"Trento, the Last Chance for a Beer". Mobility, Material Culture and Urban Space in an Early Modern Transit City

This chapter develops two of the main themes explored in the Hidden Trento walking tour Ursula: Innkeepers, princes, and migrants. Firstly, it analyses the nature of Renaissance Trento as a city of transit between the north and south of the Alps; secondly, it focuses on the diverse functions of urban public spaces inside the city in terms of interaction between the German and Italian communities. The chapter also describes how a public history initiative using locative media might be a way of reconceptualizing the history of the city. It shows how public history can embrace material culture studies and integrate its methodology into existing disciplinary approaches such as mobility studies and urban history. We explore the impact of human mobility on the urban fabric by pursuing residual material and architectural traces. Following a route with a “contemporary” local guide, the German innkeeper Ursula, we aim to rediscover the visible presence of early modern locations for hospitality and sociability in the twenty-first-century cityscape, and related items preserved in the collections of local museums. Guided by Ursula, users experience the spatial dynamics and cultural interactions that occurred at these sites, revealing how beyond hospitality and casual sociability, they acted as dynamic communication spaces. The focus on the material dimensions of mobility and everyday urban life reveals Trento’s nature as a transit city and offers new interpretations of the social and cultural history of the city.