Read La locandiera in Italianwith every sentence explained

La locandiera by Carlo Goldoni was first published in 1753. In Passage you read the full text in the original Italian, marked intermediate and filed under romance. It runs to about 25,800 words.

Every man in the inn is in love with her. Except one, and that is a challenge she cannot refuse.

Mirandolina runs a busy inn in Florence, and she runs it brilliantly. Her guests include a penniless Marquis who boasts of his title and a newly rich Count who showers her with gifts, both hopelessly smitten. Then there is the Cavaliere di Ripafratta, a proud, gruff gentleman who declares that he despises all women.

Stung by his scorn, Mirandolina sets out to make him fall in love with her, armed with nothing but charm, wit and a well-cooked meal. Meanwhile Fabrizio, the faithful waiter her late father wanted her to marry, watches the game with growing jealousy.

Carlo Goldoni's sparkling comedy is the most famous play in the Italian repertoire, still staged everywhere. Written in lively everyday prose, The Mistress of the Inn is a joy to read aloud and perfect for meeting real spoken Italian.

Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Italian. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:

• a natural translation of that exact sentence,
• a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
• the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
• all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.

It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Italian feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.