Princess Maria Antonietta of Bourbon-Two Sicilies

What people wore

Washing and mending working clothes

Workers often wore the same clothes for entire seasons to avoid wearing out their limited Sunday best, and their laundry was a significant weekly burden that involved extensive washing and patching rather than ironing. On feast days, laundry hanging from windows in popular neighborhoods served as a colorful display of these mended, sometimes faded, working garments.

Getting around

Limitations of mail-coach travel

Before railways became dominant, mail-coaches reached speeds of 8 to 12.7 km/h, but their daily range was limited to around 100 kilometers due to frequent stops, meals, and border controls.

At the table

Frugal flavor for polenta

For peasant families, one salted herring was considered sufficient to flavor a large serving of polenta for at least three people.

Music

Pifferari musicians perform for the Madonna

As Christmas approached, wandering musicians known as pifferari traveled from the mountains to Rome, playing bagpipes and oboe-like pifferi to perform devotional concerts before images of the Madonna.

Daily life

School uniforms and lack of toilets

School children wore mandatory aprons; boys wore black with blue bows, while girls wore white with pink bows, with stripes on the sleeves indicating their grade. Due to severe facility shortages, some students had to relieve themselves in school courtyards or nearby outhouses because toilets were often absent.

What it cost

Coffee and diet of the poor

In the mid-19th century, luxury items like a cup of coffee cost 2 grana, a price that laborers often paid daily as a digestive despite their poverty. At the same time, many workers lived as mangiafoglie, eating pasta only occasionally because it was expensive relative to their daily wages.