author
Scipione Borghese
1871–1927
An Italian prince with a taste for adventure, he is best remembered for winning the 1907 Peking-to-Paris motor race and for turning travel into vivid, firsthand storytelling. His life mixed aristocratic privilege with politics, exploration, and the early thrill of the automobile age.
1 Audiobook
Van Peking naar Parijs per auto De Aarde en haar Volken, 1908
by Luigi Barzini, Scipione Borghese
About the author
Born in Tuscany in 1871, Scipione Borghese was an Italian nobleman from the Borghese family whose interests ranged far beyond courtly life. He became known as an explorer, industrialist, politician, mountaineer, and one of the early celebrities of motoring, moving easily between public life and high-risk adventure.
His biggest claim to fame came in 1907, when he won the epic Peking-to-Paris race, one of the great endurance contests of early automobile history. The journey became even more widely known through the reporting of journalist Luigi Barzini, who traveled with him and helped turn the race into a classic story of speed, stamina, and long-distance travel.
Borghese also served in Italian political life and remained a figure associated with bold modern travel at a time when cars still felt experimental and daring. He died in Florence in 1927, but his name still carries the excitement of an era when exploration and machinery seemed to open the whole world at once.