Archduke Alexander Leopold of Austria

At the table

Acquacotta: The Peasant Stone Soup

Ordinary people often ate acquacotta, a simple dish literally meaning cooked water, made from water, stale bread, and onions.

What people wore

Valuable Inherited Traditions

Traditional clothing was considered a highly valuable heritage passed down through generations, often held as a precious treasure or heirloom. Families in each community were responsible for preserving the specific techniques and processes required to manufacture this traditional attire.

Getting around

Strict schedules for grain carts

Farmers transporting grain to cities used slow ox-drawn carts and had to arrive before noon, or they were forced to stay overnight in the town outskirts.

What it cost

Self-Sufficiency and Rural Debt

Many rural families produced their own food and clothing instead of buying them, often paying artisans like cobblers or tailors with their own farm products rather than using money. In some areas, sharecropping families were frequently deeply indebted to their landlords, with average debts reaching 82 scudi.

Music

Common dances: baddu pasturinu and baddu tundu

In this period, people frequently performed two main types of dances: the baddu pasturinu (pastoral dance) for pairs and the baddu tundu (round dance) for groups holding hands in a circle.

Daily life

Primitive one-room homes for the poor

For the poor, homes were primitive, one-room ground-floor dwellings built from raw bricks or stone with packed-earth or cobblestone floors and no windows. The hearth was dug into the floor in the center of the room, and the home contained only a large parents' bed and mats for the children.