La belle ... et vivante ville de Yassi: între Orientul medieval și Occidentul modern. Jurnalul inedit de călătorie al unui genevez la Iași și în Basarabia, în 1811
La belle ... et vivante ville de Yassi: between the medieval and the modern world. A Genevese’s travel log in Iasi and Bessarabia in 1811

Summary/Abstract: Léonard Revilliod, born in Geneva in 1786 and temporarily living in Odessa (since 1809) where he had set up, together with an associate, an agricultural and animal husbandry company, travelled during the summer of 1811 in Iasi and Bessarabia. His main purpose was to purchase sheep for the business he had just started. His trip to Iasi has been recorded in a yet unpublished travel log, which can be found at Archives d’État de Genève. This relatively long visit (which started on July 14th and ended on October 25th) indirectly highlights the nature of this Romanian province capital which was, at the time, under Russian occupation. Revilliod’s notes during the short time he has been staying in Iasi (July 16th – August 8th 1811) are extremely compact, while the details regarding the surroundings in which he stayed almost three weeks are quite reduced. Nevertheless, even from Revilliod’s scarce depictions,we can still draw some impressions on how the city looked like, the local habits, certain events and especially the personal profile of some people who accompanied the Genevese during his trip, with whom he interfered or even barely met…The depiction of the people and places is not out of the ordinary and it can be added up to the other travelers’ and visitors’ notes concerning the Romanian Principalities, as they share the same conclusions: the beginning of a modernization process (to be more precise, an Europeanisation one) of a social elite and, generally speaking, of a society caught between two ages and also two regions – East and West – with all the consequences derived from this situation.

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