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Giannantonio Selva in England

Two hundred years ago the Venetian-born architect Giannantonio Selva (1751-1819) crossed the Channel on his one and only visit to England. He landed at Dover on 16 June 1781, and set out again for Ostend on the first of September. The most remarkable facts about his sojourn, apart from its relative brevity, are that he kept a written record of it, and that he is the only Italian architect known to have done so at that period. Moreover, Selva is one of the very few Italians to have made such a trip at any period, so his travel diary is doubly precious. By contrast, the travels of eighteenth-century student architects from Britain to Italy were so frequent as to be almost commonplace. It is true, however, that few of them kept so meticulous a diary as Selva. Its existence has been known to scholars for some time. Elena Bassi in her biography of Selva alluded to it, without having had the chance to consult it. Subsequently, it was presented by the heirs of the art critic Ugo Ojetti to the Biblioteca Querini Stampalia in Venice. Since the donation in 1954, Bassi has published excerpts, and has mentioned the English section, but only in passing. The following account of it is, therefore, the first to appear in English and the most extensive to deal with the English section. At the same time, no attempt has been made here to incorporate or translate the entire document.