Avignon and Rouen. Tales of sixteenth-century Italian travellers

Explored through the letters and travel diaries of the Italian travellers, early sixteenthcentury France inspired varying responses, which in turn were conditioned by the differing points of reference that travellers - courtiers, prelates, ambassadors, merchants - brought to them. Although castles and cathedrals were the most frequently described buildings, visitors often commented upon the legislative framework, wealth, beauty, customs, as well as the fortifications and antiquities of the cities they saw. The article compares the image of Avignon that we can deduce reading the accounts of three Italians, travelling in France from 1512 to 1518 with different aims (Francesco Guicciardini, Antonio De Beatis, and an anonymous merchant from Milan) with that of Rouen, one of the richest cities of France at that time. The journey from the French papal dominion to the capital of French trade towards the New World, seen with the eyes of the same travellers (De Beatis and the Milanese merchant), will show some constant elements in the tales drawn through their accounts as well as the peculiarities of each city. It reveals information regarding the form, urban structures and the characteristics of French cities of the Early Modern period in a comparative perspective but also permits us to catch a glimpse of some less objective aspects of cities, related to social, political and cultural factors filtered by the individual personality of each traveller. © 2012 Università Roma Tre-CROMA.