Extracts from the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the Year ... - by Mary Berry (1783), 1866

Two miles from Piacenza, the Trebia is crossed in a boat. The water was considerably swelled by the quantity of rain that had fallen, and crossing rivers is always troublesome; the boats are small and bad, the boatmen awkward, and the postilions noisy and quarrelsome. Piacenza is a great half-inhabited-looking town; the streets are tolerably wide and in general straight, but consisting of mean irregular houses, interspersed with the long dead walls of monasteries, and here and there a palace going to decay.