The Life of Charles Dickens 'Geonese washerwomen.' Dickens toured Italy in 1844-1845 and was insterested in the Religious Houses and he found a nunnery next to the Acqua Sola ; a little park where the Genoese made their Sunday promenade ; and underneath there was an archway with great public tanks, where, at all ordinary times, washerwomen were washing away, thirty or forty together. Illustration by Fred Barnard