A ‘little known’ Country and its Capital: British Residents and Travellers in Turin and Piedmont, 1747–1748

The aim of this text is to add to knowledge about travel and eighteenth-century Turin by concentrating on the city and its territory, as they are revealed by the archival sources relating to travel and travellers around the middle of the century. By placing the city, the roads and the built environment at the centre of our observation, we will highlight some issues that may be useful for enriching existing narratives about travel and mobility. In the first part of our text, by following in the footsteps of the British envoys along the routes across Piedmont around 1748, we discover a territory, and a network of roads, beyond the capital. In the second part, the identification of a few buildings and addresses in the city will allow us to discuss some of the issues that influenced the choice, by foreign travellers and residents, of a house or an apartment. We will also suggest that the observation of British elites in Turin should take into account the complex relationships – also involving placement and proximity within the city – that they had with their bankers.