ABSTRACT
For early modern travellers, the urban experience is first and foremost that of a global comprehension. The global experience, beyond its emotional elements, is constructed according to two schemes, which, developing since the 16th century, have produced an enormous corpus of urban cartography on a European scale and beyond. If sight – “the delighted eyes,” according to John Moore – undeniably prevails over the other senses in the discovery of the early modern city, and in the relationship that the traveller establishes with it, the noises and sounds that invest it can confront him as soon as he arrives and throughout his stay. For Schafer, the sound universe of pre-industrial cities had produced a “soundscape” that was indeed grounded on aesthetic principles. The historian David Garrioch demonstrated that these sounds, far from being perceived as a nuisance, were as many means of orientation, of moving around the city, of participating in a collective life.
