Karl Baedeker 📕
A prop from the film Death on the Nile (2022) which is set in 1937. A beautiful score and a must-watch if you haven’t seen it yet!
Welcome to my newest obsession: Karl Baedeker (pronounced BUY-decker) and his red travel books. 📕📕📕📕📕
Karl Baedeker
If you’re like me, you first want to read his wikipedia page, so here it is. 👍🏼
The Father of Tourism
Known as the “Father of Modern Tourism,” Karl was a German man, born in 1801, who practically invented what we know as travel guidebooks. Was he the very first to write down how to visit a place? No, but he was the first to include helpful things like local slang, hotel reviews, tipping recommendations, pricing information—you know, the practical stuff! The best part were the gorgeous and highly accurate maps. You guys, they are precisely hand cut and they fold out to show you everything.
Here’s some other facts I love about him:
Karl took over the family publishing business from his dad but completely reinvented it—switching from a newspaper and religious texts to his true passion: travel content. 🌏
Karl changed his family’s last name from Bädeker with the umlaut to Baedeker when he was 49. I’m wondering if it had to do with pronunciation? 🤔 BUY-decker BUY-decker BUY-decker!
Karl removed a star from a hotel who treated him poorly on a subsequent visit—he actually checked up on his recommendations to make sure they still cut muster. ⭐️
On his deathbed, Karl said he didn’t feel like he did enough with his life. (I feel that way all the time, and I’m not even on my deathbed yet, hopefully.) 🤞🏼
Look at this little flap that folds out so the lake wouldn't get chopped off on the map… gorgeous attention to detail.
The Patron Saint of Perfectionism
Another reason I love Karl: he was 100% a perfectionist. In 1847, he was walking up the steps to the top of the stunning Milan cathedral in Italy. Picture a 46-year-old Karl in his everyday causal attire (which is to say, a 3-piece suit) deep in thought and moving things around from pocket to pocket. A stranger asks him, “what are you doing?” Karl holds out a handful of peas. 🫛 He explains, that every 20 steps he moves a pea from his waistcoat pocket to his trouser pocket so that he can verify his count is correct on the way back down. 🥹 Truly an unsung hero of correctness, accuracy, and the patron saint of perfectionists everywhere. 🫡
Also, I did the legwork for you and buried on a PDF on the Duomo’s website… the answer is 251 steps. When you Google it, the top answer is 919 steps but I felt that wasn’t right. It’s like the internet has made it both harder and easier to find correct answers... And yes, I am dying to run home to my copy of Baedeker’s Italy so I can see what number he wrote. ✍🏼
Ok, now I’m holding Baedeker’s Italy from the Alps to Naples (1909) which certainly was many years after Karl died… but I’m guessing they don’t re-count things like staircases in 500-year-old cathedrals between editions so here is verbatim what it says:
The traveller should not fail to ascend to the *Roof and Tower of the cathedral. The staircase ascends from the corner of the right transept (ticket 25 c.; to the highest gallery 25 c. more; Panorama of the Alps 75 c.). Single visitors not admitted unless others are already at the top. Closed an hour before sunset. The visitor should mount at once to the highest gallery of the tower (by 194 steps inside, and 300 outside the edifice). Watchman at the top, with a telescope.
So now I am just as confused as you are and need to purchase a flight to Italy to count the steps myself. I’m guessing Karl counted 194 steps during the aforementioned encounter. Digging further, the cathedral was finally finished in 1965, so I guess you could make the argument the Duomo di Milano is only 58 years old maybe they added steps. ♥️
So here I am… waiting impatiently for my Baedeker biography Baedekeriana to show up, and thumbing through my old editions of Baedeker guides. ☺️ Keep your eye out for their red leather covers at used book stores—some of them are worth quite a bit!