A late Roman relief found in Isernia (in Samnium)—a kind of tavern sign—shows us a traveler holding his mule by the bridle as he takes leave of the hostess and pays his account. The traveler has on his cloak and hood. The hood, even up to Seume’s time (i.e., up to the end of the eighteenth century), was generally worn by travelers in Italy, and especially in Sicily: “My mule-driver showed a tender solicitude for me,” wrote Seume, “and gave me his hood. He could not understand how I dared to travel without one. This peculiar kind of dark-brown mantle with its pointed headgear is the standard dress in all Italy, and especially in Sicily. I took a great fancy to it, and if I may judge from this night’s experience, I have a great inclination toward Capuchin vows, for I slept very well.”
ROMAN·TAVERN·SIGN·FROM·ISERNIA
We have had to confine ourselves in the treatment of ancient signs entirely to Roman examples, for we have very little knowledge of Greek signs. In fact, the tavern sign seems to have come late into Greece, through Roman influence. We hear of a tavern “The Camel” at the Piræus, also of a sailors’ inn having the sign in relief: a boiled calf’s head and four calf’s feet.
We shall later see what an important part signs played in directing travelers in a city through the Middle Ages and even in modern times. They took the place of house numbers and street names. In ancient Rome a whole quarter was often named after an inn, like the “Bear in the Cap” (“vicus ursi pileati”). This is the longest-lived bear in history: he lives even to-day. An excellent German tavern guide, Hans Barth, writes in his delightful little book “Osteria”: “On the quay of the Tiber was the famous old inn of the Bear, where Charlemagne lodged, because the Cafarelli Palace was not yet built; where Father Dante frolicked with the pussy-cats; where Master Rabelais raised his famous bumpers of wine.” In Montaigne’s time the Bear was so frightfully stylish an inn, with its rooms hung with gilded leather, that the essayist stayed there only two days and then forthwith sought a private lodging.
Campana and Canone d’Oro
Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy
In modern Italy there are only a few interesting signs. The most delightful ones (the Golden Cannon, and the Bell) we found in the main street of the North Italian mountain town of Borgo San Dalmazzo. The “White Horse” (“cavallo bianco”) was a little off the main street. The form of these was probably influenced by the proximity of Switzerland—a country very rich in beautiful signs.
Seume, who had the finest opportunity for studying taverns and signs in his walking tour from Leipzig to Syracuse, often mentions the name of his inn; as, for instance, “Hell” in Imola, or the “Elephant” in Catania. But there was only one Italian town in which the signs impressed him: that was Lodi. “The people of Lodi,” he writes, “must be very imaginative if one can judge them from their signs. One of them, over a shoemaker’s shop, represents a Genius taking a man’s measure—a motif which reminds one of Pompeii.”
Our excellent guide, who has an eye for everything picturesque, does not seem to have met much of interest from Verona to Capri. An exception was the “Osteria del Penello,” in Florence, on the Piazza San Martino, a tavern established about the year 1500 by Albertinelli, the friend of Raphael. On the sign over the door was the jolly curly head of the founder, who, when the envy of his colleagues poisoned the work of his brush, here established a tavern. An inscription read: “Once I painted flesh and blood, and earned only contempt; now I give flesh and blood, and all men praise my good wine.”