The economic space of cities: an analysis of leather tanners in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Rome

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the use of suitable archive sources for the study of the economic space of cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The research is based on the integration and critical analysis of cartographic, descriptive and quantitative sources of an administrative and fiscal nature, developed by using Geographic Information Systems. The advantage of adopting this approach includes, in addition to the study of spatial relationships amongst economic activities and the urban space, the possibility of investigating discrepancies between the sources, thus facilitating their interpretation.

Most economic activities take place in cities and are crucial to their development. Historical cities are shaped by the competition between different players seeking to control, access or allocate rights to the use of space. By undertaking a spatial analysis of leather tanners in Rome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article investigates how the integrated use of suitable quantitative, qualitative and cartographic archive sources enables us to identify the main players, their social conditions and the complex relationships established between them over time that affected the urban structure of the area.

The social relations that influence the use and functions of urban space have provided a rich seam of research material since the publication of the influential The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre and subsequent works by Manuel Castells and Edward Soja.¹ Numerous scholars have argued that urban historians must study human activities and their physical space contextually.² Spaces and places are not simply given entities; they are socially constructed through interactions of a socio-economic, cultural, religious and psychological nature. Complex urban environments can be mapped and analysed with spatial data using Historical Geographical Information Systems (HGIS) in order to describe spatial relations and underlying processes.³ According to Richard Rodger and Susanne Rau, in the context of urban historical studies, the term ‘spatial relations’ encompasses the formation of spatial configurations and hierarchies arising from social interactions as well as from spatial practices and perceptions.⁴

New analytical tools such as GIS-based mapping and spatial analysis have the potential to assist economic historians to manage, analyse and share different and complex types of information. From the beginning of the twenty-first century, an array of HGIS studies have appeared in research journals, referring to projects on digital mapping at the national or regional scale, while applications at the urban scale are less frequent.⁵ There are few examples of in-depth historical studies of economic activities studied at the urban scale, and they are often approached from a microhistorical perspective, without particular attention to space.⁶

This article offers a starting point for the study of economic activities in the city of Rome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The research is based on the integration and critical analysis of cartographic, descriptive and quantitative sources of an administrative and fiscal nature, developed by using GIS. So far, exhaustive quantitative studies on the overall economic activity of Rome in this period are missing. This is probably because existing data are partial by nature. In this article, we identify specific sources that allow us to analyse the spatial distribution, size and economic weight of economic activities together for the first time.

What are the most suitable archival sources for studying such economic activities? Is it possible to propose a valid and replicable working methodology for every economic sector in the city? To answer these research questions, we propose a ‘step by step’ survey of the available archival sources. First, we identify the most appropriate source in terms of localization and the effectiveness of economic activities. Subsequently, other archival sources from which it is possible to extrapolate the existence and location of economic activities are identified and utilized to build an integrated information system. The advantages of this approach include, in addition to the study of spatial relationships between economic activities and urban space, the possibility of investigating discrepancies between the sources, thus facilitating interpretation. With regard to the space and time variables, it is possible to conduct both synchronic and diachronic analyses, and to switch the scale from a micro level, such as a single building, up to larger spatial units such as neighbourhoods, parishes or the entire city.

In this article we analyse leather tanners. Tanning was chosen as a good starting point for a complete analysis of economic space of the city for two reasons: for centuries, tanning was one of the most flourishing industries in Rome⁷ and tanners formed a spatial cluster in the Regola district. Therefore, they can be analysed at a local level as well as representing the city as a whole. From an operational point of view, this has enabled us to start the work from one district.

The article is organized as follows. In the first section, we discuss the archival sources relevant to the study of economic space in Rome between the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century. In the second section, we discuss the choice of the tanners' activity as the first application of the proposed methodology and illustrate the historical-institutional context of this production sector. In the third section, we present the integrated information system and analyse, with specific reference to the activities of the tanners in the Regola district, the distribution, characteristics and relationships that emerge from the comparative territorial analysis of the sources. We conclude with a few final considerations and indications of the future developments of our project.

An analysis of the sources

The sources used to analyse the economic activities in Rome between the end of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century were, in chronological order, the declarations of assets (Assegne dei beni) of the Papal States (1793), the Colizzi catalogue (1809), the ‘block estimates’ (Isole estimative i.e. hand-written registers containing detailed data on the estimates of property values, organized by building blocks, used for the preparation of the cadastre) (1820–23), the second series of property registers of the Pio-Gregorian cadastre, called Brogliardi (1822–23), a statistical source from the financial police (1827) and, for specific in-depth detail, the Stati delle anime (registers of souls, i.e. lists of parishioners kept by parish priests) (1822–27).⁸

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Assegne dei beni were taken into account. These were sworn declarations drawn up by individual holders of incomes in order to meet the payment of an extraordinary tax, which the Papal States periodically used to address contingent needs. They form a valuable fiscal source for historical purposes because of the generalized nature of the contribution, which does not make any exceptions for the privileged classes (ecclesiastical bodies and the nobility).⁹

The sample considered, applied in 1793 and only levied in Rome and the Agro romano (the agricultural belt of Rome), is different from its predecessors from a qualitative point of view because it lasted for several years, thereby diminishing its extraordinary nature. The Assegne, an extraordinary financial instrument typical of the ancien régime, was used throughout the eighteenth century in the Papal States for compiling the cadastre or land register, which was of a descriptive nature and lacking in any cartographical surveys.

The end of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth century were characterized by political disruption caused by the Roman republic and the first Restoration and economic upheaval from the growing government deficit, monetary chaos and inflation. This turbulence necessitated a fundamental reorganization of the tax system, which meant that the Assegne was superseded. The projects for reform that enlivened debates in the eighteenth century were completed with the Motu proprio ‘on the new regulation of the customs duty system’, signed by Pius VII on 19 March 1801. The most innovative part of the reform was the Dativa reale, a tax that, as well as targeting interest-bearing loans, exacted a sum equal to 0.6 and 0.2 per cent of the cadastral value of farmlands and urban properties respectively.¹⁰

The new urban cadastre was set up in the capital in 1824 and provides a wealth of documentation that could be used for a wide range of analyses: from the distribution of properties to the use of the land and from the production sector to social aspects of property usage.¹¹

The data on the cadastral parcels are described in detail in the registers known as Brogliardi, which were completed by 1823. They report the identity of the owner and a series of facts about the property owned, such as location, type, number of rooms and floors, surface area and property valuation, calculated according to the annual rent, actually collected or just estimated.¹²

The property valuation played a fundamental role because it formed the basis for both the calculation of the Dativa reale (described above), and for the calculation of the tax on roads (equal to 0.2 per cent of the property valuation). A semi-objective method was used to quantify the valuation, as the basic component was obtained simply by applying a multiplier (12.5) to the annual rent; discretional elements were employed when the rent was estimated or in cases when deductions were applied (for example the value of the furniture in houses that were rented furnished). The property valuation of the Pio-Gregorian cadastre can be considered a reliable measure of the value of property, unlike the pre-nineteenth-century cadastres, which historical and economic historiography has long debated, on account of the pitfalls of diachronic studies and comparisons of different territorial realities.¹³

The property valuation was not found in the first series of the Brogliardi, which was presumably compiled between 1818 and 1820, and it appeared for the first time in the second series, which was completed by 1823. In order to determine valuations, a detailed survey was organized in the city to gather all the information needed to make the estimations. These data are preserved in the Isole estimative, small size registers that contain data from the beginning of the 1820s, with some notes on the following years. This source is particularly useful for supplementing the Brogliardi because it provides accurate information, for example, on the organization of internal spaces and on the use of properties. It was far more detailed than the cadastral registers, where a great deal of data was merged in summary form. As the following case-study shows, the systematic noting down of the intended uses makes possible a more in-depth analysis of the businesses found in the Roman districts, otherwise ignored in the official cadastral registers.¹⁴

The data gathered from the fiscal sources described above were compared with two statistical sources, one from the Napoleonic era and the other contemporary with the cadastre, both to test the level of reliability and coherence of the documents and to facilitate a diachronic reading of these phenomena. The former is an in-depth survey on manufacturing in Rome, promoted by the French administration and drawn up by Vincenzo Colizzi, in his role as inspector-general for crafts and manufacturing. This is without doubt the most historically interesting document of the five drawn up as part of the Napoleonic survey conducted in the Empire's territories.¹⁵

The Colizzi catalogue listed more than 700 businesses between the end of 1809 and early 1810. The data mainly refer to firms in the manufacturing sector, in line with the objectives of the survey, which aimed to provide a picture of how much manufacturing took place in Rome. This approach deliberately paid little attention to smaller artisanal and trade activities, with the subsequent omission of the numerous workshops that were part of the city's business life.¹⁶

The objective limit of the Colizzi catalogue is not found in the other statistical source examined, namely an 1827 survey on the manufacturing, shops and artisans’ workshops for each district of Rome. The survey was arranged by the directorate-general of the police, an institution that was reorganized in 1816 as part of the administrative reform envisaged by the Motu proprio in July of the same year.¹⁷ The 1827 survey gathered extremely detailed data that made it possible to know the identity of the owner of the business (and the leaseholder or tenant), the staff employed and their job titles, the address and the date when the business started.¹⁸

The last source considered was the Stati delle anime (1822–27), which are registers carefully kept by parish priests and in which the inhabitants of each parish were registered every year at Easter time, generally grouped by households, in order to identify those who had to comply with the Easter precept (the actual taking of communion was then verified).¹⁹ The Stati delle anime were a valuable resource for some in-depth investigations into the use of workshops that made it possible to identify the people who actually ran the businesses, with data on the composition of households, and on the age and profession of household members.

The historical-institutional framework

In order to begin the study of the economic activities in Rome in the nineteenth century, tanning was selected for analysis. This choice was determined by the clear functional specialization of this activity in the Regola district. The 1527 census shows that some 45 out of 46 tanneries were located there.²⁰ The reasons for this concentration are the proximity to the river Tiber, where the hides were washed, and the availability of open spaces near the riverbank, used to stretch out the hides so that they could dry quickly. In addition, the relative proximity to the Campo Vaccino may also have played a role, as it was the site for the cattle market that supplied the leather industry and its derivatives. The spatial concentration of tanners was above all dictated by reasons relating to hygiene, health and urban decorum, and it was a common feature of many other urban centres, such as the rue des Tanneries in Bordeaux (Fondaudège area), via dei Conciatori in Turin (now via Lagrange) or the Giudecca island in Venice.²¹

The high concentration of tanneries in Regola was supported by the statutes of the tanners’ guild, which reserved preferential treatment for its members with regard to the location of houses and workshops in the district. The statutory provisions for the location of the tanneries had their origins in Pius IV's Bull on the jurisdiction of the Maestri delle Strade (August 1565), which established that the tanners could work exclusively along the banks of the Tiber, in an area mostly corresponding to the Regola district.²² The attention paid by the public authorities to the location of industry was not confined to the tanners alone. It encompassed all the professions connected with the processing of slaughtered animals; their products, hides, fats and offal, were mainly used by the producers of candles and strings for musical instruments.²³

The impact of the tanning industry on public health was particularly marked in Rome because the work was carried out in the city centre, unlike in various other Italian cities where the production sites either sprang up in or had been transferred to peripheral areas. While Rome's situation at the end of the eighteenth century was not so unusual (consider the faubourg Saint-Marcel in Paris), in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was definitely an anomaly. Many cities had in this period taken specific measures to move tanneries to the outskirts. For example, in 1775 Milan introduced a tax for the tanners who did not transfer their plants outside the city walls.²⁴ In Rome, Regola remained the tanners’ district up until the mid-1880s, when the building of the river embankments and the redevelopment schemes for the old city centre meant that they had to move beyond the Aurelian Walls, near the new slaughterhouse in the district of Testaccio (1888–91).²⁵

The attention paid by the state to the tanners was also due to the fact that the goods they produced were considered as basic necessities.Their economic weight could not be neglected, both in terms of employment and revenues from taxation: at the end of the eighteenth century, the tanners accounted for about 2.5 per cent of the total revenue of the customs of Rome and the leather sector employed 43 per cent of the inhabitants of the Regola district.²⁶ The tanners were well aware of the interest they inspired, and their bargaining power over the authorities was strengthened in the long run.

In terms of government, the leather industry was under the control of the presidency of the Grascia, the body that dealt with the supply of meat, and, from the second half of the eighteenth century, also managed the activities carried out by the members of the ‘Università dei vaccinari, dei pellari e dei candelottari’ (hereafter the tanners’ guild). This guild included the tradesmen and artisans involved in working with the waste from the slaughterhouses. It was primarily composed of the vaccinari (literally, cowmen), who bought the hides from the butchers and, after working the leather, sold them on to the pellari (leather dealers who specialized in lamb leather), to shoemakers and to cobblers; the conciatori di arte sottile (highly skilled tanners) who used other skins that were not suitable for tanning with alum (such as calfskin) and then sold them on to those who made gloves, shoes or chairs; and to candle and soap makers who used animal fats as raw material.²⁷

The tanners’ guild was founded in the fifteenth century and became established over the following century, when production was regulated by the municipal authority. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the guild still played a decisive role in representing interests to the higher authorities, which was no longer the town council but the state. The entrepreneurs in this sector operated in a market that was strictly regulated, above all by the detailed provisions of the presidency of the Grascia that governed how the production process was carried out, set the prices and the number of people authorized to work in the profession, and established the dates for slaughtering and for the sale of meats based on the calendar of Christian holidays.²⁸

Over the course of the eighteenth century, leather manufacturing took on all the characteristics of a public service. Tanners, for example, could not cease their activity freely because new structures had to remain active for at least 10 years, while the tanners already present in the market were obliged to continue their activity for life (‘ad vitam’).²⁹

Such pervasive and restrictive legislation periodically provoked a reaction from the tanners’ guild that, in the midst of tensions and judicial controversies, managed to obtain protection and concessions, such as limits on foreign competition, going as far as banning imports, and credit facilities. The conflictual dialectic with the government and the other guilds (and between members of the same guild) was physiological and strategic, and helped to protect the sector's interests.

Relations between the state and guilds, however, were not only characterized by contrast and opposition. Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the running of the Roman economy, fragmented into numerous small family-run firms, relied on close co-operation between the state and the guilds, which were entrusted with tasks such as the exercise of control over production and trade activities.

In a conservative and traditional society such as Rome, the breaking up of the guilds, carried out between 1801 and 1806, was fraught with uncertainties and worries. The tanners’ guild, like all those that were dependent on the presidency of the Grascia, was abolished by the Motu proprio of March 1801, which at the outset explicitly adhered to the principles of free trade.³⁰

Formally speaking, this was a real break with the past, but a careful reading of the sources of law and of the measures actually adopted in the years following the Motu proprio reveals several elements of continuity with the previous period. As regards the shift declared towards free trade, the same Motu proprio that broke up the guilds introduced laws and regulations typical of an interventionist state, and for those sectors considered to be strategic ones, such as the textile industry, the old guilds were kept alive. In some ways, the regulations introduced after the abolition of the corporations hampered Rome's production system even further, as it was a system that also suffered from the unpreparedness of the newly set up bodies, often lacking in competence and not helped by a state that was incapable of managing the change.³¹

This delicate transition phase following the abolition of the guilds gives rise to reflection on the role and effectiveness of the guild system. The guilds were traditionally considered to be a hindrance to growth, but over the last few decades, they have been the object of new studies that have reassessed their role. Specifically, their ability to evolve over time and to contribute to economic development in terms of professional training and of technological innovations has been pointed out. In the case of Rome, the guilds reached their peak towards the mid-eighteenth century, but even in the last decades of the eighteenth century, despite being called into question, they continued to be an essential element of the public government of the urban economy.³²

Rome was not the ideal context for expressing entrepreneurial spirit. The principle of equality between operators enshrined in the guild statutes was well received in the Papal States, where the economic policy measures were also inspired by standards of equity and therefore not favourable to the accumulation of capital.

Nevertheless, despite the value system and the formal limitations on the expansion of business, within every guild there were groups of particularly dynamic traders that stood out from the rest. In 1797, just before the breaking up of the guilds, some 25 per cent of the tanners had made up almost half of all investments in the sector, which confirmed the elasticity of a system made flexible by the ability of the most enterprising people, who were able to take advantage of the gap between rules and actual practices.³³

As previously mentioned, the years following the abolition of the guilds were characterized by ambiguity and inefficiencies that led to the reintroduction of some provisions that were typical of the era of the guilds. Specifically, the laws that focused on hygiene and on the quality of the products were restored for the leather industry. With the death of Pius VII and the subsequent pontificates of Leo XII and Gregory XVI, who held conservative views, any ideas about reformist economic policy waned, and the situation continued until the guilds were reopened in 1854 under Pius IX.

Tanneries and tanners In Rome

The measures for the location of tanneries in a specific area of the city had not been in force since 1801, the year in which the guild of the vaccinari was dissolved, but, as is apparent in the census on businesses conducted by the economic police in 1827, tanneries continued to operate in the southern sector of the Regola district (Figure 1).³⁴

Figure 1. Distribution of vaccinari and pellari in 1827. Elaboration of authors on ASR sources.

The police source registered 40 vaccinari in 1827, 33 of which were located in the Regola district. They were not necessarily the owners of the tanneries, but rather the tradesmen active at that time. The situation depicted by the police census reflects a momentary condition, a freeze-frame shot of an extremely changeable situation, since the activities in the tanneries were subject to sudden changes, also of a seasonal nature. In addition, they were heavily influenced by the complex networks of property and kinship between the families of the ‘historic’ tanners and their descendants, and by the actions of other parties involved in various ways in the tannery business. In many cases, the people recorded as tradesmen in the tanners’ workshops held temporary licences and cannot be traced in the other contemporary fiscal and demographic sources.

For this reason, it was decided to build up a database for the tanneries starting with the activities listed in the Isole estimative drawn up from 1820 onwards, which recorded some 76 businesses linked to the working of hides in Rome, 74 of which were located in the Regola district.³⁵ Given the small numbers of these activities located outside Regola – there were only 2 small tanneries reported in Trastevere – special attention is given to this part of the city.

The Isole estimative source describes a less fleeting reality compared with the situation depicted in the police source. Among the pages of the files lies correspondence exchanged between the surveyors and the property owners who often had to show their deed of purchase. These data would be almost completely ignored in the drawing up of the official cadastral register, where the number of tanneries in the Regola district would be reduced to 12 owing to the numerous unifications of properties belonging to the same owner.³⁶

The situation described in the Isole estimative was compared with the source of the official cadastral register (1824) and that of the police (1827), and also with the two aforementioned censuses: the Colizzi catalogue (1809) and the Assegne dei beni (1793).³⁷ As previously noted, the presence of tanneries in these two sources was an indication of greater economic weight, as well as their belonging to owners or leaseholders that were known and ‘respectable’. The total number of tanneries in the Regola district according to the sources examined is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Number of tanneries in Regola district according to the different archival sources

The way the ‘District of the vaccinari’ looked is shown in an engraving made by Giuseppe Vasi in 1754 (Figure 2). In this area, the banks of the Tiber were of an irregular height because of the frequent floods and the total lack of maintenance. In the foreground of Vasi's engraving is a pile of sand that is much higher than the level of the streets in the background. The tanneries were mainly located in the long and narrow block that ran alongside the river and in the streets behind it, where the church of San Bartolomeo dei Vaccinari stood, headquarters of the confraternity of the vaccinari until 1801. The area was densely populated and the buildings were some of the tallest in Rome. As well as being very high (up to four floors in the block alongside the river, and up to six floors in the blocks further back), the houses had numerous rooms and several entrances. Nowadays, the only memory of the presence of the tanneries in the Regola district is found in the name of ‘via di San Bartolomeo dei Vaccinari’. Demolition of the church, together with the adjacent blocks, began in 1885 in order to open up via Arenula and build retaining walls for the Tiber.

Figure 2. G. Vasi, 1754, The Shore Called La Regola. In The Bridges and the Buildings along the Tiber, vol. V, table 90. The ‘Contrada de Vaccinari’ is indicated with the number 4.

From a topographical and toponymic point of view, the study area is carefully depicted in the maps of the Pio-Gregorian urban cadastre, drawn up between 1818 and 1820 on a scale of 1:1.000, and in the subsequent drawings of the ‘cadastral subdivisions’, used to calculate the property valuations in the second series of Brogliardi, starting from the surface areas of the parcels.³⁸

Both the maps and the cadastral subdivisions have been georeferenced within the GIS. The territorial database includes the vectorized version of the cadastral parcels, with the registers of the second series of Brogliardi and the complete nineteenth-century toponymy attached.³⁹ The location in GIS of all the economic activities listed in the Isole estimative of the Regola district was done very carefully, making use of the positioning of the properties (street and street number) found in both the lists of the Brogliardi and in the maps of cadastral subdivisions. Once they had been extrapolated from the rest of the district's businesses, the tanneries were compared with the other archival sources, checking their presence or absence on a case by case basis, and shown in the database in tabular form. This procedure makes it possible to analyse the matches and mismatches between the sources cartographically and aids interpretation.

According to the Isole estimative, in the years 1820–23, some 559 companies were active in the Regola district, divided into: 382 commercial businesses (grocery shops, tobacconists, second-hand shops, charcoal burners, general shops and little markets), 134 mainly artisanal businesses (carpenters, farriers, glassmakers, soap makers, tub makers, candlestick makers, wool workers, leather dealers, vaccinari and weavers) and 43 firms in the service sector (taverns, hotels, barbers and so on).⁴⁰ Among the businesses recorded, 74 of them worked with animal hides. The tanneries were the leading sector in the district, accounting for about 20 per cent of the overall weight of economic activities. This was due to the great number of tanneries, as the few other manufacturing firms carried far greater economic weight than single tanneries.⁴¹

Almost all the tanneries were located in the southern part of the Regola district, just by the Jewish Ghetto and opposite the Tiber Island. They were usually on the ground floor of the buildings, with the entrance to the workshop and a floor plan with adjacent working spaces that, by law, were supposed to house a well used for soaking or ‘bating’ the hides, the tanks that were essential for various types of treatment and the farinatori, containers where the leather was left to ferment in a mixture of water and barley flour. The drying areas could also be on the higher floors, in loggias that were partly open, or in the courtyards (Figure 3).⁴²

Figure 3. Plan of the Altieri tannery, 1858, in via S. Bartolomeo dei Vaccinari no. 76, Regola district. ASR, Trenta Notai Capitolini, uff. 2, vol. 845, c.293bis.

Of the five tanneries housed in a property greater than 1,000 scudi, three belonged to the De Cupis family, one to Giuseppe Gauttieri and one to Michelangelo Rinaldi. Among the 26 tanneries in a property of between 300 and 900 scudi, we find, sometimes more than once, well-known names of the families of Roman tanners: Gauttieri, Codini, Scandi, Gaggioli, Bersani and Merolli. The rest of the businesses were worth very little. The smallest tanneries, only a few of which belonged to the well-known tanner families, were often the property of religious organizations or the nobility, presumably managed by holders of temporary licences (see Figure 4 and Appendix).

Figure 4. Location of the tanneries in Regola district and their economic size (scudi) according to the Isole estimative. Elaboration of authors on ASR sources.

The disconcerting decrease in the number of tanneries during the transition from the Isole estimative to the second Brogliardo is hard to understand. Apart from the De Cupis tannery, located in via di San Bartolomeo dei Vaccinari 81, the businesses that ‘survived’ were not the largest in size (Table 2). The initial assumption that as the same owner had a residential space as well as a tannery, the tannery became part of the residence, with the ensuing loss of data, was not always proven to be true. Half of the tanneries mentioned in the second Brogliardo do not appear in the police source and nor are they in the Colizzi catalogue or in the Assegne. Their geographical distribution suggests that the choice to indicate them as stand-alone businesses depended on where they were located along the river and on the conspicuous amount of space they covered compared with other uses of space within the blocks. The mapping tool enabled the interpretation of historical data (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Location of the tanneries in Regola district according to the second Brogliardo. Elaboration of authors on ASR sources

Table 2. Tanneries in Regola district listed on the second Brogliardo (1822–24)

* The name is erased on the second Brogliardo.

** Tanneries not present in the other sources.

Sources: ASR, Presidenza del censo, Isole estimative, vols. 2706–7 (Rione VII-Regola); ASR, Presidenza generale del censo, Brogliardi, vol. 2727 (Rione VII-Regola).

In the Assegne dei beni of 1793, only eight large tanneries were listed in the Regola district, which belonged to two historical families of tanners: the De Cupis and the Codini families. In 1809, 13 years later, Vincenzo Colizzi's census of manufacturing businesses listed 20 tanneries, which apart from the 8 found in the Assegne included the names of other well-known tanners, such as Gauttieri, Candi and Giorgi (Table 3).

Table 3. Tanneries in Regola district listed on the Assegne dei beni (1793) and the Colizzi census (1809)

* Tanneries present in both sources.

Sources: ASR, Presidenza del censo, Isole estimative, vols. 2706–7 (Rione VII-Regola); ASR, Assegne dei beni dello Stato Pontificio, nos. 93–5, 97–100, 105, 108–9, 112, 120–1; Archives Nationales, Paris, F. 20, 249, d. 38.

The Gauttieris, the family with the second largest property in the years 1822–23, had married into the powerful De Cupis family at the end of the eighteenth century. Political marriages, aimed at the economic expansion of families, were fairly common among Roman artisans. The tannery of Anna Colangeli, the widow of Merolli, a tanner who was active in the eighteenth century, also appeared in the Colizzi census.⁴³

It is more difficult to explain the presence of some small tanneries, a subject that deserves further study. The picture provided by these two sources, mainly focused on the financial power and the reputation of the tanner families, indicates that the barycentre of activity was slightly further back from the riverbank compared with that provided by the cadastre, with three De Cupis tanneries, four Codini tanneries, two Candi tanneries and four Gauttieri tanneries (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Location of the tanneries in Regola district according to the Assegne dei beni and the Colizzi catalogue. Elaboration of authors on ASR sources.

A more complex and comprehensive picture than that of the Isole estimative emerges from the census of economic activities carried out by the financial police in 1827. This source identified 33 tanneries in the Regola district, but in many cases, the addresses do not coincide with those reported in the Isole estimative. The tanneries were often at adjacent street numbers, while some were in areas further away from the river, traditionally not involved in the working of the hides (Figure 7). The mismatch between street numbers found in the various sources also depends on the high level of labour mobility in the tanneries, which were often used on an annual basis, or turned into storage areas or other businesses of a temporary kind. The most striking fact in the police source is that of the 25 street numbers listed in the Isole estimative, there are only 7 cases where the name of the owner is the same as that of the shopkeeper. These names belong to the Gauttieri, Scandi and Piastrini families, the only owners who continued to practise their trade in their tanneries in the first half of the nineteenth century; the others, thanks to the fair economic conditions, preferred to have their businesses run by other people. The tradesmen worked with their families and with their often numerous associates in other people's tanneries, and often accounted for most of the people working in the tanning industry. But they would have remained unknown if they had not been listed in the police source (Table 4).

Figure 7. Location of the tanneries in Regola district according to the census of economic activities by the financial police. Elaboration of authors on ASR sources.

Table 4. Tanneries in Regola district listed on the police census (1827)

* Tanneries with the same owner in both sources.

Sources: ASR, Presidenza del censo, Isole estimative, vols. 2706–7 (Rione VII-Regola); ASR, Miscellanea statistica, Titolo IV-Industria, nos. 22–3.

The case of the De Cupis family, whose name is absent from the police source, is worth further investigation. There were three large De Cupis tanneries in via di San Bartolomeo 75–6, 77–8 and 81 recorded in the Isole estimative, in the Assegne and in the Colizzi census. From a notarial source, it emerges that the tannery in via di San Bartolomeo 76 belonged to the De Cupis family until 1858, when Pio, Maddalena and Fortunata De Cupis, leaseholders of the walls of the Altieri property, sold it to Giovanni and Pietro Sabbatini (see Figure 3). In 1827, the police census indicated Anna Colangeli (the widow of Merolli, a tanner) as operator of the tannery, together with Giovanni Mordenti, a tanner and her son-in-law, indicated as the tenant. According to the cadastre and to the Stati delle anime, Anna Colangeli owned two properties elsewhere in the Regola district, in via della Mortella 19–20 where she lived with her family, and in via del Merangolo 20–1 where she had a tannery, also found in other sources, which in the police census was in the name of Stefano Rei, a tradesman who was not resident in the district.⁴⁴

The tannery at number 77 in the police census was named after Agostino Strabelli, who did not have any property (or emphyteuses – long-term leases) in the Regola district according to the cadastre and did not appear in the Stati delle anime of that time.⁴⁵ The police source did not also mention the large tannery at number 81 that belonged to Domenico De Cupis until 1826, when it was transferred to his grandchildren.⁴⁶ According to the Stati delle anime in 1824 the property housed three families (a saddler, an artisan and a soldier) that had no connection with the De Cupis family.⁴⁷ It is not clear how long the tannery remained operative or by whom it was managed, although the lack of an address in the police source would suggest that business had been interrupted.

The absence of the De Cupis at these addresses in the 1827 police census is presumably linked to the fact that in this period they did not practise their trade in the workshops they owned. This assumption was confirmed by consulting the Stati delle anime of 1824, which show that not one of the De Cupis owners resided in the living spaces appurtenant to the tanneries.⁴⁸ Domenico De Cupis, ‘the master vaccinaro’, lived in Piazza dei Cenci 28 with his family in 1825. Pio De Cupis, the owner of the tannery in via di San Bartolomeo dei Vaccinari 75–6, lived with his family in the building next to the tannery, at number 74, while a third brother, Pietro, who had no tanneries in his name, only a warehouse, lived at number 3 via di San Bartolomeo dei Vaccinari.⁴⁹

Unlike the De Cupis family, the Gauttieris, whose tanneries had the second highest valuation according to the Isole estimative, are also found at the same addresses in the police source. The Gauttieri brothers had four businesses located in three neighbouring cadastral parcels in via del Merangolo, where their houses were also located, in via di San Bartolomeo de Vaccinari, via della Mortella and along the river, in via del Merangolo. The largest business described in the Isole estimative as ‘a covered loggia used to spread out the hides’ and ‘cellars used as a tannery with large vats and containers for flour and water’ was marked as a ‘wool and tanning factory’. Wool work was closely associated with the work of the vaccinaro, or cowman. Before the nineteenth century, the tanneries were controlled by the guild, which prevented the proliferation of licences among the descendants of the vaccinari. Since they had capital but were not allowed to work as tanners, they became wool workers.⁵⁰ The Brogliardo only shows two tanneries in the name of Filippo Gauttieri, at number 34 and at numbers 80–1 in via del Merangolo, leaving out the woollen mill/tannery in via del Merangolo 35. The Stati delle anime only listed the latter business. The source reports ‘Door of the house of Mr Giuseppe Gauttieri which has become a woollen mill. Nobody has slept in this house this year.’⁵¹

The tannery with the third highest property value belonged to Michelangelo Rinaldi (see Appendix). According to the Isole estimative, it was located at numbers 30–1 in via della Mortella, right next to the Gauttieri woollen mill/tannery, but this is not confirmed by the other sources studied, perhaps because between the 1870s and 1880s, the great Rinaldi tannery, behind with its payments to the Apostolic Chamber, had gone bankrupt. It was subsequently taken over by a financer, with Polidoro Rinaldi reduced to the status of a simple wage earner, and it reappears with the name of the original owner in the cadastral registers of the 1820s.⁵² The disappearance of the Rinaldi tannery from the police source is instead explained by the fact that in the second Brogliardo, Rinaldi, indicated as the owner of two neighbouring houses in via della Mortella 28 and 30–1, was crossed out and replaced by Giuseppe Baseggi. In the Isole estimative there is also a note that cites ‘5 October 1826 – Application 72136 from Giuseppe Basseggi who has purchased the tannery opposite and has rented out for a total of 40 scudi – thus corrected.’ Had Rinaldi sold the tannery in 1826, Baseggi would have been able to close it and rent the rooms for other uses.⁵³

The last cross-check carried out concerns the Codinis, another historic family of Roman tanners, whose business in the nineteenth century seems insignificant, in spite of their lasting presence in the sources. The properties of the Codini family were less concentrated spatially compared with the other cases studied. Like the De Cupis family, the Codini family, as owners of tanneries, also tended not to work in the trade, preferring to delegate the work in their workshops to relatives or to other tanners.⁵⁴

Examining the archival sources revealed some trends, showing that the beginning of the decline of the tanneries in the Regola district can be traced to the 1820s. The ‘shift towards free trade’ in 1801, which sanctioned the end of the guilds and the theoretical opening up of the sector to the free market, was unable to ensure the momentum necessary to achieve this. The Roman tanneries continued to be uncompetitive because the tanners had little enthusiasm for innovation and were reluctant to change their working methods. It should be noted that this sector was distinguished by a strong resistance to change even in the most dynamic countries such as England and France, where the main innovations originated. Rome was not amongst the favourite destinations for technicians and entrepreneurs and therefore remained isolated from the circulation of ideas and technical innovations. Other areas of the Papal States, such as the Marche region, also struggled to incorporate the new techniques, ending up in crisis in the second half of the nineteenth century, when tanning became an essentially chemical sector.⁵⁵ The state, for its part, was short-sighted in its continued protection of local products, which were of poor quality compared with imported products, and was inefficient in its attempt to take over from the guild in controlling production and commercial activities. As a result, the profitability of the Roman tanneries was declining, and the owners of the businesses were less and less interested in doing the job themselves; some had specialized in other, less demanding and more lucrative professions, leaving the management of the tanneries to external operators or to less well-off relatives. The progressive loss of competitiveness of the Roman tannery industry in 1810 resulted in an imbalance of 25,000 scudi between the export of raw hides and the import of tanned hides.⁵⁶

In the period considered, the biggest tanneries appeared to be in difficulty. There were a number of cases of transfers of ownership or sales of production spaces that indicated that activities would soon come to a standstill. The transformation process triggered in the first 20 years of the nineteenth century would lead to the expulsion of the tanneries from the Regola district by the end of the century, a consequence of the post-unification urban transformations.

Concluding remarks

The integration of different sources – fiscal and administrative – helped to produce a broad view of the activities of the Roman tanneries between the end of the eighteenth century and the first 30 years of the nineteenth century, making it possible to identify the main players, their social conditions and the complex relationships created between them over time. The methodology adopted, based on GIS technology, is replicable for other economic activities. The next phase of the project will be focused on analysis of the relationships established between different economic activities and with the urban space once they have been integrated into the information system.

The literature review has shown that there is a lack of spatially detailed historical studies on economic activities in cities. This is probably due to the incompleteness of available sources which, when read in isolation, cannot offer a complete understanding of such complex phenomena. In our study, comparing and integrating the sources has made it possible better to frame and understand the sources themselves, thus avoiding partial and in some cases misleading pictures.

In this survey, which is mainly methodological in nature, an attempt was made to assess jointly the level of accuracy and the ability of the sources to provide useful and evenly distributed information on economic activities in an urban context. The integration using codified digitization and geolocalization of the descriptive and numerical data from the various sources has made possible the production of additional historical information, which is able to provide new territorial and diachronic readings, as well as to support the interpretation and analysis of economic activities through the comparison and cartographic synthesis of the data.

Surprisingly, the urban cadastre of Rome was the least relevant source for analysing the activities of the tanneries in the nineteenth century. Having been designed to calculate the amount of property tax, the cadastral registers mainly focused on the owners and not on the real estate units, which were often merged, thereby concealing the traces of most economic activities. Fortunately, the Isole estimative, which were used as the basis for compiling the registers of the second Brogliardo, provide detailed information on the use and structure of the properties, allowing a precise mapping of the activities.

Cross-checking with the Stati delle anime has enriched our knowledge of the families of the tanners and, above all, has proved useful for improving the interpretation of the data present in the police's statistical source, which initially appeared to contradict the Isole estimative. Placing the financial police source in the right perspective brought to light an interesting picture of the complex work carried out in the tanneries, crucial in making clear the relationships between the various players. The term ‘owner’ is used in the various sources in reference to completely different legal roles and positions, and this ambiguity, in the absence of any accurate knowledge of the sources, could lead to a wrong or distorted interpretation. The term ‘owner’ could simply indicate the owner of the walls, who often just rented the building and therefore remained outside the production process, or it could refer to the entrepreneur holding the tanner's licence, who carried out the business but was not necessarily also the owner of the property.

The nobility and the high Roman bourgeoisie tended not to invest in the manufacturing sector, as they often preferred investments with lower-risk coefficients, such as real estate income and public debt securities. However, despite the difficulties of a sector that was held back by a restrictive system, that had survived the corporations and was characterized by a widespread resistance to innovation, the leather manufacturing industry was still able to attract the investments of entrepreneurs who had recently been or were soon to be ennobled, such as Cavalier Sampieri and Vincenzo Grazioli, as well as various country merchants such as Candi, De Cupis, Giorgi and Merolli, who as livestock farmers were obviously interested in the tanning sector (see Table 4).

The methodology proposed, in addition to being extendable to other economic sectors and to other portions of territory, can be used to create a comparative analysis with other cities located in the Papal States. Our study shows the benefits of an approach based on the integration within an information system of descriptive and spatial historical sources which could generate new information about the urban economy, its structure, spatial organization and the social and familial networks that sustained it. This approach helps to fill a gap in the literature related to the scale and homogeneity of information produced. In this context, our work can be seen as the first stage of a comprehensive analysis of the economic space of cities in an historical perspective.