Old Age, Urban Space, and Mobility in Seventeenth-Century Italy

Abstract

The elderly are an overlooked cohort in early modern urban spaces. Where studies of old age have tended to focus on the spaces of the home or the hospital, studies of street space and urban mobility have often not considered age, or have focused on youth groups. This article examines the relationship between urban space and mobility, and old age in early modern Venice. It shows how elderly people used urban spaces and were a visible presence in the early modern city. In so doing, it demonstrates that attending to how and where elderly people moved can shed light on strategies for self-sufficiency and on histories of disability and care, as well as shedding new light on how urban populations used city spaces.