Italy of bygone days. Travel diary of 1855-56.

"The Italy of Days Gone By" is a diary of notes by one of the most famous literary duos, the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, in whose honor the most prestigious literary award in France is named. Over six months, from November 1855 to May 1856, they traveled from Domodossola to Naples, absorbing the atmosphere of Italian cities, studying their architecture, examining mosaics, frescoes, and paintings in cathedrals and museums as if under a microscope, and noting the peculiarities of the local residents. Readers of this book will encounter not embellished pictures with bright landscapes, but naturalistic sketches that form a multifaceted collage of details, captured by a keen eye and described with precise, and sometimes biting, prose. The authors intended to base a series of novellas on their travel notes about Italian cities, but only one of the planned novellas was written - "Venice at Night," which concludes this book.