Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma

Music

Tarantella instruments and triccheballacche

The tarantella was commonly accompanied by instruments such as tambourines, castanets, and the triccheballacche, which is a device made of wooden hammers joined together to mark the dance's rhythm.

Daily life

Poor housing and shared living spaces

In many rural areas, peasant families lived in small, damp, two-story houses with dirt floors, often sharing space and warmth with their livestock during the winter. Urban poor households frequently lacked windows, relied on smoke-filled kitchens, and suffered from a lack of sanitation, such as sewers or waste collection.

What it cost

Domestic servant wages in Naples

In Naples, a domestic servant could earn as little as 8 lire per month, while a housemaid might earn 30 lire.

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

Railway challenges and social class differences

Train schedules were unreliable and inconsistent between cities, sometimes varying by over 10 minutes due to different local time standards. Trains also had distinct social classes, with third-class passengers often enduring crowded, basic, and sometimes unroofed carriages.

At the table

Street pizza for a soldo

In late 19th-century Naples, poor families often bought ready-to-eat slices of pizza from street vendors for one soldo, a small coin, frequently topping them with garlic, tomato, or salted anchovies.