Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 15, No 7
Articles in this issue
- L. V. Bertarelli describes the Società dei Grandi Alberghi Varesini's scheme to develop the Monte delle Tre Croci (1083 m) above Varese: a funicular from the Sacro Monte line, an aqueduct pumping spring water from the Vellone some 600 m uphill, building plots for villas and a hilltop hotel designed by the Milanese architect Giuseppe Sommaruga.
- Notice of Bertarelli's 400-page report to the Touring council on Italian place-names, built from about 3000 sheets of the Istituto Geografico Militare's 1:100 000 map circulated to more than 10 000 informants and some 48 000 exchanges, and proposing nearly 8000 corrections for the Touring's own 1:250 000 Carta d'Italia.
- Enrico Thovez on the recurring pull of Venice and the Biennale: the gondola after trains, bicycles, motor cars and aeroplanes, Franz Stuck's room as the show's revelation, Antonio Fradeletto presiding, Ducrot and Zorn at the Florian, and the Lido crowds.
- A summer essay on swimming and bathing as the answer to the heat, invoking Archimedes' principle, the Roman and Greek baths at Pompeii, Byron's re-swimming of Leander's Hellespont crossing, and the growing sport of high diving.
- A companion piece to the author's earlier article on caravanning: the moored house-boats of Henley and Oxford, and sailing wherries and yachts on the Norfolk Broads out of Yarmouth, Potter Heigham, Wroxham and Stalham, with George Applegate's 32-ton Dauntless quoted at 10 to 13 guineas (L. 262,50–341,25) a week.
- The magazine's camping department, opening with the Genoa section of the Club Alpino Italiano encamped at Pra Riondo.
- After Prince Scipione Borghese's camp on Monte Baldo, members of the Genoa section of the Club Alpino pitched seven tents at Pra Riondo (1000 m, between Monte Beigua and Monte Sciguello above Cogoleto) on 22 May, with detailed instructions for erecting the two-man mountain tent photographed by Tensi.
- Progress on the Touring's appeal and public subscription for Italy's woods and pastures, welcomed at the Congresso Forestale di Bologna and backed by the Ministry of Agriculture; the organising commission is to be appointed in July.
- An illustrated account of travel in China after the Boxer rising and Prince Borghese's Peking–Paris drive: Peking's Temple of Confucius, Temple of Heaven, the 1734 Great Bell weighing some 39 450 kg, the Five Pagodas, and the foreign concessions at Tientsin and Tsingtao.
- The magazine's aviation department, illustrated with the new French military airship hangars and Latham's Antoinette monoplane.
- Argues that 1909 is reversing 1908's triumph of the biplane (Wright, Voisin, Farman, Delagrange): Blériot has lifted two passengers besides himself, Esnault-Pelterie is flying well, and Hubert Latham's Antoinette took the French record at Châlons on 5 June in rain and wind.
- The department covering touring legislation, customs and statistics.
- Deputy Marc Réville's report to the French Chamber's customs commission proposes to split heading 614 of the 1892 tariff, creating heading 614 bis for cycles and parts at L. 220 per 100 kg and a four-part motor-car heading (chassis, bodywork, engines and parts, accessories), with a full table of the proposed rates.
- Photographs of the Touring and the Dante Alighieri society at the Magenta ossuary, the Duke of Genoa on the speakers' tribune, and the Touring's commemorative plaque walled into the S. Martino ossuary on 24 June.
- The Touring proposes replacing the separate national triptychs with a single libretto di libera circolazione (12 paired counterfoils in Italian, French and German) valid for Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and Spain; Foreign Minister Tittoni has agreed to press it at the coming Paris conference.
- A photo page of the cyclist relay carrying a message from Rome to Paris: the start in Rome, the riders escorted to the Hôtel de Ville, and their arrival in Paris.
- A report from Champéry in the Swiss Valais, where the women do the field and stable work in home-made trousers under a scarlet bodice while the men keep house and mind the children; village elders now forbid them to appear in public in trousers, so they pull a skirt over the top.
- Lists the Touring's map sheets issued in 1906–1908 and the eight due in 1909 (Pesaro, Sciacca, Ravenna, Caltanissetta, Cuneo, Macerata, Chieti, Orbetello), with a correction to the index printed on the Cefalù and Catania wrappers; the block of 20 back sheets costs L. 10.
- The T.C.I. opens its annual survey for the 1910 Annuario Generale and will print the questionnaire in the August Rivista, asking members to help make it a practical encyclopaedia for travel and study.
- On Mario Archambault's communication of 19 February to the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres about prehistoric rock carvings in New Caledonia, and the case for cataloguing them alongside similar engravings found in America, Africa and central Europe.
- News in pictures: the start of the Coppa del Principe Enrico, the winning Peugeot in the French voiturette race, the Dante Alighieri's cruise from Rome to the sea, the Tiber water fêtes in Rome and Italy's military airship.
- A country-by-country table of motor taxation: France charges 5 francs per HP plus a surtax scaled by town size, Britain's proposed new scale runs from £2 2s to £25 above 60 HP, Germany taxes by a bore-and-stroke formula, while Austria-Hungary, Denmark and Sweden levy nothing.
- Five rules for members writing to the club — register letters containing valuables, use one sheet per subject, always quote the membership card number — and a request not to notify short summer changes of address.
- Book notices including the completed Cartes-Guides-Campbell of France, Kistemaeckers' aviation novel Aeropolis, the Italia Artistica monographs on Tivoli, Pesaro and Benevento, Magrini's La navigazione aerea e gli aeroplani, Gregorovius' Passeggiate per l'Italia and Champly's Guide pratique du chauffeur d'auto.
- The Touring's roads department.
- The Sezione Strade sets up a permanent register of road conditions: Italy's main roads are divided into stretches assigned to the nearest consul, who returns a standard form monthly so members can consult the state of the surface before a cycling or motoring trip.
- Delegates of the Touring's roads commission, the Società Agraria Lombarda, the Collegio degli Ingegneri and Milan's Comizio Agrario met the deputy Scorciarini-Coppola in Milan and agreed five amendments to his bill on parish roads, keeping the communes involved and funding the work by surtax and a users' levy.
- New and proposed motor-bus services: Edolo–Ponte di Legno, Albenga–Pieve di Teco, Berceto to its station, Belluno to the Cadore, Roma-Campagnano–Nepi, Caltanissetta–Piazza Armerina, the Oneglia–Pieve di Teco–Ormea mail run and Sestri Levante–Borgotaro.
- Road news: traffic restored on 11 June over the Sandrigo–Ancignano stretch of the Marosticana provincial road, and a coast road between Savona and Albissola Marina under study.
- Thanks to the provincial technical offices and consuls who returned the questionnaire on the state of the Touring's signposts, and announcement that Comm. Dott. Guido Ravà Sforni of Mantua has been appointed Commissario Generale dei Cartelli Indicatori.
- Consular appointments: capo consoli at Ancona (Giuseppe Virgilio Marchetti), Ferrara (Marchese Salvago Raggi) and Udine (Luigi Fabris), plus new consuls from Alessandria d'Egitto and Bangkok to Pola and Smirne, and new medical and legal consuls.
- Resolutions of the Touring's Direzione: avv. Belotti to the Concorso Nazionale Fotografico; Gildo Guastalla as delegate to the international governments' conference on motor traffic and to the commission revising the rules for motor vehicles; abstention from the L.I.A.T. congress in London; Bertarelli to the Bologna forestry congress and to the honorary committee of the 1911 Rome geographical congress.
- The roll of members who have recruited others reaches a total of 1545, and gold medals for enrolling 100 members go to Carlo Mauprivez of Milan, Ferruccio Zambaldi of Florence, ing. Alfredo Baracco of Sturla, Umberto Gagliardi of Villa Maria (Cordoba) and Vincenzo Miolatti of Milan.
- Alphabetical list of members who have taken up the five-year subscription, from Emilio Agnoletti of Coriano to Giorgio Dello Strologo of Port Sudan, and continued in the next issue.
- Applicants for membership in April 1909, opening with the life members (soci vitalizi) from Bologna, Buenos Ayres, Milan, Naples, Turin and San Francisco, then listed province by province and, from p. 77, by country abroad.