Monday, March 24, 2014

Buffalo Bill in Milano


"Wild West" toys for sale in Italy. I think that's Buffalo Bill on the bottom label. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber


Buffalo Bill toured his Wild West show all over Europe. These tours comprised one of three phenomena around 1900 that came together and helped solidify and spread the Imaginary Wild West in Europe -- the other two were Karl May's books and the birth of the movies.

You can now find a lot of material related to Bill's European Wild West tours online.

Check out this link -- to the full program of his show in Milan, Italy in 1906 

It's from the Buffalo Bill Online Archive of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

The tour opened in Genoa on March 14th, and closed in Udine on May 11th. The show  performed in Milan April 30th to May 5th.

The full tour route in Italy was:  Genoa, La Spezia, Livorno, Roma, Terni, Perugia, Arezzo, Firenze, Pisa, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Forli', Ancona, Rimini, Ravenna, Ferrara, Padova, Verona, Mantova, Cremona, Piacenza,Pavia, Alessandria, Torino, Asti, Novara, Como, Milano, Bergamo, Brescia, Vicenza, Treviso, and Udine.