CAPELLINI, Pietro Antonio.

Projet pour la reparation des Eaux d'Aix.

Moutiers, 8 February 1769. Folio manuscript.pp.17, tied with blue silk, with a long folding 'Plan topographique depuis la Source de Mouxi a Aix, avec le Projet pour la y amener' and a large square 'Plan des Bains des Eaux de Soufre d'Aix selon leurs Etat actuel. Avec le Projet pour les reparer', both in pen and ink with pink, gray and green wash. The three documents enclosed in a recent marbled paper box, red morocco label. Early proposals by the Torinese architect and engineer P.A.Capellini (1717-1795) to revive the decayed Roman spa of Aix in the canton of Savoie in S.E.France, later known as Aix-les-Bains. The Roman town of Aquae Gratianae with its fashionable hot and cold baths and medicinal waters fell into disuse in the middle ages although it had a brief resurgence in the early seventeenth century when Henri IV spent an hour in the 'Royal Bath' and a Doctor Cabias published a work in 1623 extolling the virtues of the baths.Capellini's interesting report lists some of the problems that he encountered; poor demarcation between men's and women's baths, confused opening hours and lack of concern for the sick, the abuses of hoteliers and bath servants, poor road connections with Geneva, foul and adulterated drinking water and the baths themselves and their water supply in poor repair. He has an intelligent appreciation of the age of the existing structures and concludes that the remains of aqueducts to bring water from a spring at Moxi were Roman. He also discusses the subterranean rooms and aqueducts found four years earlier under the garden of Madame de Martinel near the Royal Bath housing ancient steam baths with bricks or tiles inscribed 'Clarianus'. His proposals are an interesting combination of utilising and repairing the old Roman system (the cement, as he points out, was as hard as stone) and providing entirely new buildings illustrated on his plan.Aix began to re-establish itself after the visit of the Comte de Provence (the future Louis XVIII) in 1775 and the decision of the King of Sardinia, Victor-Amedeus II, in the following year to make the town worthy of its famous waters. In 1784 the Etablissement Royal des Bains was inaugurated and new baths, a swimming-pool and a vaporarium were constructed, possibly along the lines of Capellini's earlier project. In the nineteenth century the Spa became immensely fashionable and even today is a centre for the treatment of rheumatism.

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• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)