Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 13, No 7
Articles in this issue
- Giulio Majoni's illustrated portrait of Perugia — the Palazzo dei Priori, the Fontana Maggiore of fra Bevignate and the Pisani brothers, and the Giardinetto laid out on the ruins of the Rocca Paolina — written for the Mostra d'Arte Antica Umbra and the cyclo-automobile convegno of 25–26 August got up by the Veloce Club Perugino and the local T. C. I. consulate.
- Many members have answered the Rivista's referendum asking which is the finest viewpoint in Italy; publication of the replies begins next month, and further correspondents are asked for brevity plus a photograph or picture postcard.
- The steamer Concordia is back in service on Lake Trasimeno under its new director dott. Grifi, with cheap Sunday runs to San Feliciano and Isola Maggiore and a Thursday luxury circuit halting two hours at Castiglion del Lago for the Della Cornia castle, then the Emissario, Monte del Lago, Torricella and Passignano.
- L. V. Bertarelli reads the Touring's new Civitavecchia and Frosinone sheets of the Carta d'Italia as a poem of Lazio: the Volsini, Cimini and Sabatini craters with the lakes of Bolsena, Vico and Bracciano, the coastal lagoons of Fogliano, Caprolace, Paola and Fondi, and the Appia, Cassia, Aurelia, Portuense and Flaminia.
- Ottone Brentari's report on the Venice geographical congress: about 400 adherents attended and 200 spoke, among them Ricchieri, Baratta, De Marchi, Errera and Olinto Marinelli, with army and navy delegates; De Agostini and Bertarelli's paper on the Touring's 1:250 000 Carta d'Italia drew a unanimous vote of praise, and a new statute was adopted after the Società Geografica stayed away.
- L. V. Bertarelli argues that the War Ministry's ban on selling the Istituto Geografico Militare's 1:50 000 quadranti and 1:25 000 tavolette is futile, since the sheets circulated freely for decades, and hopes the Institute's forthcoming 86-sheet 1:200 000 Carta d'Italia will not likewise be kept from the public.
- The first congress of the Associazione per la difesa delle bellezze naturali d'Italia met at Bologna on 22–24 June under Touring consul cav. Carlo Sandoni, with Attilio Brunialti lecturing on Sicily and Ugo Ojetti giving the inaugural address; Bologna was fixed as the seat and the council elected.
- Reprint of an article by « Un italiano che viaggia » in the Giornale d'Italia denouncing the squalid inns of Umbria, the Marche and the Abruzzo and proposing a single company of a hundred identical « Cento Alberghi »; the Rivista replies by citing the 12 000 copies of its pamphlet Il Touring agli albergatori.
- Plans and façade, taken from the Revue Mensuelle of the Touring Club de France, of the small-town hotel designed by Cerrutti Maori, T. C. F. delegate at Menton, and shown at the Lyon urban-hygiene exhibition of 12–19 May: L. 39 000 to build and L. 8000 to furnish.
- The motoring department for July 1907, carrying the Touring's second petrol analysis, the Brescia races, the Ostend motor show and the new compulsory car plates.
- Fractional distillation of a second petrol sample, from the Italian refineries, tabulated by boiling point, density and ignition temperature of the carburetted air; it proves 7.3 per cent poorer than June's sample, and the writer blames rising prices on refiners' trusts and on the meagre benzine yield of Caucasus, Romanian and Pennsylvanian crude.
- The regulations for the Coppa Florio and the Coppa della Velocità, to be run at Brescia on 1 and 2 September by the Automobile Club of Milan, are out in a de luxe edition in four languages with the Brescia Victory on the cover.
- A motor, cycle and sports show will be held from 10 to 17 July during the Ostend international exhibition, under the auspices of the Automobile Clubs of Flanders, Antwerp, Liège, Namur and Luxembourg and the patronage of the King of the Belgians.
- The T. C. I. undertakes to supply its members with the two enamelled iron plates every car must now carry; members need only state the province that issued the circulation licence and the licence number.
- O. B. on two youth alpine outings: the Mediolanum Femminile's tenth anniversary at the Alpe Turati on 2 June, with the Federazione Prealpina congress and a banner unveiled by signorina Rachele Galbiati, and Luigi Brioschi's C. A. I. Milan excursions of 9 June taking about 300 girls to Brunate and the Cima Innominata and 150 boys from Calolzio to the Cima Tesoro.
- The roads department, carrying an attack on the government's inertia over road upkeep, the new Taceno-Bellano road and the London tarring competition.
- Ing. Massimo Tedeschi reviews years of unkept parliamentary promises on road maintenance — Cavagnari's and Nuvoloni's questions, Scorciarini's proposal for a special office, Ferraris in 1905, Tedesco in 1904, the 1902 commission on the public works law — and asks for legislation rather than further studies, as communal roads decay.
- The new stretch joining the Valsassina road to Bellano will complete a 50-kilometre touring circuit past Ballabio, the Balisio gorge, Barzio, Introbbio with the Troggia waterfall, Primaluna, Cortenova and the Tartavalle magnesian spring, then through the Val Muggiasca above the Pioverna; the contractor Agostino Scheggia is to finish by 1908.
- Report on the London competition of tar products and spreading machines, run between Staines and Ascot with 18 entrants over granite, silica and sandstone roads: pressure machines penetrate no better than brush ones, and Britain has already contracted to tar 1600 km against France's 300 in five years.
- Cav. Ugo Trevisanato, a Venice councillor and Touring member, protests at the Rivista printing Molmenti's case against a bridge to the mainland; the editor replies that he has always favoured the bridge but will print opposing views, and invites Trevisanato to write up the rival projects.
- Correction to page 456 of the Annuario dell'Automobilismo 1907: no departure over the Simplon may be made after three in the afternoon, not before it.
- Latest subscriptions for Touring road signs, raising the running total to 2531 signs and L. 33 658, from the provinces of Cosenza, Genoa and Modena, the municipalities of Brescia, Follina, Viareggio and Pontebba, and Turin motorists including cav. Giovanni Agnelli.
- The Touring has circulated the mayors of every comune on a main road with its own blue enamelled iron town sign, 115 by 70 cm, giving province, circondario and mandamento with their distances plus symbols for post and telegraph office, tramway, Touring consul and doctor and railway station; sold at cost, L. 20 free Milan station.
- The ninth congress of the Lega Internazionale delle Associazioni Turistiche met at Munich on 19–22 June, admitting London's Motor Union; with avv. Bortolo Belotti for the T. C. I., it voted to exempt touring foreigners from residence taxes, to seek an international customs conference, and praised the Italian club's road signs. Stockholm takes the next congress.
- Some 700 Volontari Ciclisti e Automobilisti and Bersaglieri exercised near Palo on 1–2 June against mock landings from the torpedo boats Falco, Sparviero, Nibbio and Avvoltoio, colonel Morrone directing and the King reviewing them; the Senate then passed Scialoja's bill authorising recognition of a national V. C. A. corps.
- The book department, reviewing the State Railways' new Umbria album and noticing guides and motoring annuals from Milan, Paris, San Remo and Oderzo.
- L. V. Bertarelli praises Umbria, the State Railways' 120-page album with a Cambellotti colour cover, some two hundred engravings and text by Michele Oro, who is also the Touring's consul for Rome; copies have been granted to the club for those enrolled in the Perugia convegno of September.
- The legal-advice department, with a Reggio Emilia acquittal over a cycling fanfare, a Rouen judgment on a motor-car collision and a notice of Imbrecq's Code du chauffeur.
- Avv. F. Panizzi sends the judgment of pretore Battaglini of Reggio Emilia acquitting Vito Govi, who led seven or eight players on a serenade towards porta Santo Stefano: a small cycling fanfare is not a « banda musicale » required to notify the public security authority under art. 77 of the P. S. regulations.
- The Rouen tribunal's judgment of 12 December 1906 blames Nicolas for the collision with Milou's carriage, finding from Tellier's evidence of the wheel tracks that the car was going too fast for the steep road and had taken more than the middle of it instead of keeping right.
- Notice of Le Code du chauffeur by I. Imbrecq, advocate at the Paris Court of Appeal, a 500-page annotated and critical collection of all the laws affecting drivers, owners and makers of motor cars.
- Members who have still not paid their 1907 subscription are warned that after this month the Rivista, the sheets of the Carta d'Italia and the other publications will be stopped and the coercive measures allowed by the Statute applied.
- The club's official section for July 1907: the stand at the Padua tourist exhibition, action against the Prefecture's restrictions on motor traffic, the tryptique treaty with the T. C. F. and A. C. F., the L. I. A. T. delegates, the London Olympiad, road-monograph medals to ing. Pangrazio and ing. Libertini, and the Venice consulate under Conte Pietro Foscari.
- The lapsed hotel-improvement commission is reconstituted, electing Luigi Gavirati president and an executive of Mainoni, Mazzoni, Brioschi, Caspani and Consonni; it will turn the forthcoming report of the national bedroom competition into a vademecum of the Touring's rules for hoteliers.
- Touring members living in the principality presented Prince Albert of Monaco, the oceanographer and founder of the museum, with an illuminated parchment reproduced here; the prince has enrolled as a perpetual member of the club.
- Cav. Alfredo Rostain, the Touring's capoconsole at Turin, has been named an officer of the Crown of Italy by the King's own motion.
- An appeal for every member to bring in at least one new member during 1907, so that 58 000 may become 100 000, listing the L. 22.50 of publications a new member gets free: the three-volume Guida delle Strade Italiane, the 1907 Annuario Generale, eight sheets of the 1:250 000 Carta d'Italia, the Rivista and the Profili Itinerari.
- Prizes for members who recruit others: five nickelled acetylene lamps given by Fratelli Santini of Ferrara, five five-year Touring subscriptions and L. 50 of photographic plates from La Luminosa of Genoa, and an « Expo » watch-shaped pocket camera with enlarger from Toletti e Ferretti of Milan.
- Candidates who applied for membership between 1 and 31 May 1907, listed first as life members — among them Prince Albert of Monaco, the Automobile Club of Naples, the comune of Reggio Emilia and the municipality of Viareggio — then as annual members province by province, closing with a total of 57 733 members.