Northern European patterns of visiting Rome, 1400–1850

The city of Rome was probably Europe’s most popular destination city well into the modern era, but due to the presence of deadly endemic malaria, such visits were a risky proposition for unacclimated Northern Europeans. Consequently, Northern Europeans were advised to minimise this risk by avoiding Rome during the dangerous malaria season, which was usually defined as peaking July through September. However, as this paper will show, different types of visitors to Rome did not follow this advice equally. Overall, Protestants were somewhat less likely to be in Rome than Catholics during the summer season, as were women, whose seasonal visitation pattern to Rome was markedly more seasonal than that of the men. The biggest difference, however, was between pre-1750 and post-1750 visitors to Rome. Travellers to Rome in the earlier period were over twice as likely to visit during the dangerous summer season, and thus expose themselves to Rome’s deadly P. falciparum infections, than were travellers to Rome in the century after 1750.

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Published in: Journal of Tourism History
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1755182x.2019.1607571