with the Esposizione dell'industria italiana per il materiale turistico that the Touring's Bologna consulate opens on 15 May, with F. I. A. T., Isotta Fraschini, Bianchi, Florentia, Taurinia, Marchand, Türkheimer, Frera, Pirelli, Marquart and Fusi among the exhibitors. It continues with the Brescia regional exhibition opening 29 May on Monte Cidneo, where the Touring has a large hall and a branch office, and the Romagna regional exhibition inaugurated at Ravenna on 1 May with a cycling rally.
- Standing department on the campaign to bring visitors to Italy, carrying the ten-point programme of the Siena committee, news of the imminent Lombardy and Lakes section of the national association, and the Roman consulate's excursions laid on for foreign visitors.
- The great "Sezione Lombarda e dei Laghi" of the national association for the movement of foreigners is about to be constituted. The promoting committee sitting at the Touring has raised membership to 135 — 77 for Milan, 12 for Lake Como, 8 for the Varese plain, 6 for Erba, 8 each for Orta and Maggiore, 6 for Iseo and others for Garda, the Ossola, the Valtellina and the Bergamasco — and local committees are being formed where the groups are already substantial.
- Letter from C. A. Cambi-Gado, president of the Siena committee of the national association for the movement of foreigners, to the editor of La Vedetta Senese, announcing an information office in via Umberto 8 and a ten-point programme: an interpreter, a register of public services, museum hours and tradesmen's tariffs, a sealed urn for visitors' complaints, a fixed-price combined ticket for the city's monuments and museums, examined and licensed guides, periodic carriage or motor excursions, negotiations with the railways and travel agencies, and eventually a large illustrated guide to Siena.
- The Touring's Roman consulate, by arrangement with the national association for the movement of foreigners, organised early-morning excursions to show visitors the country round the eternal city: first to Monterotondo and Castel Giubileo, the ruins of Ardea, Frascati, the abbey of Grottaferrata, Marino, Genzano and Lake Nemi, with Veio and Isola Farnese still to come on 8 May, Anzio and Torre Astura by boat on the 12th and Tivoli, Subiaco and S. Scolastica on Sunday the 22nd.
- Standing railway department, carrying notes on the Trans-Siberian, the helicoidal tunnel of the Domodossola-Iselle line, the new Lecce-Francavilla railway and the electric lines being built around Varese.
- The Trans-Siberian from the St Petersburg station to Dalny in China measures 9,345 km, excluding the Lake Baikal crossing still made by steamer or sledge, with metal bridges of 700, 800 and 938 m over the Irtysh, Ob and Yenisei. Beyond Baikal it crosses the Stanovoi range, pierces the Grand Khingan by a three-kilometre tunnel and reaches Kharbin over a 1,015 m iron viaduct across the Sungari.
- The helicoidal Varzo-Trasquera tunnel, Italy's largest spiral tunnel, is almost finished: nearly 4 km long and about 14 km from Domodossola on the line to the Italian mouth of the Simplon, it is formed of three spiral galleries joined by bridge sections so that trains climb continuously. The works took nearly five years, were directed by the Mediterranea and employed only Italian labour.
- Work has begun on this 87 km line through the most fertile districts of the Lecce province, with a construction office opened at Manduria to push towards Francavilla and a second gang starting from Lecce for the Novoli-Nardò section. Directed by ing. Fassi, it will have ten stations, none more than 200 m from its village, and first-class economic construction with 36 kg per metre steel rails.
- Quoting La Prealpina Illustrata on the first section of the Varese-Luino electric railway just opened as far as Ghirla — an idea born in 1895 and to be completed within a year by the Società per le Ferrovie e Tranvie Elettriche Varesine — on the Valle d'Olona industrial line built from Castellanza by the Novara-Seregno company, and on projects to extend it to Mendrisio and to build a Varese-Angera line now that the Simplon is opening.
- The signposting department publishes a first list of seventy numbered direction and warning boards placed despite the bad season, province by province from Aquila and Ascoli Piceno through Bologna, Brescia, Belluno, Como, Genova, Girgenti, Milano, Modena, Novara, Siena, Siracusa, Torino and Treviso to Verona, naming each donor and the consul or municipality that erected it. It closes with new subscriptions from Martini Bernardi Neri, count Ettore Costa, dott. Cesare Pegna and others, bringing the fund to L. 11,755 and 909 signs.
- The roads department, edited by ing. M. Tedeschi, carrying his Turin lecture on road maintenance and an account of the draft general regulation of highway police.
- Ing. M. Tedeschi's lecture at the Turin motor exhibition, reproduced almost entire from Camillo Benevolo's shorthand report: haulage effort on a bad road is two or three times that on a good one, and Italy's road decay springs from ignorance of what a good road is, the belief that railways made roads superfluous, engineers' neglect, inadequate budgets and the want of a road code. He contrasts France, Württemberg, Luxembourg, Baden, Belgium, England and mechanised American practice, praises the Touring's 1900 prize competition and Bertarelli's section, and ends with the order of the day carried unanimously by the national motoring congress at Turin on 11 February 1904.
- Outline of the draft general road-police regulation drawn up by the sub-commission of senator Ginori, comm. Giovanni Silvestri for the T. C. I., cav. A. Massoni, cav. G. Coltelletti, comm. Paolucci and cav. Cappelletti to replace the rules of 1881, 1890 and 1901. Its five titles cover road conservation, a uniform keep-right rule across the Kingdom, technical inspection by the Genio Civile at L. 10 a car, two independent brakes, a horn, an enamelled rear plate, white lamps, a prefectural certificate of competence and a 12 km/h limit in built-up areas, with lighter provisions for motorcycles; a footnote gives the Genoa Auto-Club's motion for the right-hand rule.
- Standing mountaineering department, carrying P. Nicolai's account of a Sardinian winter outing on the Limbara and news of alpine lecture propaganda and the 1904 outing programmes of the Milan clubs.
- P. Nicolai writes from Tempio that forty members, among them the signore Frasconi and Bertula with their daughters, were carried by forty Sardinian ponies to the summit of Limbara (1,362 m), slept at the refuge near punta Giugantino and next morning skated on the frozen pool and skied on the snow. A wild-boar drive with beaters and hounds killed five boars and six young, two of them shot by signorina Frasconi; consul Pietro Azara toasted the Touring's forty thousand members and socio M. Panu lectured on the optical telegraphy trials with La Maddalena.
- The Università Popolare of Milan, with the Milan section of the Club Alpino, put on seven lectures in the Aula Magna of the Liceo Beccaria by the section's secretary rag. Mario Tedeschi on mountaineering in art and science, its history, food hygiene, technique and the world of the Alps, illustrated with photographic projections; he repeated them in one lecture of a hundred slides and section president ing. Alberto Riva presented him with a medal. The 1904 outing programmes of the C. A. I. Milan section and the Società Escursionisti Milanesi follow, from Monte della Croce to the Adamello and the Disgrazia.
- Motoring department, describing the new Ausonia electric vehicles built at Sesto San Giovanni, the Milan Automobile Club's caravan to Rome and the French motor-touring competition in Italy.
- The Camona Giussani Turrinelli works at Sesto San Giovanni have built a range of light electric vehicles round the new Fulgor accumulator, as light as the Edison but far cheaper, which allows tubular steel chassis: a double phaeton good for over 150 km at 25 km/h, a van carrying 5 tonnes for 40 km, a twelve-seat omnibus and an interchangeable Brougham/Victoria body first built for socio marchese Fazio Dal Pozzo. The firm has opened a Milan branch running cars on contract, has asked the city for a per-kilometre fare instead of the L. 4 hourly tariff, and will put two twenty-seat trolley cars into service at the Montecatini baths with the Frigerio company.
- Ten cars of the Milan Automobile Club drove to Rome in three stages totalling 662 km to present the King, its honorary president, with the club badge and a parchment inscribed by Giuseppe Giacosa. The party included cav. Augusto Massoni's 24 HP Isotta Fraschini, Paolo Meda's 16 HP, Enrico Maggioni's 20 HP Wartburg-Eisenach, Riva's 24 HP Fiat, Oreste Scandola's 10 HP Bianchi, Gustavo Modiano's 12 HP Figini and Vehrheim's 15 HP Darracq; the King met them at Ponte Molle and led them into the city, then received them in private audience for half an hour.
- Paul Meyan, director of France Automobile, gathered eleven cars at Nice on 19 April, but foul weather and impassable roads cut the caravan to five by Turin and to four after a collision near Cremona, so the run was stopped at Florence instead of Rome. The Touring's consulates looked after the party, which included two ladies, and Meyan repeatedly praised his reception, returning director-general comm. Johnson's visit at the club's headquarters.
- Motorcycling department announcing the Touring's practicality run over the Colle Sestrières circuit fixed for 19 June 1904 and the lamp competition to be held with it.
- The date of the run is fixed for 19 June; members applying to the club's administration receive the regulations and an entry form to be sent to the Turin capo console cav. A. Rostain at via Pisa 5. The June number will explain how petrol tanks are to be closed and stamped and where the control, timing and refuelling points lie.
- Rules for the acetylene lamp trial run alongside the Sestrières circuit: entries by 15 June to cav. Alfredo Rostain, lamps delivered to the Club Automobilisti d'Italia at the Palazzina del Valentino by 17 June, charged and lead-sealed two hours before the start and burnt for an hour, then fitted to a competing motorcycle and relit at the Susa control. They are relit again at 21.00 without recharging and judged on duration, photometric intensity and steadiness, ease of recharging and weight, with first- and second-class gold and a silver medal, tampering punished by disqualification and the L. 10 entry fees going to the signpost fund.
- Motorcycle department, with a technical notice on the Puch machine of Graz and a review of the legal dispute over whether motorcycles are cycles or motor cars.
- Technical notice on the Graz-built Puch, praised for its frame shape and rational engine mounting: a vertical engine whose head is separate from the cylinder and bolted on, the cylinders turned on the lathe to avoid eccentric boring, a Longuemare carburettor, a chain-driven rotary magneto with ignition advance, a 30 mm flat belt and a grooved pulley tensioner movable on an arc. Made in 2, 2½ and 3 HP types weighing 54 to 60 kg, with a frame tank holding oil and enough benzina for about 200 km; Italian agent Carlo Torresini of Padua.
- History of the dispute: a January 1902 circular of the Ministry of Public Works excluded motorcycles from the motor-car rules, but an instruction of the following year subjected them to the regulation of 29 July 1901 while keeping the L. 20 cycle tax; the Touring appealed against the prefects' orders and the ministry suspended them, whereupon the Consiglio di Stato held motorcycles to be motor cars. Pending the Tedesco commission's reform they remain treated as cycles — the Milan prefecture has refunded examination deposits and forbidden prosecutions, while Brescia's contrary order was suspended after the local consulate pressed the point.
- Cartoon reprinted from Paris sport illustré, drawn by Kell'R and captioned "Molto progresso ma... non troppo!", in which a chauffeur flung from his overturned car declares that he is undoubtedly a man of progress but no partisan of wireless telegraphy.
- Cycling department, carrying the annual technical review of the bicycle and prof. Vinassa de Regny's account of a cycling-and-geology trip through Umbria and the Marche.
- Annual technical survey: Italy's cyclists rose from 173,359 to 199,301 in a year, proof that the motorcycle feeds rather than kills the bicycle, since scarcely anyone becomes a motorcyclist without first having cycled. Frames show no innovation and prices keep falling, so the only real novelties are in brakes — flexible cables giving way to fine steel rods and relay levers, with rim brakes now standard — and in hubs, illustrated by a sectioned free-wheel-and-back-pedal brake hub and a two-speed epicyclic hub whose blocks were lent by the Edoardo Bianchi works of Milan.
- Prof. P. Vinassa de Regny, a Touring consul, answers the magazine's question whether one sees anything from a bicycle by describing a geological field trip from Perugia with prof. Marchi and dott. Bortolotti, riding by Foligno, Sellano and Cerreto to Norcia while the rest of the students went round by Spoleto in a motor car, then over Forca Canapine and the Piano Grande del Castelluccio to the Vettore, down to Arquata, Acquasanta and Ascoli and home by the Adriatic coast, Porto Civitanova and Macerata. The cyclists, he argues, saw far more than the motorists.
- Standing department of outings and rallies, covering the general convegno at Siena, the Cagliari and Spezia meetings, the Rome-to-Montenegro tour and consular outing programmes from Alessandria and Bergamo to Firenze, Genova, Padova and Torino.
- Programme of the general touring rally at Siena during the exhibition of ancient art: reception of teams in the courtyard of the provincial palace, visits to the city, museums and galleries, the mayor's vermouth d'onore, a parade of bicycles, cars and motorcycles along the Lizza, prize-giving at Forte S. Barbara and a gala performance. The honorary committee is headed by senator and lieutenant-general Baldissera and the executive by capo-console Giuseppe Camajori with consuls Bargagli Bardi, Bratto, Caselli and Ficalbi; entry L. 4.50 to console Martino Bratto by 25 May, banquet L. 5.
- The Cagliari consulate — capoconsole Luigi Casotti with consuls Miorin, Todde and Binda — appeals to members with a frankly modest programme, offering instead the purity of the sky, the gulf and the island's costumes. Director-general comm. Johnson is answering the call with a motor tour of Sardinia to see which roads could carry a regular motor service, running from Milan by Genoa, Spezia and Civitavecchia to Terranova, Tempio, La Maddalena and Caprera, Sassari, Alghero, Oristano, Cagliari, Iglesias, Monteponi and Nuoro, and back for the Bologna exhibition.
- Console Carlo Uberto Gabbi writes that the national touring rally planned for Parma in June has been put off to June 1905, because Bologna's rally and exhibition fall in the same month and region and the clash could only damage the Parma meeting.
- The Spezia consulate and the Club Spezia are working hard on the rally of 22-23 June, built round the launch of the battleship Regina Elena. The honorary committee is headed by navy minister Mirabello with vice-admiral Palumbo, rear-admiral Coltelletti of the arsenal and Touring officers Johnson and Riva; the executive is led by capo console cap. Alfredo Fanfani. The programme runs from reception of teams and the municipality's vermouth d'onore through a trip round the gulf to Porto Venere and a parade, to free places aboard ship for the launch and a guided visit to the arsenal.
- Entries close on 31 May for the July tour organised by the Touring's Rome consulate from Rome through Puglia to Montenegro and Dalmatia: seventeen days by way of Terracina, Capua, Benevento, Foggia and Barletta to Bari, then by steamer to Antivari and on through Scutari, Podgoritza, Niksic, Cettigne, Cattaro, Ragusa, Spalato, Sebenico and Zara, returning by sea to Ancona. Adhesions go to console rag. Fernando Trasatti, and Vico Mantegazza offers members 100 copies of his 340-page book on Montenegro for L. 1.20, the whole proceeds to the Dante Alighieri.
- Two new clubs: a Sport Club at Creva presided over by sig. Clemente Pozzi, with a score of cyclists among its first members and an interest in mountaineering, which has adopted a white, red and green costume for coming rallies; and a Società Sportiva at San Vito d'Asolo in the Treviso province, its members mostly Touring men, which opened with a cycle run by Valdobbiadene to Feltre.
- New aeronautics department, opening with an interview with the Milanese engineer Cosimo Canovetti on the state of dirigible balloon experiments.
- Interview with ing. Cosimo Canovetti of Milan, a member of the Frassinetti balloon company's board, on airship progress since Zeppelin: Santos-Dumont's No. 6 rounded the Eiffel Tower in autumn 1901 at an apparent 8 to 8.5 m per second, bettering La France of 1884. He describes the silk and rubber envelope of No. 7 built for the Saint Louis contest, the De Bradsky whose thin steel suspension wires broke, the Severo whose bamboo frames brought the car too near and ignited the gas, and the Melin, Barton, Lebaudy and Almerico da Schio Italia craft with their sliding planes and rigid keels.
- Customs department covering the new French triptych won for members, the Belgian and Italian concessions, and the formalities to be completed on leaving Switzerland, Austria-Hungary and France.
- The French finance ministry has granted the Touring the right to issue triptychs for the temporary import of cars and motorcycles into France, valid to 31 December of the year of issue, obtained on a form with L. 3 for expenses and photographs of member and vehicle, and with the duty deposit waived for members domiciled in Italy — a large saving against French duty of 50 francs per 100 kg above 125 kg and 120 francs below. Belgium's finance minister count V. Smet de Naeyer has renewed the deposit-free concession, and the Italian triptych for members living abroad runs six months and five entries and exits.
- The Swiss customs directorate now requires bicycles admitted free of duty deposit to bear an impressed factory number, excluding machines built from parts of different origin or repainted, and those numbered later with a punch; the Touring has protested that indelible punched numbers identify a machine just as well. Swiss customs also no longer admit new bicycles arriving by rail, boat or carriage on the membership card alone, so a consignment note describing them as used is now needed.
- Two judgments of interest to tourists. The Treviglio magistrate, pretore avv. Bonicelli, holds that a railway crossing-keeper exercises no discretionary power and so is not a public official, making Curletti's insults to keeper Bacis simple ingiuria under art. 396 rather than oltraggio. The Florence conciliatore avv. Del Beccaro rules that the Ferrovie Meridionali, having accepted avv. Paradiso's bicycle as luggage, were liable for sending it on a later train and leaving it out in the rain to rust, and awards L. 6 damages.
- Avv. Cesare Agrati answers members' legal queries: whether a tree-lined avenue at Casalbuttano can bar cyclists, whether Morandi of Orzinuovi should still pay the L. 20 motorcycle tax, why the Rivista prefers to print acquittals, the solve et repete rule on taxes and fines, the Perugia private-carriage tax, a Salò consul's recourse against the mechanic whose man incurred the fine, and a warning to the mayor of Pavia that closing the town gates against passing motorists and motorcyclists would be neither justified nor legal.
- Library department listing the yearbooks and reviews sent in by members, an appeal for missing numbers of the Rivista, and the books presented to the Touring's library.
- Thanks to the members who sent back numbers of yearbooks and reviews, among them Antonio Agazzi of Bergamo, G. Albani of Monza, consul Giovanni Cima Ballerio of Massafiscaglia, E. L. Delle Piane and M. Multedo of Genoa, colonel Sardegna of Mantua, ing. Luigi Picciola of Trieste and Ettore Taglioni of Bergamo.
- List of books presented to the library, including Apollonio's Diario-Guida of Mantua and of Brescia for 1904, prof. D. Barduzzi on the baths of S. Giuliano near Pisa, the thirteenth edition of Baedeker's Italie Centrale-Rome, Piero Cornaglia's I misteri del Sahara, prof. Carlo Marco's Piccolo Dizionario Botanico published by the Varallo section of the C. A. I., the 2,000-page Guida Savallo of Milan and Spuhler's Mon Voyage en Italie, together with the 1904 yearbooks of the Touring Club de France, Touring Club Suisse, Cyclists' Touring Club, Union Vélocipédique de France and Dansk Automobil Club.
- Miscellany department carrying a French forecast of travel in the year 2000, the new ossuary at Melegnano, obituaries of Amato Amati and count Luigi Sugana, the veterans' home at Turate and a historical note on Rovereto.
- Louis de Meurville, writing in the Gaulois of Paris, predicts that in a century railways will lose the fight against motor cars unless rebuilt to a far wider gauge, with carriages so steady that one can read, write, eat, sleep and shave in them and find a bar, library and bath, at 150 km an hour, while the Atlantic crossing falls to three days. Purpose-built motor roads banked at the curves and free of level crossings will carry cars at not less than 100 km/h, and so much road will be built that no ground will be left for growing wheat.
- Unlike Montebello, Palestro, Magenta, Solferino and San Martino, the dead of the battle of Melegnano of 8 June 1859 — about 1,200 French killed and wounded and 1,000 Austrians, including the Zouave colonel Paulze d'Ivoy and the mortally wounded Austrian general Roden — had never been given a monument. An ossuary raised by public subscription, to which the King of Italy and the French government have lately contributed, will be inaugurated on 8 June, crowned by two statues designed by the sculptor Domenico Barcaglia and reproduced here in advance.
- Obituary of Amato Amati, born at Monza on 24 January 1831, a volunteer in the student battalion of 1848 and author of the eight-volume Dizionario corografico d'Italia (1864-1872). A few months before his death at Rome on 26 March, on his way to the geographical congress at Naples, he persuaded the Istituto Lombardo to take up the study of the Italian place-names of the unredeemed provinces, prompting a commission under prof. Vigilio Inama that includes Bertarelli, prof. Ottone Brentari and avv. Riccardo Fabris.
- Count Luigi Sugana was struck down at the Teatro Goldoni in Venice on the evening of 27 March while discussing with mayor count Filippo Grimani his scheme to rebuild the Bucintoro, and died a few hours later. The Rivista recalls a detail nobody else mentioned: some twenty-five years earlier at Treviso he built a wooden four-wheeled carriage in which he steered while a peasant behind pedalled furiously, careering through the streets — making him one of Italy's first motorists — until he abandoned it to write a tragedy.
- The veterans' home at Turate in the Como province grew out of comm. Giuseppe Candiani's protest of 20 September 1895 at the destitution of the soldiers of 1848-49: funds were raised, the vast former palazzo Ala-Ponzoni was bought on 10 October 1896 and the three promoters — Amato Amati, Giacinto Bruzzesi and Candiani — opened it on 4 March 1899. It now houses over 60 veterans, has just been voted L. 50,000 a year by parliament, and has become a frequent goal of cycling, gymnastic and school outings.
- With Rovereto in the news because the government would give it a quarter of the Italian university that the Italians of Austria want whole at Trieste, the town proposes a fresco in its town hall of 1476 showing its submission to Venice. The review Tridentum publishes unpublished evidence from Marin Sanudo's Vitae ducum on the Venetian occupation of 1416-17 and the Castruncolo ceded by Aldrighetto Castelbarco; the finest part of the castle, now a barracks, is the round tower the Venetians built in 1492 above the Vallarsa road.
- The club's official notices section, carrying the Council's decisions, publication news, the innkeepers' pamphlet, the despatch of the Lombardy guide, the necrology, the affiliation lists and the membership rolls.
- The Council notes the resignations of councillors avv. Cesare Agrati and comm. Giovanni Silvestri, awarding Agrati a gold medal for six years at the head of the legal and alliances sections; adopts a burgee for members' boats, an elongated triangular tricolour with the T. C. I. initials in the green and a ship's wheel in the white; decides to publish six more railway guides; puts to the Vienna congress of the Lega Internazionale delle Associazioni Turistiche proposals for a unified identity booklet and recognition of four new road signs; and approves the estimate for fitting out the new headquarters at via Monte Napoleone 14.
- The three guides Milano-Torino, Milano-Genova and Milano-Bologna have gone out to all subscribers; each has about 40 pages, numerous engravings and a map for 50 centesimi, and members sending L. 1 direct receive all three post free. Subscriptions are now open for the second group — Milano-Genova, Genova-Pisa and Genova-Ventimiglia-Nizza — and the club asks members for photographs of buildings, monuments and landscape details visible from the lines, and for notes on any gaps or errors.
- The hotel commission's pamphlet has been published under this title in 12,000 copies, dealing with the layout of an inn's rooms, heating and ventilation, lighting, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, latrines, toilet, bath, cleanliness, service, prices and tips, and closing with a "decalogue of the innkeeper". Its introduction makes clear that it is aimed not at the great city hotels but at those of small towns, villages and alpine valleys, where nobody expects luxury but where cleanliness must improve if foreigners are to come and stay.
- L. V. Bertarelli's new Lombardy guide is ready in three cloth-bound volumes of over 1,000 pages, with 1,000 profiles and itineraries of 2,500 road sections; because the Istituto Geografico Militare has been delayed by the War Ministry, the six sheets of the 1:100,000 map will follow in May and the volumes are going out first. Subscriptions closed on 30 April, and from 1 May the guide sells to members at L. 8 at the Touring's office, L. 8.60 post free in Italy, L. 9.75 to Belgium, Germany and Britain, and L. 16 to non-members.
- Printing of the 1904 yearbook is proceeding without interruption; most of the sheets are already off the press and the volume, on which no pains have been spared, will be ready before long.
- Nine communes of the Benevento province — Cerreto Sannita, Solopaca, Castelvenere, Amorosi, Melizzano, S. Lorenzo Maggiore, Frasso Telesino, Pontelandolfo and Casalduni — have joined the Touring on the proposal of captain Giuseppe Venditti, with Faicchio, San Lupo, San Salvatore Telesino and Morcone almost certain to follow; a few more men like Venditti, the club remarks, and every Italian commune would be enrolled.
- Carola Rolla, widow Vigliardi-Paravia and mother of the Touring's general secretary cav. Innocenzo Vigliardi-Paravia, died suddenly at Turin on the morning of 11 April. L. V. Bertarelli represented the club's council at the solemn funeral, which showed how large a part the citizens of Turin took in the family's loss.
- Eighteenth list of affiliated hotels with room and meal prices, service-staff rates, garage space and the discount allowed to members: the Albergo Centrale at Alassio, the Ristorante dei Velocipedisti at Arenzano, the Giardino at Arona, the Panteo at Brescia, the Centrale at S. Gimignano with a 25 per cent discount, the Continental des Étrangers and the Union at Genoa, the Campana at Pinerolo, the Centrale Bagni at Salsomaggiore and the Londres, Royal Deux Tours at Verona.
- From 31 March the Touring's own benzina and lubricant depots gave way to affiliated dealers, who must not charge members more than the price published in the Rivista and the Annuario, must keep drums ready at a set price, stock at least one Touring-approved lubricant, publish their hours and a holiday contact, and hold scales, a strainer funnel, a Touring-marked thermometer-densimeter and a book in which buyers may record satisfaction or complaint.
- Sixth list of members who have paid five years in advance, running alphabetically from Mario Allegri of Milan to Adolfo Zanutta of Udine and including count Giuseppe di Porcia, marchese Pio Luigi Strozzi of Florence and the Piaggio brothers of Genoa, bringing the total at 15 April 1904 to 1,105.
- List of members recognised for their services in recruiting, from Virgilio Roffi of Avezzano and Achille Granata of Barlassina to Marco Vassilich of Fiume, Mario Siriani of Santos and Ugo Scala of Verona, bringing the total at 15 April 1904 to 679.
- Roll of candidates for life and annual membership presented between 15 March and 15 April 1904, arranged by Italian province from Alessandria to Vicenza and then by foreign country, including the Trentino and Venezia Giulia, France, Germany, Greece, England, Russia, Switzerland, Tripoli, the United States, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. It closes with the totals: 38,162 annual and 630 life members, 38,792 in all.