Note 853 — Chapter II · THE OUTWARD REFINEMENT OF LIFE.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 21. Padua, about the year 1450, boasted of a great inn—the ‘Ox’—like a palace, containing stabling for two hundred horses. Michele Savonarola, in Mur. xxiv. col. 1175. At Florence, outside the Porta San Gallo, there was one of the largest and most splendid inns then known, but which served, it seems, only as a place of amusement for the people of the city. Varchi, Stor. Fior. iii. p. 86. At the time of Alexander VI. the best inn at Rome was kept by a German. See the remarkable notices taken from the MS. of Burcardus in Gregorovius, vii. 361, note 2. Comp. ibid. p. 93, notes 2 and 3.