Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 16, No 8
Articles in this issue
- Arnaldo Fraccaroli describes the Valentino park site of Turin's 1911 International Exposition still under construction — the reinforced-concrete embankment of the Po, the 125-metre two-tier Ponte Monumentale, the French, German, British and Siam pavilions — followed by the editors' own survey of the updated general plan, including the Touring's own pavilion with its Mostra della Strada and hotel competition.
- Photographic plate of the new machines at the Reims air meeting: Bréguet, Voisin, Savary and Farman biplanes and Nieuport, Hanriot, Pischoff, Blériot and Antoinette monoplanes, with Wachter, Labouchère, Métrot, Latham, Aubrun and Bathiat at the controls.
- The Milan International Air Circuit's Alpine crossing prize: competitors will start from Brigue at 950 m, climb 1,000 m over the Simplon pass between the Punta d'Aurona, the Spitzhorn and the Chienhorn, then descend past Varzo, Preglia and Domodossola and cross ten kilometres of Lake Maggiore over Stresa and the Borromean Islands to the Milan aerodrome — 40 of the 150 km flown above mountains.
- The Touring Club Italiano announces a 2,800-kilometre river and sea cruise for June–July 1911, running down the Po from Turin to Venice and on through the Adriatic, Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas to Rome in eleven stages, with 100,000 lire in prizes and rules requiring unsinkable, part-decked boats crewed by at least four men.
- Vittorio Gottardi follows Boccaccio the traveller — Florence, Ravenna, Naples, his 1351 embassy to Ludwig of Bavaria — and argues that despite all his wandering the author of the Decameron was a painter of characters rather than of places, illustrated with plates from the Giornata II and III novelle.
- Nino Salvaneschi surveys sporting caricature, above all in the Munich Simplicissimus of Franz von Reznicek, Bruno Paul and Th. Th. Heine, with examples from the Journal Amusant, King and Life ("Se Nerone avesse conosciuto l'automobile!"), R. M. Eichler's cycling "Heimweh" and Manfredini's aeronautical cartoons.
- Silio Carfani remembers the travelling fairs of his village childhood — acrobats, steam roundabouts, performing dogs — and compares them with the surviving great markets: Sinigallia's fair from 14 July to early August, the rionali fairs of Milan such as Porta Genova, and the fairgrounds of the Paris suburbs and the Low Countries.
- Count Orazio Oldofredi gives the Touring 5,000 lire as an indivisible prize for the Cruisers race from Anzio to Rome closing the 1911 Motonautical Cruise, following comm. Teresio Borsalino's 15,000-lire gift the previous month; the Consiglio direttivo voted him thanks on 15 June.
- Dott. Gaetano Scotti's itinerary for tourist alpinism within reach of Milan: train to Abbadia, up the mule track past the Colonghei huts to the Capanna Rosalba at 1,750 m, the Grignetta's Torrione Clerici, Torrione Cecilia, Torrione Palma and Cresta Segantini, with notes on double-rope descents and roped traverses and a timetable ending at Lecco.
- Nearly a hundred members of the Associazione Milanese per la Propaganda Nautica, founded by Andrea Fasoli and chaired by ing. cav. Massimo Pestalozza, travelled by sand barge down the Ticino from Sesto Calende to Turbigo, visiting the Villoresi canal intake and the Vizzola power station.
- The Milan section of the Lega Navale Italiana chartered the steamer "Pavia" for a 29 June outing from Pavia to Piacenza, passing the floating mills, the mouth of the Ticino at Parpanese and the Becca pontoon bridge, and meeting the "Nino Bixio" club at Piacenza.
- News photographs of recent flying: the Swiss airship "Lucerna", Erbslöh killed in his own dirigible's destruction, Daniel Kinet's fatal fall at Ghent, Rolls dead at Bournemouth, Wachter killed and the Baroness de la Roche injured at Reims, and Swendsen's 28-km crossing of the Sound in 31 minutes.
- Filippo Tajani traces cable railways from Bonaiuto Lorini's 1579 Delle Fortificationi to their modern tourist role, describing the counterweighted winding drum, the Vesuvius funicular, Genoa's Righi line, Lugano-Paradiso, the Jungfrau rack railway and the newly opened Wetterhorn aerial cableway above Grindelwald.
- Attilio Brunialti and count Eugenio Brunetta d'Usseaux report that the International Olympic Committee, meeting at Luxembourg in July, awarded the Touring Club Italiano the Olympic Challenge Cup for 1911; instituted in 1906, it had previously gone to the Touring Club de France, Henley Royal Regatta and a German gymnastics federation.
- A history of lighthouses, from the 140-metre marble Pharos of Alexandria built for Ptolemy Philadelphus about 270 B.C. to John Smeaton's revival of stone towers, Robert Stevenson's four-year struggle at Bell Rock, the 45-metre Skerryvore, Minot's Ledge and Fastnet, and the isolation of the keepers.
- Picture pages of the month: the Milan aerodrome that will host the Air Circuit of 25 September–3 October, Giuppone's Peugeot voiturette and Jenatzy's Pipe winning the Boulogne hill-climbs, Willy Poge's Mercedes taking the Czar's Cup, the new Dessau airship hangar, and the cyclone damage at Solaro and Saronno.
- Text of the Ministry of Public Works circular of 27 April 1910 reminding prefects that road-police rules on lights, keeping right and obstructive loads apply to cyclists and horse-drawn vehicles as well as motorists, plus Paul Fauchille's proposed legal code for balloons in France and the new Comitato Talassografico Italiano.
- The magazine's monthly news department, arranged by subject from Aeronautica and Archeologia—Arte through Automobilismo, Aviazione, Ciclismo, Ferrovie e Tramvie, Fotografia and Motonautica to Navigazione, Pesca, Ponti and Strade; items include a projected Paris–London airship service funded by Lady Abdy, the Erbslöh disaster, English insurance for bicycles carried by rail, and Giorgio Molli on crossing the Atlantic by dirigible.
- Book notices: the Alinari edition of the Decameron illustrated by Tito Lessi, Corrado Ricci's city monographs, Cei and Castagneris on how aeroplanes and airships are built, Painlevé and Borel's L'Aviation, Dr Sarramon's physiological study L'Alpinisme, and a moral-theology supplement resolving whether priests may ride bicycles.
- Minister E. Sacchi's instructions to prefects for issuing the international certificate of passage and plate agreed at the Paris conference of October 1909; the Touring supplies the plate and licence booklet for 2 lire from its Milan office and its branches at Bergamo, Como, Florence, Genoa, Turin, Udine and Venice.
- Official business of the Touring: a gold medal offered for Il Secolo's "Ai mari, ai monti e ai laghi" cycling race, representation at the Naples aerology congress of 22 October 1910, reprinting of the Lazio, Marche and Veneto guides, the tourist-tax bill amended in the Touring's favour, and the club's L.I.A.T. congress resolutions on bicycle carriage, cyclist taxes and customs triptychs.
- Subscription list for the Touring's road signs, with gifts from the municipalities of Asolo, Bertinoro, Castelfiorentino, Gussola, Zoppola and Castronno, the Genio Civile of Campobasso and Dinamite Nobel of Avigliana, bringing the fund to L. 73,350.75; 5,331 signs had been erected by 31 May.
- The Court of Cassation of Rome, 17 March 1910, quashed the Mongrando magistrate's 15-lire fine on Luigi Rossotto: excessive motoring speed falls under the special motor-vehicle regulation, not art. 482 of the Penal Code, and prosecution is barred where the report was never sent to the prefect for settlement by oblation.
- Seventeen new benemeriti named, among them rag. G. B. Arado of Savona, Achille Cortesi of Brescia, cap. Luigi Micheli of Milan and Emilio Lattes Frias of Buenos Aires, bringing the total to 1,685.
- List of members taking out five-year subscriptions, including Giuseppe Antonioli of Trobaso, the Apostoli brothers of Lugano, Vincenzo Barberis of Turin and Romeo Brillante of Massawa.
- Members who recruit 15, 30 or 50 new subscribers taking the back sheets of the Carta d'Italia before 1 December 1911 earn free second-class circular rail tickets to the Rome and Turin exhibitions of 1911, the largest covering Milan–Venice–Taranto–Messina–Palermo–Naples–Rome–Turin.
- Candidates for membership who applied between 1 and 30 June 1910, listed as life and annual members by province from Bologna, Brescia and Cagliari through Genoa, Milan and Novara to Venice, Verona and Vicenza, with foreign sections for Europe, Africa and the Americas.
- Membership figures: 78,276 annual members after 816 new enrolments and 125 lapsed between 15 June and 15 July, plus 3,761 life members, giving a total of 82,037.