Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 13, No 10
Articles in this issue
- Director-general comm. Federico Johnson, with cav. Innocenzo Vigliardi-Paravia, avv. Federico Guasti and Achille Negri, drove Milan–Piacenza–Parma–Abetone–Lucca–Siena to Pienza on the way to the Perugia meet; the article describes Pio II's Renaissance town, the Palazzo Piccolomini restored by conte Silvio and contessa Anna Piccolomini, Rossellino's well, and the cathedral with Vecchietta's Assunta and Pio II's embroidered cope.
- The Touring's general meet at Parma on 21–22 September 1907, organised by console cav. Carlo Uberto Gabbi with geom. Pietro Prussia and capitano Guido Regazzi: an inaugural ceremony at the Teatro Reinach with speeches by mayor Luigi Lusignani, capoconsole comm. Ettore Candiani and prof. Alberto Lisoni, a banquet at the Albergo d'Italia, and an outing to the Castello di Torchiara; the Volontari Ciclisti shooting competition drew no entrants at all.
- The Società ciclistica comense's ciclo-moto-automobilistico meet of 14 September, held with the Touring consulate under the patronage of the Pro Como, drew 890 cyclists from 56 societies plus 60 banners, 20 motorcycles and 7 cars; organised by dott. Miro Masciadri, capoconsole ing. Piero Pomi and Alessandro Preda, with the parade ending at the Palazzo del Liceo.
- The Società Pro Zogno, led by avv. Bortolo Belotti and avv. Aristide Torri, held the Valle Brembana's first sporting and touring festival on 8 September, its novelty a foot race up the Monte Canto started by thirty-two runners outside the Albergo d'Italia.
- Report on the press take-up of the Rivista's survey of Italy's finest viewpoints — Il Marzocco, the Giornale d'Italia, Il Berico, Il Piccolo della Sera and others — with readers' nominations running from Monte Cocuzzo and the Sibillini to Taormina, the Gianicolo and Monte Mottarone, and a member's letter arguing for a bare list rather than purple prose.
- The roads department for October 1907, given over to the reopening of the Traversetta tunnel under the Monviso.
- On 25 August the C.A.I.'s Monviso section reopened the fifteenth-century Traversetta gallery — the old Perthuis du Viso, cut at 2900 m for the marquis Ludovico II of Saluzzo — after clearing it and repairing the mule tracks; Italian and French parties met at the mouth, and the day closed with a banquet at the Piano del Re. By Vittorio Marsengo-Bastia.
- Motoring department, with notes on the Brescia circuit, the Turin school for chauffeurs, F. Werner's warning on reckless driving in Austria, a steel-clad desert car built for the Sirdar Wingate in the Soudan, and London's motor omnibuses rising from 8 in 1904 to 810 by January 1907.
- The tenth Salon International de l'automobile, du cycle et des sports runs at the Grand Palais in Paris from 12 November to 1 December 1907; the leading Italian makers will exhibit and the T.C.I. takes a large hall beside the central nave for its usual propaganda.
- Caving department, carrying Bertarelli's practical follow-up on the Grotta della Figlia di Jorio in the Abruzzo.
- L. V. Bertarelli supplies the access notes missing from prof. Franchella's August article on the Grotta del Cavallone: Lama dei Peligni as base (19 km from Palena station, 51 km from Torino di Sangro), the ninety-minute horseback climb up the Valle di Taranta, a descent by hay-sledge "treggia" in twenty minutes, and a continuation via Fara S. Martino and the Piano delle Cinque Miglia to Sulmona.
- Department on the Italian lakes, with items on the threatened Lago d'Elio, the reorganised Iseo steamer company and overcrowding on the Lariana's Como boats.
- The little lake above Maccagno in the Valle Vedasca, reached in about two hours by Campagnano and Musignano, has been sold to a private company and partly drained for industrial use; quoting Alessandro Marabelli in the Avvenire of Pavia, the Rivista protests that its loss would also harm the water-poor valley.
- A deal between the Banca Bergamasca and the old Società Loverese has produced a new one-million-lira navigation company for Lake Iseo, which promises steamer connections with the Iseo–Pisogne railway, better-trained lake crews and wholesale renewal of the fleet.
- Sunday excursion traffic on Lake Como has left the Lariana's steamers packed to the gangways, and the company is said to be about to increase its service.
- Ottone Brentari's account of the C.A.I. congress held in the Valsesia and on Monte Rosa by the Varallo section: the commemorative volume La Valsesia, two new mountain roads (Febo Banfi's to the Pizzo Tracciora, and the Rima–Colle del Moud mule track paid for by Antonio De Toma), the four successive Gnifetti huts, the botanist Don Antonio Carestia of Riva, and the 42 climbers who went on to the Capanna Regina Margherita.
- Signed "Fritz", a report on the second congress of the C.A.I.'s Stazione Universitaria, from Edolo to Trento by rock, glacier and valley amid Trentino hospitality; the sessions asked the central office to unify guide and porter regulations, publish a map of the Brenta group, and regulate mountain waymarking.
- The Società Sportiva di Gargnano has circularised mayors, parish priests and schoolmasters after its waymarks on the ridge between Garda and the Valle di Ledro — the interlaced T and F for Touring and Federazione — were taken for cabalistic signs and defaced; the Cittadino of Brescia adds its support.
- After their meet at Fiera di Primiero, San Martino di Castrozza and the Passo del Mulaz, where the Venice C.A.I. section opened a new refuge, the Tridentine, Venetian and Cadore climbers went on to Monte Piana above the Lago di Misurina to unveil a monument to Giosuè Carducci's 1902 ascent.
- The road-signpost department, printing the latest subscriptions towards the Touring's signposting fund.
- New donations towards signposting from the provinces of Genoa and Rovigo, the comuni of Altare, Bagnolo Mella, Biella, Caltagirone, Lodi, Sanremo, Torre Pellice, Varallo, Vico Equense and others, bringing the running total to 2734 subscribers and L. 37 353.
- Twenty-three members of the Milan C.A.I. section, led by Antonio Rossini, reached Palermo on 4 September and were received by the Club Alpino Siciliano; their programme ran from Monte Caputo and the Castellaccio to the chief Sicilian cities and ended with the ascent of Etna, and Rossini now plans a twelve-day Sardinian tour.
- Comm. Federico Johnson has struck a medal for the members who made the Touring's Greek tour, bearing Pindar's head on one side and a commemorative inscription with the club's arms on the other; photographs come from capoconsole ing. Gaetano De Angelis of Naples, and Greek cyclists are announced for an Italian tour next year.
- Worked examples of how the Touring's 1:250,000 map of Italy is being revised — the Po between Cremona and Casalmaggiore compared with the 1883 Istituto Geografico Militare survey, and the changed mouths of the Ticino and Maggia on Lake Maggiore — followed by the rolls of local collaborators for the Catania, Messina and Perugia sheets.
- The T.C.I.'s commission on level crossings reports that painting the gates achieves nothing, and recommends instead a 2×1 m metal plate in 50 cm black-and-white checks, tested at the Rogoredo crossing on 17 September with the director-general and ing. Verga of the State Railways, plus a lamp throwing white light on the sign and a red light, visible at over 200 m, towards the approaching traveller.
- Book notices: Ercole Bassi's illustrated Valtellina guide, Anna Fioroni Parken's Emigranti; quattro anni al Canadà, Carlo Guidi's Manuale della Caccia, Bertero's dictionary of comuni, James Bennet's L'Arte della Réclame, Namias's photographic manual, the Schio section's 1:75,000 map of the "Dolomiti Meridionali", Paravia's Le Provincie d'Italia and Zanetti's new plan of Venice.
- The legal advice department for October 1907.
- The Monza tribunal's judgment of 9 August 1907 in the Parodi case, holding that although Meda's car was the one involved, the injury came from the cart's jolt against a kerb-stone and could not be laid to the driver — an important precedent on motorists' liability for running down pedestrians.
- Resolutions of the Direzione: the projected motor-boat display on the Po for the Piacenza 1908 meet, the L.I.A.T.'s handling of the Monaco congress votes 8 and 9, new enamelled hotel-affiliation plates, Conte Piccolomini named console for Pienza, a gold medal for the Turin provincial road-machinery competition, a new frontier signpost, and a medal for dott. Edgardo Longoni of the Peking–Paris raid.
- Some fifty Veneto consuls met at the Restaurant Bauer on 22 September under capoconsole conte Piero Foscari, who urged maritime tourism and announced a Dalmatia–Montenegro–Albania cruise; Larcher of Trento proposed a great meet there, avv. Cornoldi asked the Touring to limit its patronage to two cycling meets a year per region, and dott. Manzutto attacked German-only signs on Lake Garda and the "Venezia-Triest" tickets sold at Venice station.
- The Direzione presses the consuls who have not yet answered its hotel circular, asking them to report on hygiene, comfort and modern fittings and on each innkeeper's willingness to adopt the reforms in the pamphlet Il Touring agli Albergatori, so that the commission's findings can reach the Annuario 1908.
- Members are asked to send the 1908 subscription early — L. 6 in Italy, L. 8 abroad — by postal order to via Monte Napoleone 14, Milan, and are invited to convert to life membership (L. 100, or L. 125 abroad) or the five-year rate (L. 30 / L. 40) which carries a special badge.
- Austria alone still refuses to accept the membership card as proof of nationality for temporarily imported cycles, motorcycles and cars; the existing pass, guaranteed by the Rovereto capoconsole to the Innsbruck customs, works only at the Italo-Austrian frontiers and for one month, so the Touring is negotiating with the Austrian Touring and Automobile Clubs for any frontier and a three-month term.
- Spain has at last granted permits allowing the temporary import of cycles, motorcycles and cars for up to four months under special guarantees, sparing travellers the heavy deposit-and-refund formalities; the Touring is pressing Madrid to extend the facility to its own members.
- Seventh list of new consular appointments, headed by capoconsole Achille Isnenghi at Riva di Trento, with consuls at Aulla, Bologna, Buonconvento, Cherasco, Mezzolombardo, Porto Maurizio and on the warships Napoli and Vittorio Emanuele, plus an addendum of consuls missing from the Annuario 1907 and the seventh medical and sixth legal-adviser lists.
- Newly affiliated garages (Società degli Alberghi di Lecco, Agenzia Fornara at Novi Ligure, Enrico Mayr at Trento), mechanics at Belluno, Biella, Cagliari, Casale Monferrato, Occimiano and Zurich, and pharmacists at Assisi, Cannobio, Fontecchio, Marone, Riva and Rogliano.
- Candidates for membership who applied between 1 and 31 August 1907, listed first as life members (Boito, Züst, Pizzini, Afan de Rivera and others) and then as annual members province by province from Alessandria and Aquila through Brescia, Cagliari and Como to Reggio Emilia.