Useful Tips (or is London Always a Good Idea?): Impressions on the City of London and its Inhabitants, and Practical Tips for Survival in Travellers’ Accounts Before and After the Great Fire (1666)

The objective of this article is to examine how travel came to be regarded as an ex- emplary experience, one that could be replicated, during the early modern era. To this end, the 17th-century London case will be studied, a period of significant transforma- tion for the city in both political and urban terms. Subsequently, the investigation will examine how these transformations were reflected in travel accounts of the period and how travellers’ society exchanged useful observations on how to ‘survive’ in the city. The number and diversity of travellers producing travel reports on London increased notably during the latter half of the seventeenth century. The proliferation of narratives that not only ‘narrate’ but also ‘suggest’ how to respond in a given situation con- tributed to the multiplication of experiences, rendering them replicable, particularly with the advent of the press. The article is divided into two sections. The initial section of the article employs a series of maps to examine the urban transformation of London, encompassing the comprehensive reconstruction of the City in the wake of the Great Fire of 1666. The second section of the article focuses on the impressions of foreign travellers of London as a built space, including advice and directions for readers or po- tential future travellers. In this section, the paper will also examine the subject of use- ful directions for travellers, as presented in the first real travel guide to London: the Guide de Londres pour les étrangers (1693).

Keywords: London, Travellers, 17th Century, Great Fire, Travel Literature, Guide.

Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri, Useful Tips (or is London Always a Good Idea?): impressioni della città di Londra, dei suoi abitanti e consigli pratici per la sopravvivenza nei testi dei viaggiatori prima e dopo il Grande incendio (1666) in "STORIA URBANA " 176/2023, pp 27-50, DOI: 10.3280/SU2023-176002