Since ancient times, man has felt the need to travel and effortlessly transport goods and has, therefore, relied on chariots drawn by animals. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans used different forms of transportation, but these chariots were considered mostly an instrument of war or as a means of transport, and only a few specimens were richly decorated and participated in parades and religious ceremonies. It was not before the 14th century that elegant wagons were introduced. These carts were made with a case placed directly on the axles, and represented an object of luxury, a convenience for the exclusive use of noble families. The first coaches were built in Hungary in the town of Kötcse, in the second half of the 15th century and consisted of suspending the body of the coach from elastic springs, thereafter, they spread rapidly to Germany and France.
In Italy, specimens arrived in Ferrara thanks to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, and thus a tradition of “master builders” was born. These artisans made significant improvements to the Hungarian models both in terms of the suspension system and the steering group.
During the 1600s there was a transition from the coach to the carriage; in fact, additional improvements were introduced that mainly concerned the scaffolding of the case that acquired a skeleton and wooden paneling, which allowed the body to be equipped with windows and doors, and then with the emergence of the Baroque style were enriched with ornate embellishments. The construction of roads in the 17th century was expanding and allowed the construction of the first travel carriages that could travel longer distances. In 1662 the omnibus model first appeared in France, it was a carriage drawn by two or more horses, equipped with a longer frame, capable of transporting between 8 and 10 people. The invention was decidedly innovative, but it required about two hundred years before the carriage became commonplace, reappearing in Paris only in 1826. Small two-wheeled carioles or open carriages became available for rental, which were also introduced to Florence from France. At this point, the use of the carriage spread rapidly across the Old Continent, where it reached its peak, and specimens then began to appear in the Americas and in other parts of the world. Italy, in particular, held the record for the production of coaches and carriages.
Since ancient times, man has felt the need to travel and effortlessly transport goods and has, therefore, relied on chariots drawn by animals. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans used different forms of transportation, but these chariots were considered mostly an instrument of war or as a means of transport, and only a few specimens were richly decorated and participated in parades and religious ceremonies. It was not before the 14th century that elegant wagons were introduced. These carts were made with a case placed directly on the axles, and represented an object of luxury, a convenience for the exclusive use of noble families. The first coaches were built in Hungary in the town of Kötcse, in the second half of the 15th century and consisted of suspending the body of the coach from elastic springs, thereafter, they spread rapidly to Germany and France.
In Italy, specimens arrived in Ferrara thanks to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, and thus a tradition of “master builders” was born. These artisans made significant improvements to the Hungarian models both in terms of the suspension system and the steering group.
During the 1600s there was a transition from the coach to the carriage; in fact, additional improvements were introduced that mainly concerned the scaffolding of the case that acquired a skeleton and wooden paneling, which allowed the body to be equipped with windows and doors, and then with the emergence of the Baroque style were enriched with ornate embellishments. The construction of roads in the 17th century was expanding and allowed the construction of the first travel carriages that could travel longer distances. In 1662 the omnibus model first appeared in France, it was a carriage drawn by two or more horses, equipped with a longer frame, capable of transporting between 8 and 10 people. The invention was decidedly innovative, but it required about two hundred years before the carriage became commonplace, reappearing in Paris only in 1826. Small two-wheeled carioles or open carriages became available for rental, which were also introduced to Florence from France. At this point, the use of the carriage spread rapidly across the Old Continent, where it reached its peak, and specimens then began to appear in the Americas and in other parts of the world. Italy, in particular, held the record for the production of coaches and carriages.
Different models of carriages gradually appeared: the fiacre, the first carriage for public hire; the cabriolet with a folding hood; the landau, a covered carriage with a flexible leather roof; the berlin a four-seater covered carriage with glass windows; and the tilbury a two-wheeled, lightweight carriage. In the 1700s, during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, French arts reached their highest point in decorative splendor and craftsmanship, and a light-weight structure was achieved with the coupé model, whose name derived from a cut-down coach body truncated at the front starting from the door. At the end of the 18th century, there were so many vehicles in circulation in urban centers that it was necessary to organize traffic on the roads.
In the early 19th century, there was a flourishing of horse-drawn vehicles, to which were added other improvements such as elliptic spring suspensions, front and rear brakes, oil-lamp fixtures, and wheels covered with hard rubber. In the mid-19th century, the use of the carriage became more widespread even among the bourgeoisie, becoming an important means of public transportation. Then, the introduction of the first motor transport vehicles witnessed a slow but inevitable decline of the use of horse-drawn carriages until their disappearance.