Maria Vittoria of Savoy

Maria Vittoria of Savoy was a legitimated daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia, first king of the House of Savoy. Married to the head of a cadet branch of the House of Savoy, she is an ancestress of the kings of Sardinia and of the Savoy kings of Italy.

Everyday peasant clothing

Simple peasants wore sturdy, locally-made garments of brown or white wool and stiff cloth for everyday tasks.

Feast day attire

For feast days and Sundays, people increasingly wore finer, brightly colored fabrics that were imported rather than produced in the village.

Hunting horns in religious and public life

Hunting horns were used for communication and public celebration, with performances traditionally occurring during mass on Saint Hubert's Feast Day. This ancient sound helped connect the congregation and audience to nature during these open-air events.

Hurdy-gurdy as a popular folk instrument

The hurdy-gurdy was a common instrument used by ordinary people for centuries to accompany singing, dancing, and popular entertainment. It was also famously associated with Savoyard street performers and children who traveled across Europe with their music and puppets.

Horse relay postal systems

Organized postal routes allowed authorized travelers or couriers to use relay stations to swap tired horses for fresh ones, significantly increasing their travel speed.

Mountain travel and daily distances

Alpine crossings required switching to mules or porters because carriage roads often ended at the base of the mountains. Travelers covering long distances usually managed about 20 to 40 kilometers per day.

Education and social life

While public education systems were introduced by 1661, daily social interaction for the rural population primarily took place in stables during the evening, which served as a shared space for work and exchange.

Forced lodging of soldiers

Ordinary families often had to provide their own heating, bedding, salt, and cooking materials for quartered soldiers. Soldiers could forcefully enter these homes, sometimes destroying doors with muskets.

Simple Daily Meals and Rare Meat

For many ordinary people, the daily meal was simple and focused on survival, often consisting of dark bread, wine, and soups made with vegetables like cabbage, turnips, or onions. Meat was a rare luxury, eaten mostly during festivals or when money allowed.

Survival Diet During War and Famine

During times of war and famine around the 1690s, the rural poor in mountainous provinces were sometimes forced to survive on ground shells and nuts mixed with small amounts of oats or barley.

Daily wages and food costs in Turin

Ordinary workers in Turin earned daily wages of just a few dozen soldi, making a single measure of wheat cost as much as six to ten days of labor during price spikes.

Controlled bread prices and production

City authorities in Turin strictly regulated the bread market, setting prices based on the cost of wheat and using official baking tests to determine production costs.

Common jobs in the Duchy of Savoy

Common occupations included domestic servants, laborers, masons, bakers, and shoemakers for immigrants, while native city dwellers often worked in tailoring, weaving, or bureaucracy. Women frequently worked as domestic servants, washerwomen, seamstresses, or shopkeepers.

Hardships of the common people

During times of famine and war, survival for the poorest was so dire that they lived on ground shells and nuts mixed with a small amount of oats or barley. Additionally, during military occupations, peasants were often forced to provide heating, bedding, salt, and cooking materials for quartered troops.

Slow mail and high-stakes information delivery

Communication was physically limited by geography and weather, as letters between Turin and Paris took about a week to arrive. Because information only moved as fast as a person could travel, a intercepted letter could be more valuable than the money a traveler carried.

State-controlled postal relay networks in Savoy

In the Duchy of Savoy, the state had claimed an exclusive right to the postal service since 1604, although it was managed through contracts until 1718. Ordinary travelers and official couriers moved at different speeds, with official messages prioritized via dedicated relays of horses.