The Gentleman’s Guide in his Tour through Italy

1787

de Beer Eb 1787 M

London: Printed for, and sold by, G. Kearsley

The capital of Liguria is Genova or Genoa; the largest sea-port in Italy and its sixth largest city. From the beginning of the second millennium Genoa had a strong maritime presence in the Mediterranean and the city prospered as a major trading port in Europe. Thomas Martyn (1735-1825), in his Gentleman’s Guide, writes of his visit to Genoa in the late 18th century. He describes the population as ‘laborious, industrious and brave’ but laments that ‘scarcely any of them are able to speak pure Italian’; Ligurian, a Gallo-Romance language is still widely spoken in Genoa today. In 1884, 50,000 Italian emigrants passed through Genoa on their way to South America; just a fraction of the 7.5 million Italians that emigrated to the Americas from 1876 to 1914.