The best spas as seen by a wise man

June 22, 1580. A wealthy 47-year-old gentleman leaves his castle near Bordeaux, bound for Italy. He suffers from frequent kidney stones—flatulence and phlegm, kidney stones, pebbles, and sand—so whenever possible he stops at spas where he drinks waters good for the kidneys and takes baths. This gentleman is Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who has just become famous among scholarly and aristocratic circles for the publication of two books he has called EssaysWith these works, he inaugurates a literary genre: that of self-experimentation in order to understand oneself and the world. Man, and no longer God, has come to occupy the center of existence. And man has concrete, prosaic needs.

Now he sets out to record what happens to him and what he sees during this journey, which will last one year, five months, and eight days and will be recorded in Travel Diary, first published in Catalan in Adesiara Translated by Vicent Alonso. If the EssaysIn the midst of the Renaissance, the individual emerges from the confines of religion. In this itinerant text, the landscape appears, especially insofar as it has been cultivated, nature as a garden, including a taste for archaeological ruins. However, this wise man is not drawn to modern art, which at that time included, for example, that of Michelangelo, who had died just seventeen years before Montaigne visited Florence or Rome.

Aside from servants, muleteers, and a secretary, he is accompanied by some young men from his circle, including his younger brother—who wants to learn fencing—and a brother-in-law—who stays in Padua to study law. Through Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, the route takes them to Italy, a fashionable and obligatory destination for the humanists of the time. He dictates the first part of the text to his secretary, who occasionally adds his own touches. Once they arrive in Rome, Montaigne himself takes over the writing, which shifts from French to Italian, a language he is fluent in.

Unlike the first two volumes of the EssaysAlthough he dedicated almost ten years of his life to this project, he did not write his travel diary for publication. In fact, it was not discovered until 178 years after his death, in 1770. It appeared in Catalan in 2012 from the short-lived publisher La Mansarda, and its translator, Vicent Alonso—also the author of the magnificent Catalan version of the Essays, in Proa–, now recovers it through Adesiara and expands it with valuable letters, among them the one Montaigne wrote to his father following the death of his soul friend, Étienne de Boétie, or the two sent to King Henry IV of France.

In Italy, Montaigne matured his thinking, as will be seen in the third and final volume of the Essays. Besides admiring humanized landscapes, he engages in dialogue with non-Catholic theologians, takes an interest in technical artifacts at the service of progress, observes unique customs and rituals, strolls through the gardens of Italy's most admired villas, frequents libraries—especially the Vatican Library—visits the Pope—and, dances for the peasants, converses with humanists like Girolamo Borro and accepts judgments about his Essays by the Inquisition, which, however, grants him the freedom to make corrections when reprinting them.

But, tormented by cramps, what occupies most of the text are the thermal waters and the establishments where he stays. As if it were a practical travel guide, he details the quality of the food, the prices, and the general comfort. At the Bagni della Villa, 25 kilometers north of Lucca, he discovers the doccia, "Pipes through which one receives hot water on various parts of the body, and particularly on the head, through channels that descend continuously and strike the area, heating it, and then the water is received through a wooden channel, like those in laundries, along which it filters." "There is another bath, also in a spiral shape and dark, for women," he adds. Quite an innovation, a luxury we take for granted today.

His health is fragile. In addition to kidney stones, he suffers from migraines, leg cramps, toothaches, intestinal pain... He would die at 59. But curiously, he doesn't stop doing anything. Not even peeking into the red-light districts: "While Roman and Venetian prostitutes stand in windows for their lovers, these [Florentine] do so at the doors of their houses, where they display themselves to the public during appropriate hours." In Lucca, he says that "they play ball very well, and beautiful matches are often seen." He enjoys the shops, the palaces he visits, the churches, and the squares. He finds good accommodations, good food, and good conversation.

Perhaps we could compare him to what today would be a well-to-do, retired tourist, with deep pockets and no hurry. "The piazza of Siena is the most beautiful that can be seen in any other city in Italy," he writes, and when, after a few days, he returns to Rome, the letters informing him that he has been elected mayor of Bordeaux are handwritten for him. He then begins his journey home, passing through Milan, the "most populous city in Italy, large and full of all kinds of artisans and merchandise; it is not very different from Paris, and has largely the appearance of a French city." "It lacks the palaces of Rome, Naples, Genoa, and Florence, but in grandeur it surpasses them all, and in population it equals Venice," he writes. Four and a half centuries later, Milan remains the economic capital of Italy. Four and a half centuries later, Montaigne remains a point of reference.