Militante e irredentista: la rappresentazione di Rovereto nelle guide turistiche ottocentesche

The paper addresses the narrative contexts of 19th Century Italian-language tourist guides of Rovereto. Comparison of such sources made it possible to highlight authors’ interpretations, the different urban contexts and the narratives of the spaces in which the interests of commissioners and local elites intertwined. In the examined period, Rovereto was a densely populated urban centre, whose thriving manufacturing production, among which that of silk stood out, made it famous throughout Europe. At the same time, however, it was also an “Italian” town under the Austrian Empire, in which the dominant cultural perception by the bourgeoisie was characterised by a certain anti-Habsburg sentiment, as was the case in almost the entire Trentino region.