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• What Was The Grand Tour...

What Was the Grand Tour and Where Did People Go?

Freelance Travel and Music Writer

Nowadays, it’s so easy to pack a bag and hop on a flight or interrail across Europe’s railway at your own leisure. But what if it was known as a right of passage, made no easier by the fact that there was no such modern luxury? Welcome to the Grand Tour – and we’re not talking about Jeremy Clarkson’s TV series …

What was the grand tour all about.

The Grand Tour was a trip of Europe, typically undertaken by young men, which begun in the 17th century and went through to the mid-19th. Women over the age of 21 would occasionally partake, providing they were accompanied by a chaperone from their family. The Grand Tour was seen as an educational trip across Europe, usually starting in Dover, and would see young, wealthy travellers search for arts and culture. Though travelling was not as easy back then, mostly thanks to no rail routes like today, those on The Grand Tour would often have a healthy supply of funds in order to enjoy themselves freely.

What did travellers get up to?

Of course, in the 17th century, there was no such thing as the internet, making discovering things while sat on the other side of the world near impossible. Cultural integration was not yet fully-fledged and nothing like we experience today, so the only way to understand different ways of life was to experience them yourself. Hence why so many people set off for the Grand Tour – the ultimate trip across Europe!

Typical routes taken on the Grand Tour

Travellers (occompanied by a tutor) would often start around the South East region and head in to France, where a coach would often be rented should the party be wealthy enough. Occasionally, the coaches would need to be disassembled in order to cross difficult terrain such as the Alps.

Once passing through Calais and Paris, a typical journey would include a stop-off in Switzerland before crossing the Alps in to Northern Italy. Here’s where the wealth really comes in to play – as luggage and methods of transport would need to be dismantled and carried manually – as really rich travellers would often employ servants to carry everything for them.

Of course, Italy is a highly cultural country and famous for its art and historic buildings, so travellers would spend longer here. Turin, Florence, Rome, Pompeii and Venice would be amongst the cities visited, generally enticing those in to extended stays.

On the return leg, travellers would visit Germany and occasionally Austria, including study time at universities such as Munich, before heading to Holland and Flanders, ahead of crossing the Channel back to Dover.

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What was the Grand Tour?

Find out about the travel phenomenon that became popular amongst the young nobility of England

Art, antiquity and architecture: the Grand Tour provided an opportunity to discover the cultural wonders of Europe and beyond.  

Popular throughout the 18th century, this extended journey was seen as a rite of passage for mainly young, aristocratic English men. 

As well as marvelling at artistic masterpieces, Grand Tourists brought back souvenirs to commemorate and display their journeys at home. 

One exceptional example forms the subject of a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Canaletto’s Venice Revisited brings together 24 of Canaletto’s Venetian views, commissioned in 1731 by Lord John Russell following his visit to Venice. 

Find out more about this travel phenomenon – and uncover its rich cultural legacy. 

Canaletto's Venice Revisited

The origins of the Grand Tour

The development of the Grand Tour dates back to the 16th century. 

One of the earliest Grand Tourists was the architect Inigo Jones , who embarked on a tour of Italy in 1613-14 with his patron Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel. 

Jones visited cities such as Parma, Venice and Rome. However, it was Naples that proved the high point of his travels.  

Jones was particularly fascinated by the San Paolo Maggiore, describing the church as “one of the best things that I have ever seen.” 

Jones’s time in Italy shaped his architectural style. In 1616, Jones was commissioned to design the Queen’s House in Greenwich for Queen Anne of Denmark , the wife of King James I. Completed in around 1636, the house was the first classical building in England. 

The expression ‘Grand Tour’ itself comes from 17th century travel writer and Roman Catholic priest Richard Lassels, who used it in his guidebook The Voyage of Italy, published in 1670. 

By the 18th century, the Grand Tour had reached its zenith. Despite Anglo-French wars in 1689-97 and 1702-13, this was a time of relative stability in Europe, which made travelling across the continent easier. 

The Grand Tour route

For young English aristocrats, embarking on the Grand Tour was seen as an important rite of passage. 

Accompanied by a tutor, a Grand Tourist’s route typically involved taking a ship across the English Channel before travelling in a carriage through France, stopping at Paris and other major cities. 

Italy was also a popular destination thanks to the art and architecture of places such as Venice, Florence, Rome, Milan and Naples. More adventurous travellers ventured to Sicily or even sailed across to Greece. The average Grand Tour lasted for at least a year. 

As Katherine Gazzard, Curator of Art at Royal Museums Greenwich explains, this extended journey marked the culmination of a Grand Tourist’s education.  

“The Grand Tourists would have received an education that was grounded in the Classics,” she says. “During their travels to the continent, they would have seen classical ruins and read Latin and Greek texts. The Grand Tour was also an opportunity to take in more recent culture, such as Renaissance paintings, and see contemporary artists at work.” 

As well as educational opportunities, the Grand Tour was linked with independence. Places such as Venice were popular with pleasure seekers, boasting gambling houses and occasions for drinking and partying.  

“On the Grand Tour, there’s a sense that travellers are gaining some of their independence and having a lesson in the ways of the world,” Gazzard explains. “For visitors to Venice, there were opportunities to behave beyond the social norms, with the masquerade and the carnival.” 

Art and the Grand Tour 

Bound up with the idea of independence was the need to collect souvenirs, which the Grand Tourists could display in their homes.  

“The ownership of property was tied to status, so creating a material legacy was really important for the Grand Tourists in order to solidify their social standing amongst their peers,” says Gazzard. “They were looking to spend money and buy mementos to prove they went on the trip.” 

The works of artists such as those of the 18th century view painter Giovanni Antonio Canal (known as Canaletto ) were especially popular with Grand Tourists. Prized for their detail, Canaletto’s artworks captured the landmarks and scenes of everyday Venetian life, from festive scenes to bustling traffic on the Grand Canal . 

In 1731, Lord John Russell, the future 4th Duke of Bedford, commissioned Canaletto to create 24 Venetian views following his visit to the city. 

Lord John Russell is known to have paid at least £188 for the set – over five times the annual earnings of a skilled tradesperson at the time.  

“Canaletto’s work was portable and collectible,” says Gazzard. “He adopted a smaller size for his canvases so they could be rolled up and shipped easily.” 

These detailed works, now part of the world famous collection at Woburn Abbey, form the centrepiece of Canaletto’s Venice Revisited at the National Maritime Museum . 

Who was Canaletto?

The legacy of the Grand Tour 

The start of the French Revolution in 1789 marked the end of the Grand Tour. However, its legacy is still keenly felt. 

The desire to explore and learn about different places and cultures through travel continues to endure. The legacy of the Grand Tour can also be seen in the artworks and objects that adorn the walls of stately homes and museums, and the many cultural influences that travellers brought back to Britain. 

Canaletto's Venice Revisited

Main image:  The Piazza San Marco looking towards the Basilica San Marco and the Campanile by Canaletto . From the Woburn Abbey Collection . Canaletto painting in body copy:  Regatta on Grand Canal  by Canaletto  From the Woburn Abbey Collection

18th Century Grand Tour of Europe

The Travels of European Twenty-Somethings

Print Collector/Getty Images 

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• M.A., Geography, California State University - Northridge
• B.A., Geography, University of California - Davis

The French Revolution marked the end of a spectacular period of travel and enlightenment for European youth, particularly from England. Young English elites of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often spent two to four years touring around Europe in an effort to broaden their horizons and learn about language , architecture , geography, and culture in an experience known as the Grand Tour.

The Grand Tour, which didn't come to an end until the close of the eighteenth century, began in the sixteenth century and gained popularity during the seventeenth century. Read to find out what started this event and what the typical Tour entailed.

Origins of the Grand Tour

Privileged young graduates of sixteenth-century Europe pioneered a trend wherein they traveled across the continent in search of art and cultural experiences upon their graduation. This practice, which grew to be wildly popular, became known as the Grand Tour, a term introduced by Richard Lassels in his 1670 book Voyage to Italy . Specialty guidebooks, tour guides, and other aspects of the tourist industry were developed during this time to meet the needs of wealthy 20-something male and female travelers and their tutors as they explored the European continent.

These young, classically-educated Tourists were affluent enough to fund multiple years abroad for themselves and they took full advantage of this. They carried letters of reference and introduction with them as they departed from southern England in order to communicate with and learn from people they met in other countries. Some Tourists sought to continue their education and broaden their horizons while abroad, some were just after fun and leisurely travels, but most desired a combination of both.

Navigating Europe

A typical journey through Europe was long and winding with many stops along the way. London was commonly used as a starting point and the Tour was usually kicked off with a difficult trip across the English Channel.

Crossing the English Channel

The most common route across the English Channel, La Manche, was made from Dover to Calais, France—this is now the path of the Channel Tunnel. A trip from Dover across the Channel to Calais and finally into Paris customarily took three days. After all, crossing the wide channel was and is not easy. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Tourists risked seasickness, illness, and even shipwreck on this first leg of travel.

Compulsory Stops

Grand Tourists were primarily interested in visiting cities that were considered major centers of culture at the time, so Paris, Rome, and Venice were not to be missed. Florence and Naples were also popular destinations but were regarded as more optional than the aforementioned cities.

The average Grand Tourist traveled from city to city, usually spending weeks in smaller cities and up to several months in the three major ones. Paris, France was the most popular stop of the Grand Tour for its cultural, architectural, and political influence. It was also popular because most young British elite already spoke French, a prominent language in classical literature and other studies, and travel through and to this city was relatively easy. For many English citizens, Paris was the most impressive place visited.

Getting to Italy

From Paris, many Tourists proceeded across the Alps or took a boat on the Mediterranean Sea to get to Italy, another essential stopping point. For those who made their way across the Alps, Turin was the first Italian city they'd come to and some remained here while others simply passed through on their way to Rome or Venice.

Rome was initially the southernmost point of travel. However, when excavations of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) began, these two sites were added as major destinations on the Grand Tour.

Features of the Grand Tour

The vast majority of Tourists took part in similar activities during their exploration with art at the center of it all. Once a Tourist arrived at a destination, they would seek housing and settle in for anywhere from weeks to months, even years. Though certainly not an overly trying experience for most, the Grand Tour presented a unique set of challenges for travelers to overcome.

While the original purpose of the Grand Tour was educational, a great deal of time was spent on much more frivolous pursuits. Among these were drinking, gambling, and intimate encounters—some Tourists regarded their travels as an opportunity to indulge in promiscuity with little consequence. Journals and sketches that were supposed to be completed during the Tour were left blank more often than not.

Visiting French and Italian royalty as well as British diplomats was a common recreation during the Tour. The young men and women that participated wanted to return home with stories to tell and meeting famous or otherwise influential people made for great stories.

The study and collection of art became almost a nonoptional engagement for Grand Tourists. Many returned home with bounties of paintings, antiques, and handmade items from various countries. Those that could afford to purchase lavish souvenirs did so in the extreme.

Arriving in Paris, one of the first destinations for most, a Tourist would usually rent an apartment for several weeks or months. Day trips from Paris to the French countryside or to Versailles (the home of the French monarchy) were common for less wealthy travelers that couldn't pay for longer outings.

The homes of envoys were often utilized as hotels and food pantries. This annoyed envoys but there wasn't much they could do about such inconveniences caused by their citizens. Nice apartments tended to be accessible only in major cities, with harsh and dirty inns the only options in smaller ones.

Trials and Challenges

A Tourist would not carry much money on their person during their expeditions due to the risk of highway robberies. Instead, letters of credit from reputable London banks were presented at major cities of the Grand Tour in order to make purchases. In this way, tourists spent a great deal of money abroad.

Because these expenditures were made outside of England and therefore did not bolster England's economy, some English politicians were very much against the institution of the Grand Tour and did not approve of this rite of passage. This played minimally into the average person's decision to travel.

Returning to England

Upon returning to England, tourists were meant to be ready to assume the responsibilities of an aristocrat. The Grand Tour was ultimately worthwhile as it has been credited with spurring dramatic developments in British architecture and culture, but many viewed it as a waste of time during this period because many Tourists did not come home more mature than when they had left.

The French Revolution in 1789 halted the Grand Tour—in the early nineteenth century, railroads forever changed the face of tourism and foreign travel.

• Burk, Kathleen. "The Grand Tour of Europe". Gresham College, 6 Apr. 2005.
• Knowles, Rachel. “The Grand Tour.”   Regency History , 30 Apr. 2013.
• Sorabella, Jean. “The Grand Tour.”   Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History , The Met Museum, Oct. 2003.
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The lavish Grand Tours of history — and how they shaped the way we travel today

It was a rite of passage for young, upper-class Englishmen with virtually unlimited money to burn — a hedonistic "Grand Tour" far from home, unfolding over two or three or even four years.

Designed to teach them about art, history and culture, it was a kind of finishing school that would ready them for life in the powerful ruling elite.

Unsurprisingly, sex, gambling, drinking, and lavish parties also found their way into the mix.

For many historians, these travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries represent the first modern tourists.

They fuelled a passion for adventure and paved the way for the type of travel we know (and miss) today.

The ultimate destinations

The Grand Tour began in about 1660 and reached its zenith between 1748 and 1789.

It was typically undertaken by men aged between 18 and 25 — the sons of the aristocracy.

First, they braved the English Channel to reach Belgium or France. There, many purchased a carriage for the onward journey.

They were accompanied by a guide, known as a "bear-leader", who tutored them in art, music, literature and history.

If they were wealthy enough, their entourage included a troop of servants.

While there was no fixed route, most tours included the great cities of Europe — Paris, Geneva, Berlin — and a lengthy sojourn in Italy.

"A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see," English author Samuel Johnson remarked in 1776.

Rome was considered the ultimate destination, but Venice, Florence, Milan and Naples were also high on the list.

A drive for education and enlightenment was at the heart of the tour.

The Grand Tourists looked at art, admired monuments, visited historical sites, and studied classical architecture. They mingled with the elite social classes.

Behaving badly

They were students with practically unlimited budgets, and often very little supervision.

European history expert Eric Zuelow says this meant they were "apt to behave in a rather different way with rather different interests than the Grand Tour was designed to instil in them".

"So what they tended to do was to go and drink a lot, to gamble, to frequent [sex workers]," he tells ABC RN's Rear Vision .

"They tended not to learn much in the way of languages, not to learn much in the way of culture, but to have a lot of fun.

"And that created, I would argue, really one of the first instances of the notion of tourists as being lesser creatures and travellers being something much better.

"The first tourists, the Grand Tourists, did not behave all that well. And tourists have held that stigma ever since."

It wasn ' t all smooth sailing

In the days of the Grand Tour, travel wasn't for the faint-hearted.

There are many reports of the young men becoming ill from travel sickness, rough seas and foreign foods.

Disease was another threat — during his Grand Tour, writer John Evelyn nearly died of smallpox in Geneva.

Thieves were highly active, so many Grand Tourists didn't carry cash, instead taking the equivalent of travellers' cheques.

Roads were rough and full of potholes, and the carriages could only journey about 20 kilometres a day. Some parts of the trip were undertaken by foot.

"So they could be weeks just getting from one place to another," says historian Susan Barton.

Crossing the Alps was a particular challenge.

Some Grand Tourists hired a sedan chair to be carried, literally, over the mountain passes.

The "chairmen of Mont Cenis" became known throughout the Alps for their strength and dexterity.

The rise of 'self-illusory hedonistic consumption'

These early travellers carried guidebooks, which advised them of what to see, hear and do.

They were told to show their wealth at every turn, to garner respect.

As time went by, those making the Grand Tour also became shoppers. They wanted to buy things they could later show off.

"What was happening at this time was a development of what one scholar called 'self-illusory hedonistic consumption', which is a really fancy term for spending money because buying things will make you better," Professor Zuelow says.

"The Grand Tour, with its original educational roots, merged with that self-illusory, hedonistic idea, creating a consumable."

The young tourists would return to England with bulging luggage — marble statues from Rome, colourful glassware from Venice, pumice stone from Naples.

They brought back paintings depicting the Colosseum in Rome, the canals in Venice, the Parthenon in Athens.

They'd also commission portraits of themselves, and a mini industry sprung up around this.

It wasn't just to remind themselves of all they had seen and done. It was so other people would also know.

The souvenirs were displayed with great pride in the family's estates and manor houses.

"And later some of those things ended up in museums," Dr Barton says.

"So in a way they were creating the future 20th century tourism where people were visiting country houses as part of their leisure."

Not all Britons — and not all men

Although Britons far outnumbered all others, Professor Zuelow notes that they weren't the only Grand Tourists.

Peter the Great, the Russian Tsar, famously made the trip, as did German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and King Gustav III of Sweden.

And it also wasn't just men.

Professor Zuelow says English women such as author Mary Wollstonecraft and socialite Lady Mary Wortley Montagu spent extensive time in Europe, enjoying new freedoms and the chance for an education not available to them back home.

Travel for leisure and the Grand Tour's legacy

By 1815, the Grand Tour was disappearing.

Professor Zuelow says part of the reason for this is obvious: the French Revolution, followed closely by the Napoleonic Wars, swept across Europe starting in 1789 and extended until 1815.

"When the fighting stopped, many visitors returned — even if only to see the damages of war — but this was no longer the old Grand Tour," he writes in his book, A History of Modern Travel.

After 1815, travel to Europe slowly opened up for much wider social groups.

"So rather than just the aristocracy, we've got middle class people starting to travel, but it was still quite a lengthy process," Dr Barton says.

The legacy of the Grand Tour lives on to this day.

It still influences the destinations we visit, and has shaped the ideas of culture and sophistication that surround the act of travel.

It shaped the notion that there's something to be gained from venturing overseas, that there's a lot on offer if you can leave home to find it.

"Prior to the Grand Tour, there wasn't a lot of travel for leisure," Professor Zuelow says.

"Medieval pilgrims have been put forward as possible tourists but they were travelling for religious purposes. And although they had a lot of fun along the way, it really was about getting into Heaven."

Many of the Grand Tourists wrote about their adventures, fuelling a new level of wanderlust in society.

The trips were the stuff of fantasy, and others wanted to follow.

It was a first step in the direction of mass tourism, and the kind of travel we know today.

"I define it really as travelling for the purpose of travelling, travelling for fun, travelling for enjoyment, feeling that travel is going to make you healthier and happier and a better person," Professor Zuelow says.

To hear more about the history of travel, the impact of technology on tourism, and the future may hold, listen to ABC Radio National's Rear Vision podcast .

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The History Hit Miscellany of Facts, Figures and Fascinating Finds

What Was the Grand Tour of Europe?

Lucy Davidson

26 jan 2022, @lucejuiceluce.

In the 18th century, a ‘Grand Tour’ became a rite of passage for wealthy young men. Essentially an elaborate form of finishing school, the tradition saw aristocrats travel across Europe to take in Greek and Roman history, language and literature, art, architecture and antiquity, while a paid ‘cicerone’ acted as both a chaperone and teacher.

Grand Tours were particularly popular amongst the British from 1764-1796, owing to the swathes of travellers and painters who flocked to Europe, the large number of export licenses granted to the British from Rome and a general period of peace and prosperity in Europe.

However, this wasn’t forever: Grand Tours waned in popularity from the 1870s with the advent of accessible rail and steamship travel and the popularity of Thomas Cook’s affordable ‘Cook’s Tour’, which made mass tourism possible and traditional Grand Tours less fashionable.

Here’s the history of the Grand Tour of Europe.

Who went on the Grand Tour?

In his 1670 guidebook The Voyage of Italy , Catholic priest and travel writer Richard Lassells coined the term ‘Grand Tour’ to describe young lords travelling abroad to learn about art, culture and history. The primary demographic of Grand Tour travellers changed little over the years, though primarily upper-class men of sufficient means and rank embarked upon the journey when they had ‘come of age’ at around 21.

‘Goethe in the Roman Campagna’ by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Rome 1787.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Grand Tours also became fashionable for women who might be accompanied by a spinster aunt as a chaperone. Novels such as E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View reflected the role of the Grand Tour as an important part of a woman’s education and entrance into elite society.

Increasing wealth, stability and political importance led to a more broad church of characters undertaking the journey. Prolonged trips were also taken by artists, designers, collectors, art trade agents and large numbers of the educated public.

What was the route?

The Grand Tour could last anything from several months to many years, depending on an individual’s interests and finances, and tended to shift across generations. The average British tourist would start in Dover before crossing the English Channel to Ostend in Belgium or Le Havre and Calais in France. From there the traveller (and if wealthy enough, group of servants) would hire a French-speaking guide before renting or acquiring a coach that could be both sold on or disassembled. Alternatively, they would take the riverboat as far as the Alps or up the Seine to Paris .

Map of grand tour taken by William Thomas Beckford in 1780.

From Paris, travellers would normally cross the Alps – the particularly wealthy would be carried in a chair – with the aim of reaching festivals such as the Carnival in Venice or Holy Week in Rome. From there, Lucca, Florence, Siena and Rome or Naples were popular, as were Venice, Verona, Mantua, Bologna, Modena, Parma, Milan, Turin and Mont Cenis.

What did people do on the Grand Tour?

A Grand Tour was both an educational trip and an indulgent holiday. The primary attraction of the tour lay in its exposure of the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, such as the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, as well as the chance to enter fashionable and aristocratic European society.

Johann Zoffany: The Gore Family with George, third Earl Cowper, c. 1775.

In addition, many accounts wrote of the sexual freedom that came with being on the continent and away from society at home. Travel abroad also provided the only opportunity to view certain works of art and potentially the only chance to hear certain music.

The antiques market also thrived as lots of Britons, in particular, took priceless antiquities from abroad back with them, or commissioned copies to be made. One of the most famous of these collectors was the 2nd Earl of Petworth, who gathered or commissioned some 200 paintings and 70 statues and busts – mainly copies of Greek originals or Greco-Roman pieces – between 1750 and 1760.

It was also fashionable to have your portrait painted towards the end of the trip. Pompeo Batoni painted over 175 portraits of travellers in Rome during the 18th century.

Others would also undertake formal study in universities, or write detailed diaries or accounts of their experiences. One of the most famous of these accounts is that of US author and humourist Mark Twain, whose satirical account of his Grand Tour in Innocents Abroad became both his best selling work in his own lifetime and one of the best-selling travel books of the age.

Why did the popularity of the Grand Tour decline?

A Thomas Cook flyer from 1922 advertising cruises down the Nile. This mode of tourism has been immortalised in works such as Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.

The popularity of the Grand Tour declined for a number of reasons. The Napoleonic Wars from 1803-1815 marked the end of the heyday of the Grand Tour, since the conflict made travel difficult at best and dangerous at worst.

The Grand Tour finally came to an end with the advent of accessible rail and steamship travel as a result of Thomas Cook’s ‘Cook’s Tour’, a byword of early mass tourism, which started in the 1870s. Cook first made mass tourism popular in Italy, with his train tickets allowing travel over a number of days and destinations. He also introduced travel-specific currencies and coupons which could be exchanged at hotels, banks and ticket agencies which made travelling easier and also stabilised the new Italian currency, the lira.

As a result of the sudden potential for mass tourism, the Grand Tour’s heyday as a rare experience reserved for the wealthy came to a close.

Can you go on a Grand Tour today?

Echoes of the Grand Tour exist today in a variety of forms. For a budget, multi-destination travel experience, interrailing is your best bet; much like Thomas Cook’s early train tickets, travel is permitted along many routes and tickets are valid for a certain number of days or stops.

For a more upmarket experience, cruising is a popular choice, transporting tourists to a number of different destinations where you can disembark to enjoy the local culture and cuisine.

Though the days of wealthy nobles enjoying exclusive travel around continental Europe and dancing with European royalty might be over, the cultural and artistic imprint of a bygone Grand Tour era is very much alive.

To plan your own Grand Tour of Europe, take a look at History Hit’s guides to the most unmissable heritage sites in Paris , Austria and, of course, Italy .

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Gerrit Verhoeven is assistant professor in cultural heritage and history at the University of Antwerp. He is also archivist and research fellow at the Royal Museums of Art and History (Brussels).

• Published: 18 August 2022
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Our present-day understanding of the classic Grand Tour hovers between identification and estrangement. On the one hand, there is a tendency among scholars to tone down the differences between early modern travel and modern tourism. Focusing on apparent similarities—the fascination for Michelangelo’s Last Judgment , the burgeoning tourism industry, the craving for souvenirs, and so on—the Grand Tour traveler becomes a tourist avant la lettre . On the other hand, there is also a strand to maximize the differences by emphasizing the danger and discomfort involved. Focusing on highwaymen and pirates, spectacular accidents, religious intolerance, epidemic diseases, and other calamities, a black-and-white opposition is created between our bland vacationing and its more spectacular premodern variant. To move beyond these classic, binary storylines on the Grand Tour, a more evolutionary lens will be explored here. How did early modern travel evolve in terms of space and time, the social profile of the travelers, and their motivations?

Even though the early modern Grand Tour and modern tourism are etymologically associated terms, the precise relationship between them remains under discussion. Opinions oscillate between identification and alienation. Especially in the last decades of the twenty-first century, academics felt the urge to portray the Grand Tour as an early, yet unquestionably modern, forerunner of tourism. They usually stressed ready-made similarities: the fact that Rome, Florence, and other destinations are still as popular as they were centuries ago, the lasting hype surrounding Michelangelo’s Last Judgment , Bernini’s Apollo & Daphne , and (less convincingly) Vivaldi’s Four Seasons ; the unchanging, and deeply human, passion for good wine, exquisite food, or unrestrained sex abroad; the ageless hunt for tawdry souvenirs and other mementos; the bawdy graffiti on monuments; and other resemblances. On account of these apparent parallels, early modern travel is increasingly labeled as tourism, even by academic experts. 1 On the other hand, a strong feeling of estrangement reigns supreme: it is a trope that frequently crops up in older books on the Grand Tour, whereby early modern travel behavior is often depicted as an obscure predecessor—or even antipode—of modern tourism. Significant differences include the large risks and huge discomfort involved in traveling—including merciless highwaymen, spectacular accidents, shabby inns, inedible food, and other calamities—the stern, humanistic rationale of the Grand Tour, the exclusive pedigree of the travelers with a train of servants, and other stereotypes. 2

Both opinions have their advocates and are viable as an economic strategy for selling more books because a master narrative, premised on easy binaries, strongly appeals to readers’ imaginations. Yet such accounts might also cloud our understanding of the actual Grand Tour. The historical reality was much more complex, multilayered, and versatile than cardboard cut-outs suggest. Discussions are further complicated by the fact that a classic definition of what the Grand Tour actually entailed remains missing. Vexed by the loose interpretation of some of his colleagues, Bruce Redford dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s in his book on Venice and the Grand Tour :

the Grand Tour is not the Grand Tour unless it includes the following: a young British male patrician (that is, a member of the aristocracy of the gentry); second, a tutor who accompanies his charge throughout the journey; third, a fixed itinerary that makes Rome its principal destination; fourth, a lengthy period of absence, averaging two or three years. 3

A recent upsurge in research renders Redford’s strict interpretation obsolete, as a virtually endless series of books now shows that the Grand Tour was anything but an exclusively British phenomenon. French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, and other European travelers were also drawn to Rome, although their own interpretations could differ significantly from the British prototype. 4 Moreover, research shows that the praxis of the Grand Tour was much more versatile than Redford’s definition suggests. From its dawn in the late sixteenth century until its crepuscule in the early nineteenth century, the classic Grand Tour saw radical changes in its spatial layout and timing, as well as in the social profile of travelers and their motivations. 5

Space was essential to the understanding of a classic Grand Tour; the trip was structured around a more-or-less fixed, circular itinerary, which was primarily geared toward Italy and France. Travelers only skirted the fringes of the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, or England (boiled down to London), while the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe were largely ignored. Conformism also reigned supreme on a lower level: in Italy a set of large cities, including Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Bologna, and a string of smaller towns formed the backbone of the classic Grand Tour, 6 while in France, attention was firmly focused on Paris and on the “Small Tour” (literally Kleene Tour in Dutch), a long circular journey along the Loire to Aquitaine, the Languedoc, and Provence, and back to Paris via the river Rhône. 7 On their return journey, travelers also frequently crossed the border to Geneva, the bulwark of Calvinism, sailed down the river Rhine, or paid a quick visit to the Netherlands. A classic Grand Tour was in principle an urban experience: travelers did not focus on the landscape between the cities except for some scattered notes on the fertile meadows and fields in the Po valley, along the Loire, or in the Dutch polders . 8 Conformism was fueled by a whole spectrum of factors, ranging from the lofty, yet coercive, instructions of humanist sages on what to see and do—the so-called Artes Apodemic or how-to books about the art of traveling—to the sprawl of early guidebooks, to the basic transport infrastructure, whereby travelers followed the well-trodden trail of the postal services. 9

These itineraries were not written in stone. They were not only affected by eventful blips—wars, pestilence, revolution, religious policies—but also by more structural changes. From the late seventeenth century onwards, the spatial blueprint of the classic Grand Tour was redrawn. First of all, there was a process of contraction, as the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century longlist of must-do destinations was gradually boiled down to its essence. Eighteenth-century travelers still focused on Florence, Venice, Rome, and other important Italian cities, while smaller towns were increasingly traversed in a tearing rush or simply cut from the program. The same held true for France. Grand Tour travelers increasingly shunned the long detour through the provinces and focused almost entirely on the capital. 10 Paris’s rise hints at a second important evolution. During the early eighteenth century, the compass of Grand Tour travelers shifted northward. Rome still remained the ultimate goal, but in its wake, the new metropolises of the North—Paris, London, Amsterdam, and even Berlin—were on the ascent. Whereas in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, they had served as a hearty appetizer—or dessert—for the cultural bliss of Italy, they were destinations in their own right by the late eighteenth century. 11 Last but not least, the Grand Tour lost its urban focus on the eve of the French Revolution. Travelers increasingly included a detour to the Swiss Alps in their return trip, while a cours pittoresque along the Rhine—savoring the landscape with towering rock-faces, wooded bluffs, whirling rapids, lush vineyards, and other romantic elements—became the classic terminus of the Grand Tour in the early nineteenth century. 12

Even though experts have begun to trace these topographical changes in detail, little was known about underlying causes. It is assumed that the program of the Grand Tour, and its grid of destinations and itineraries, was reshuffled by a complex set of internal factors (the changing profile of the travelers and their motivations, as well as the timing of the Grand Tour) and external causes (cultural patronage, economic growth, and transport infrastructure). For the latter, it is likely that the rule of Louis XIV, who tried to turn Paris into the New Rome through an ambitious program of urban renewal, upset the balance, which had, traditionally, tilted toward Italy. Monumental architecture, statues, squares, and parks were built; new museums, libraries, and other collections were founded; the opera, theater, ballet, science, and myriad other cultural initiatives were fostered. Louis’s patronage was followed with Argus’s eyes all over Europe and blindly copied, smartly adapted, or even completely outstripped by other rulers, whereby the cityscapes of London, Dresden, Vienna, Turin, and other European cities were transformed. 13 At the same time, the rise of these northern metropolises was powered by their economic growth, as the epicenter began to shift from Mediterranean to Atlantic shores. Owing to their economic boom, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and other northern cities became much more attractive in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, as culture (architecture, painting, music, sculpture) thrived in the slipstream of the economic expansion. 14

Travelers increasingly experienced Florence, Rome, Venice, and other Italian cities as hollow shells, ancient, museum-like theme-parks of Roman antiquity and Renaissance culture that stood in stark contrast to the vibrancy and modern feel of London, Paris, and other northern metropolises. 15 The balance was tipped by a silent transport (r)evolution. Transport and travel had become much easier, less risky, and more comfortable by the early seventeenth century owing to the spread of postal networks and coach services, but gained momentum as a result of late seventeenth-century innovations when a network of paved roads radiated from London, Paris, Brussels, and other capitals in Northwest Europe. At the same time, tow-boat and barge services facilitated easier access to the Dutch Republic and operated along the Rhine. An increasing number of ferries and packet-boats crossed the Channel. 16

Transport innovations, cultural patronage, and economic growth not only distorted the warp and weft of the early modern travel map, but also frayed its fabric, as travelers were now able to bead a set of absolute must-see destinations together, while the less attractive towns in between could simply be skipped. During the nineteenth century, the process was intensified by the advent of steam power (see Pearson , this volume). It ultimately sounded the knell of the classic Grand Tour, as steamboats, trains, and other transport innovations had made the classic, circular journey through Europe obsolete. Linear trips—boarding a train in Victoria Station, le Gare du Midi , or in The Hague, Hollands Spoor , and disembarking in Florence, Milan, or Rome—were the future.

Time was also an essential component of the Grand Tour, as the classic journey to France, Italy, and Switzerland could easily take two or three years in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. Owing to its exceptional length, the journey was often cast as a once-in-a-lifetime experience or, to use Arnold van Gennep’s famous anthropological concept, a rite de passage (rite of passage) between youth and adulthood. All the ingredients were there: a long separation from home, complex rituals upon leave and return, and a physical/psychological test to prove one’s maturity. 17 New research has shown that travelers also came home with saddlebags filled with spurs, swords, stately garb, portraits, books, and other highly symbolic objects that marked the transition from adolescence to adulthood. 18 The length of the journey could take a serious emotional toll, as travelers were frequently overcome by homesickness and melancholia on their long peregrinations in Italy; yet, despite the recent, late twentieth-century emotional turn in the field of history, research that focuses on this “dark side” of the Grand Tour remains scarce. Drawing on British letters and travel diaries, Sarah Goldsmith raised a tip of the veil, as the correspondence home was often brimming with strong, yet tacit, feelings of homesickness, although the ideal of polite masculinity required some moderation. Feelings of melancholia were actively counteracted by regular correspondence with the home front and the exchange of news, gossip, and presents. 19

During the eighteenth century, travel time was drastically reduced, because stone-slab paved roads, regular coach services, and comfy barges radically increased the speed of travel. As a result, the time span needed for a full-blown Grand Tour decreased from some years to some months in the late eighteenth century. 20 Not only did the reduction have far-reaching consequences for the social profile of the Grand Tour traveler but it also changed the symbolic value of the journey as a rite de passage . At the close of the eighteenth century, the number of travelers who were able to launch upon several trips to Italy—and by then also to Sicily, Greece, the Middle East, and other regions—was clearly in the ascendancy. It sapped the idea of travel as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Nineteenth century tourism increasingly became a recurrent praxis.

The social composition of the classical Grand Tour changed dramatically. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the journey to Italy was, indeed, as Redford argues, largely reserved for male scions of extremely wealthy noble families, even if the precise composition was highly dependent on regional differences. British, French, and German Grand Tour travelers were often nobles or gentry, 21 while the Dutch variant was much more bourgeois. Yet, even in this case, travelers came predominantly from the upper-crust of Amsterdam, Leiden, and Hague mercantile elites. 22 Most Grand Tour travelers were relatively young—somewhere between eighteen and thirty—which was logical considering the exceptional length of the classic Grand Tour made it (almost) incompatible with a career, a marriage, and other burdens of adult life. Therefore, it was often cast as a rite of passage into adulthood. 23 In addition to lots of time, loads of money were needed to complete the journey in style, which made a Grand Tour the privilege of the rich and the famous, who often traveled with a retinue. 24

In the late 2010s, new research has added some color and depth to this rather one-dimensional, black-and-white portrait. Trailblazing is, for instance, the work of Richard Ansell, who explored the decision-making behind the scenes in Ireland. Families did not always send their firstborn on a Grand Tour, but often favored their second or third son to enhance their future career prospects. Decisions about whom to send on a full-fledged Grand Tour, on a more modest trip to the continent, or even more simply, to a French academy in London were not only based on careful calculations of the family’s financial resources, but also tailored to specific educational needs, career opportunities, and personal traits. 25   T wenty-first-century research does not only shed light on the main character of the Grand Tour, the traveler, but has also uncovered valuable details about the lives of background characters. Little was known about the scores of governors (nicknamed bearleaders ) and servants, who followed their master on the Grand Tour. In recent years, however, their travel experiences have been put under the microscope. 26

This fact hints at a broader tendency in the historiography of the Grand Tour that has been profoundly influenced by gender history. Female historians, at first, went through travel journals, diaries, and letters with a fine-tooth comb and found a wealth of manuscripts written by women that had been largely ignored or shoved aside by their male colleagues. Even more numerous were the travel journals that had been written by men, but where women were part of the travel party. Rosemary Sweet and others have tried to restore the balance in recent years. Especially in the eighteenth century, female travelers were on the rise, as it was no longer frowned upon that women joined their husband, father, or brother on their journey to Rome or, even more than that, traveled alone. 27 Female participation was fueled by the changing rationale behind the classic Grand Tour, but was also powered by external factors. Transport might have tipped the balance, as the expanding network of coach and barge services seriously lowered the risk and discomfort of early modern travel behavior. 28 Depending on the region, the impact of these changes varied significantly. In the Netherlands, wives and daughters were increasingly taken along on small domestic trips or beyond, but a full-fledged Grand Tour remained out of the question until the late eighteenth century. This point hints at some deeply ingrained cultural differences concerning the freedom of movement available to women. 29 Feminization eventually changed the Grand Tour itself, as Rosemary Sweet effectively argues. Women experimented with a different kind of gaze, as the eye of the connoisseur, evaluating paintings, sculpture, and architecture remained the realm of masculine politeness. Instead, manuscripts written by women were brimming with observations on everyday life in Italian cities, as they were forced to focus on more mundane topics. Eventually, this trope also became popular among men. 30

Gender also appears in another form. Masculinity was not a focus of analysis until, in the early 2010’s, experts began to explore the topic. Sarah Goldsmith analysed how the classic Grand Tour helped to create a strong, male identity. During the late eighteenth century, continental travel became a focus of derision and criticism, as it was whispered that well-bred English youths were turned into emasculated and effeminate fobs by their exposure to French and Italian manners. Goldsmith argues that tales of bravery and manliness, whereby travelers unflinchingly faced all sorts of dangers—steep mountain passes, yawning abysses, blistering cold, and other calamities—were used as a discursive strategy to gainsay this argument about degeneration. Unwanted feelings of fear and anxiety were deftly projected onto servants, who were frequently cast as milksops. 31 Of course, this theme of male bravery abroad was not only older than the eighteenth century, but it also lingered into the nineteenth century. 32 It can, however, explain why so many travelers turned their compass toward the Alps in the late eighteenth century, while the mountains had been largely ignored for ages. 33 At the same time, the classic Grand Tour also turned into a family experience, as men increasingly took their wives and children along. Unfortunately, there is little or no research on how these small cosmopolitans experienced their journey to Rome. 34

Owing to the fresh focus on gender, experts soon discovered that, beyond the well-off, male aristocrat sitting at the center of our picture of the Grand Tour, there were many more figures emerging from the background. This is especially true for the late eighteenth century when the social profile of Grand Tour travelers became much more diverse. Members of the higher middle ranks joined in; successful merchants, lawyers, physicians, notaries, and civil servants also sent their offspring on the Grand Tour. 35 Age became less restrictive because youngsters in their twenties increasingly rubbed shoulders with older travelers in their thirties or forties, who had to combine their travels with their busy professional and private lives. The influx of travelers, who were relatively pressed for time or had a small purse, had an immediate effect on the length of the classic Grand Tour, as more extended and therefore more expensive travel was beyond their reach. 36 It fueled the shrinking and fraying, and it eroded the classic function of the Grand Tour as a rite de passage between adolescence and adulthood because travels to Italy were increasingly undertaken during all stages of life and more and more recurrently. Nevertheless, even the most optimistic estimates make clear that eighteenth century travel behavior was still poles apart from modern mass tourism. Even in the late eighteenth century, the expansion of the travel public in terms of gender, class, or age was still very much in its infancy. 37

Motivations

According to sixteenth-century sages, a classic Grand Tour should serve the utilitas . Long journeys to Italy were only deemed useful if they rendered a wealth of theoretical and practical knowledge that could be tapped in one’s further career. Education en route could be sorted into a formal and informal component. On their way to Rome, travelers frequently took some formal training at the famous academies of the Loire, in Geneva, or in Italy where noble pupils were, for several months, initiated into the aristocratic arts of fencing, horsemanship, dancing, and conversation. They could also make a bid for a doctoral title in law, medicine, or theology from some famous French or Italian university, an option particularly fashionable among Dutch and German travelers. 38 Even more important was the less formal component of the training. Northern travelers visited a long list of royal and princely courts to acquire a fair smattering of French and Italian, to master the complex rules of etiquette and protocol, to befriend, or at least to be introduced to, the aristocratic cream of the crop, and to acquire the famous, yet mysterious, je-ne-sais-quoi or the highly cultivated manners of a well-bred man. For British, Dutch, and German travelers the journey to the South provided a unique opportunity to shake off their alleged pudor rusticus and to appropriate the refined behavioral code of French or Italian courtiers. 39

Utilitas drew travelers to the renaissance court in France, but even more to the courts of the Gonzagas, d’Estes, or de’Medicis, the Viceroy of Naples, and, last but not least, the Pope in Italy. A treatise on the art of traveling—the Ars Apodemici— also advised to visit local parliaments and courts, scientists and scholars, collections of art, curiosities, libraries, and other institutions to absorb as much theoretical knowledge and practical know-how as possible. 40 Finally, humanist sages advised that travelers took detailed notes on the last remains of Roman Antiquity and that they visit temples, (amphi)theaters, aqueducts, public baths, and other archaeological sites, as well as collections of antiquities, to familiarize themselves with the corporeal remains of the classical period. 41 Not that these sixteenth- and early seventeenth century travelers did not know any Voluptas— some alarming letters of unlucky bearleaders are brimming with references to the carousing, gambling, whoring, and other mischief of their wards on Grand Tour—but the balance should, at least in theory, tilt toward education and learning. 42

Detailed research, scratching more than the surface, remained rather thin until the turn of the twentieth century. Trailblazing is, for example, the research of John Gallagher, who has scrutinized strategies for language learning on the Grand Tour in detail. Formal education in academies and by private tutors was crucial, but equally important were the more informal ways of learning: the faltering conversations with innkeepers and coachmen, lots of hewing and hawing during small talk with other travelers, and the painstaking writing exercises in journals, diaries, and letters home. 43 Language learning remained an important aspect of the Grand Tour, but the other educational goals were fading. From the late seventeenth century onwards, the large numbers of Dutch, German, and even English students at the French, Swiss, and Italian academies and universities began to dwindle, as the stern, humanist ideals gradually gave way to a more leisurely interpretation of the Grand Tour, even though the educational rim was never completely rubbed away. 44

Art became the new focus of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, whereby travelers, more than their forebears had done, developed the eye of the connoisseur or the aficionado, who was able to identify and evaluate masterpieces in terms of composition, coloring, perspective, chiaroscuro , and other features. Music, architecture, sculpture, theater, and other Arts with a capital A were also increasingly assessed and appraised. 45 These art-buffs on the move were not only attracted by the classic, well-stuffed collections in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Bologna, but were also increasingly drawn to the relatively new collections in the North that mushroomed in size during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries under royal patronage. London, Paris, and Dresden were in the vanguard. It warped the traditional itineraries of the Grand Tour, which were, especially for Dutch, Flemish, or German travelers, increasingly focused on the metropolises of the North. 46

Even though the fine arts had also appealed to late sixteenth- and early seventeenth century travelers, they became a serious topic in the eighteenth century owing to the new ideal of politeness. It turned the classic Grand Tour into an ideal training ground to acquire a taste for paintings, sculpture, music, and architecture that served as a badge for cultivation and good breeding. 47 At the same time, sociability grew in importance, as politeness was almost synonymous with the ability to converse smoothly with men and women of different feathers. Travelers therefore spoke, babbled, or yakked with an endless variety of nobles, officials, clergymen, ambassadors, and princes to hone their skills. Until recently, experts were barely interested in this social dimension of the Grand Tour, yet the importance of these homo- and heterosocial encounters has been put under the microscope in some trailblazing British research. 48 Taste was also expressed by purchasing distinctive garb, accessories, books, souvenirs, and other stuff on the Grand Tour. Drawing on account-books, receipts, and other sources, experts have begun to explore the material trail of the classic Grand Tour. Especially in Germany, a whole new line of research developed around the process of cultural transfers, acculturation, and hybridization, as German princes, earls, and barons often returned with trunks filled with snuffboxes, pocket watches, telescopes, and other fashionable gadgets. Their folders were crammed with sketches for new palaces, fountains, or gardens. They systematically hoarded all things ( was zu Hause Vortheil bringen und nachgeahmet werden könne ) that could be copied and improved at home. London became their main focus in the late eighteenth century. 49 Italian travelers did the same. They embarked on trips to London, Amsterdam, and Paris that could best be labeled as industrial espionage. 50

Leisure was also on the rise in the eighteenth century. Obviously, it had always been part and parcel of the classic Grand Tour, yet, with the eclipse of the bleak humanist ideal of the Utilitas , it became much more explicit. Travelers who filled their days in Rome, London, or Paris with lazy walks, (window-)shopping, and endless visits to coffeehouses, billiard rooms, the puppet-theater, and other pursuits were no longer frowned upon—a tendency which was fueled by the influx of more senior travelers, who saw their classic Grand Tour as an extension of their passe temps and hobbies at home. 51 Once again, this evolution had a serious impact on the classic itineraries of the Grand Tour, as virtually every city with an attractive leisure infrastructure could turn into a popular destination. London, Paris, and Amsterdam capitalized on this evolution, as their dense leisure facilities—London’s Vauxhall and Ranelagh pleasure gardens, water theaters, boxing pits, the lush boutiques and fashionable coffeehouses on the Strand (one of the English capital’s main thoroughfares), to name just a few examples—had an irresistible pull on travelers. 52

New Strands

From its conception in the late sixteenth to its final breath in the early nineteenth century, the classical Grand Tour evolved radically in terms of length, destinations, and social profile of travelers. Its DNA changed from a very unlikely predecessor of modern tourism to something that was, at least somewhat, similar to it. Yet, there was more. From the late seventeenth century onwards, new strands developed in the genome of early modern travel behavior that were strikingly different from the classic Grand Tour. Domestic travel quickly gained momentum. British travelers explored the pristine areas of their own backyard: the picturesque Wye Valley, the industrial sprawl of the Black Country, the romantic Lake District, and the remote Scottish Highlands. They also popped up at the beaches and spas. 53 Dutch trippers roved the eastern, hilly fringe of their country or crossed the border to the Austrian Netherlands, which was cast as the antithesis—popish, backward, and wild—of modernity. 54 German travelers also increasingly remained within the pales of the Holy Roman Empire. 55 Linear—or circular—trips beyond the border were a second strand that gained momentum in the eighteenth century. Dutch burghers set out on excursions to London or Paris, but also to Brussels, Aachen, or Düsseldorf, or they embarked on a brief cours pittoresque along the Rhine. Paris was also a fashionable destination for the British, although a small tour through the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic also attracted curious visitors. 56 Owing to their modest range and length, these trips could hardly be labeled as a Grand Tour and contemporaries came up with a whole range of new terms. Dutch travelers increasingly branded these excursions as pleijsierreijsje [pleasure trips], somertogjes [summer trips], speelreijsjes [leisure trips], and even vacance [vacation]: a clear sign that their rationale was miles away from the primeval ideal of the Utilitas . 57

Leisure, openly practiced and unadulterated by more ambitious agendas, became the new leitmotif of these new strands of early modern travel behavior. Such practices also differed on other grounds from their famous ancestor. For one thing, they appealed to a much wider public, because the mix between men and women, young and old, upper and middle class was much more balanced than on the classic Grand Tour, although the actual numbers of travelers was still tiny. 58 Moreover, these excursions were less time consuming. Two or three months, several weeks, or a few days were sufficient to travel one’s own country or to roam across the border. As a result, travel became more seasonal. Most Dutch speelreijsjes were planned in late spring, in high summer, or in the early fall, when the weather was warm and dry. Travel behavior also became more recurrent, as the classic Grand Tour in one’s youth was often followed by a series of smaller excursions in one’s prime. 59 In Amsterdam, the members of the travel society Semper Idem organized a series of successive summer trips: to Antwerp (1772), to Zealand (1773), to Guelders and eastern rim of the Dutch Republic (1774), to Cleves (1775), to North Holland and the Zuyder Zee islands (1776), to the southern outskirts of the Dutch Republic (1777), and to the Austrian Netherlands (1778). 60 It seems that travel was caught in the slipstream of the burgeoning consumer (r)evolution, whereby ordinary chattels and goods were supplemented by a range of new luxuries : items that were less expensive and durable, but more adaptable to the fads and fancies of the time.

Changing DNA

Looking for salient differences or striking similarities between the classic Grand Tour and tourism may render a highly compelling narrative, but it always feels like easy cherry picking. In reality, the Grand Tour was a highly complex, multilayered, and dynamic experience that should not be reduced to a cardboard cut-out of a primitive, yet unmistakably modern, predecessor of our travel behavior, nor to some primeval antipode. From its birth in the sixteenth century until its death throes in the nineteenth century, the classic Grand Tour was transformed by a set of socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors, including transport innovations, royal patronage, macroeconomic shifts, changing educational standards, new gender roles, fresh ideas about family life, and a hodgepodge of other elements. Not only did these changes radically alter the DNA of the classic Grand Tour, but they also provided an ideal seedbed for other strands of travel to develop. It is more than likely that our modern tourism did not pop up unexpectedly in the nineteenth century: essential elements were already included in the seething prebiotic soup of early modern travel behavior.

Further Reading

Babel, Rainer , and Werner Paravicini . “ Vorwort und Dank. ” Grand Tour: Adeliges Reisen und Europaïsche Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert 60, ( 2005 ): 7–10.

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Black, Jeremy.   Italy and the Grand Tour . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003 .

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Chaney Edward . “ The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance. ” Journal of the History of Collections 11, no. 1 ( 1998 ): 121.

Colletta, Lisa , ed. The Legacy of the Grand Tour. New Essays on Travel, Literature and Culture . London: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015 .

Dolan, Brian.   Ladies on the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe . New York: Harper, 2001 .

Gallagher, John.   Learning Languages in Early Modern England . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019 .

Gelléri, Gábor.   Lessons of Travel in Eighteenth-Century France: From Grand Tour to School Trips . Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2020 .

Goldsmith, Sarah.   Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour. London: University of London Press, 2020 .

Goldsmith, Sarah , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven , eds. Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour . London: Routledge, 2017 .

Kinsley, Zoë ., Women Writing the Home Tour , 1682–1812 . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008 .

Sweet, Rosemary.   Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, 1690–1820 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 .

Towner, John , “ The Grand Tour: A Key Phase in the History of Tourism. ” Annals of Tourism Research 12 ( 1985 ): 297–333.

Verhoeven, Gerrit.   Europe within Reach: Netherlandish Travelers on the Grand Tour and Beyond (1585–1750) . Leiden: Brill, 2015

Warneke, Sara   Images of the Educational Traveller in Early Modern England . Leiden: Brill, 1995 .

1 Especially in recent books, the Grand Tour is often without further discussion equated with tourism: Jeremy Black , Italy and the Grand Tour (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 1–5 ; Jeremy Black , “The Grand Tour,” in Il tempo libero economia e società , ed. S. Cavaciocchi (Prato 1994), 863–873 ;

2 Usually, there is a touch of nostalgia in these descriptions: Antoni Maczak , Travel in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995) ; Paul Kirby , The Grand Tour in Italy (1700–1800) (New York: Vanni, 1952), XII–XV, 30–35 : Anthony Burgess , “The Grand Tour,” in The Age of the Grand Tour , eds. Anthony Burgess and Francis Haskell (London: Elek, 1967), 13–32 ; Joan Parkes , Travel in England in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).

3   Bruce Redford , Venice and the Grand Tour (New Haven: Yale university press, 1996) 15.

4 For Germany, Mathis Leibetseder , Die Kavalierstour: Adlige Erziehungsreisen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Köln: Böhlau, 2004) ; Antje Stannek , Telemachs Brüder: Die höfische Bildungsreise des 17. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2001). For France, Normand Doiron , L’Art de voyager: Le déplacement à l’époque Classique (Paris: Presses universitaires Laval, 1995). For the Netherlands, Gerrit Verhoeven , Europe within Reach: Netherlandish Travelers on the Grand Tour and Beyond (1585–1750) (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

5 For a long time, there was little or no interest in these long-term evolutions, but see, Lisa Colletta , “Introduction: The Grand Tour and Its Legacy,” in The Legacy of the Grand Tour. New Essays on Travel, Literature and Culture , ed. Lisa. Colletta (London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015), IX–XX ; James Buzard , “The Grand Tour and After (1660–1840),” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing , eds. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 37–52.

6 Detailed research on the itineraries and destinations is scarce. Some impressionistic clues in Black, Italy and the Grand Tour , 2–3, 8–10; Black, “The Grand Tour,” 863; John Stoye , “The Grand Tour in the Seventeenth-Century,” Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies 1 (1991) 62–73. Trailblazing in this regard was the work the British geographer Towner, who tried to quantify the changes in the spatial grid: John Towner , “The Grand Tour: A Key Phase in the History of Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 12 (1985) 297–333.

Stoye, “The Grand Tour,” 62–73; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 313. For Germany, Stannek, Telemachs Brüder , 76–77.

8   Black, Italy and the Grand Tour , 2–3; Rosemary Sweet , Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, 1690–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1–5 ; Black, “The Grand Tour,” 871.

9 For more on these genres, see Justin Stagl , “Un système de littérature normatrice des voyages au XVIe siècle,” in Les Guides imprimés du XVIe au XXe siècles: Villes, paysages, voyages , ed. Gilles Chabaud (Paris: Belin, 1998), 34–44 ; Gábor Gelléri , Lessons of Travel in Eighteenth-Century France: From Grand Tour to School Trips (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2020), 17–54

10 Even though there is a range of books and articles which hint at these geographical shifts, they have never been examined in detail. See, for example, Black, “The Grand Tour” , 864; Burgess, “The Grand Tour,” 14–15. A more statistical approach can be found in: Michael Heafford , “Between Grand Tour and Tourism: British Travelers to Switzerland in a Period of Transition, 1814–1860.” Journal of Transport History 27 (2006), 25–47 ; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 317–320.

11 More about these changes, Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven , “Introduction,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour , eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 1–24 ; Gerrit Verhoeven , “In Search of the New Rome? Creative Cities and Early Modern Travel Behaviour,” in Cities and Creativity from the Renaissance to the Present , eds. Bert De Munck , Andrew Miles , and Ilja Van Damme (New York: Routledge, 2018), 65–84.

12   Lut Missine , “Entzückend schöne Gegend: Dutch Travel Writing Langs den Rijn around the Midst of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Dutch Literature 8 (2017): 36–46 ; Arianne Baggerman and Rudolf Dekker , “Changing Places, Shifting Narratives: Nineteenth-Century Dutch Travelers in Germany,” in Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930. Modernity, Regionality, Mobility , eds. Alison Martin , Lut Missinne , and Beatrix Van Dam (New York: Routledge, 2017), 159–181 ; Heafford, “Between Grand Tour and Tourism,” 40; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 314; Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour , 3.

  Verhoeven, “In Search of the New Rome?” 65–84.

14 During the eighteenth century, the Netherlands became a fashionable destination for British, French, and German travelers. See, for example: Madeleine Van Strien-Chardonneau , “Amsterdam as Global Market and Meeting Place of Nations: Perspectives of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Travelers in Holland,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour , eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 147–160 ; Kees Van Strien , Touring the Low Countries: Accounts of British Travelers, 1660–1720 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998) ; Anja Chales de Beaulieu , Deutsche Reisende in den Niederlanden: Das Bild eines Nachbarn zwischen 1648 und 1759 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000)

  Sweet, Verhoeven, and Goldsmith, “Introduction,” 12.

16 More on these transport innovations in: Hamish Scott , “Travel and Communications,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern History: 1350–1750. Volume I: People and Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 166–192 ; Gerrit Verhoeven , “Wading through the Mire Mobility on the Grand Tour, 1585–1750,” Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg , Mobility and the Renaissance [in press].

  Stannek, Telemachs Brüder , 19–23.

18   Antje Stannek , “Vestis Virum Facit: Fashion, Identity, and Ethnography on the Seventeenth-Century Grand Tour,” Journal of Early Modern History 7 (2003): 332–342.

19   Sarah Goldsmith , “Nostalgia, Homesickness and Emotional Formation on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour,” Cultural and Social History 15 (2018): 333–360. For more about homesickness and the Grand Tour, see Sweet, Citiesand the Grand Tour , 19–20; Gerrit Verhoeven , “Malleable Masculinity: Fashioning Male Identity in the Teding van Berkhout’s Travel Letters (1739–41),” Journal of Family History 45 (2020): 3–19.

According to Towner, travel time was seriously cut back in the eighteenth century, yet to explain this evolution he rather points at changes in motives than to transport innovations. Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 315–316. For more about the changes in hardware, see Scott, “Travel and Communications,” 166–192.

For more on their social profile, see Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 304–307.

22   Willem Frijhoff , “Éducation, savoir, competence: Les transformations du Grand Tour dans les Provinces-Unies à l’époque moderne,” in Grand Tour: Adeliges Reisen und Europaïsche Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert , eds. Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), 609–635.

  Black, Italy and the Grand Tour , 140; Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveller , 79; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 311.

24   Anthony Maczak , “An Expensive Leisure: Travelling in Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Il tempo libero, economia e società , ed. Simoneta Cavaciocchi (Prato: Ist. Storia Economica Datini, 1994), 767 ; Black, “The Grand Tour,” 863; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 307.

25   Richard Ansell , “Foubert’s Academy: British and Irish Elite Formation in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Paris and London,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour , eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 46–64 ; Richard Ansell , “Educational Travel in Protestant Families from Post-Restoration Ireland,” Historical Journal 58 (2015) 931–958.

In the past, experts rarely moved beyond the stereotype of incredibly large retinues: Stoye, “The Grand Tour,” 67–68; Parkes, Travel in England , 242. More details about the servants on Grand Tour are found in Verhoeven, Europe within Reach , 82–104.

27   Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour , 7–9; Rosemary Sweet , “British Perception of Florence in the Long Eighteenth-Century,” The Historical Journal 50 (2007) 837–895 ; Brendan Dolan , Ladies on the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 5–15 ; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 312.

  Scott, “Travel and Communications,” 186–187.

29   Gerrit Verhoeven , “Not for Weaker Vessels? Travel and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries,” in Gender, Companionship, and Travel. Discourses in Pre-modern and Modern Travel Literature , eds. Floris Meens and Tom Sintobin (London: Routledge, 2019) 66–78.

  Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour , 7–9; Sweet, “British Perceptions,” 845–846.

31   Sarah Goldmith , “Dogs, Servants, and Masculinities: Writing about Danger on the Grand Tour,” Journal for Eighteen-Century Studies 40 (2017) 3–21 ; Sarah Goldsmith , Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour (London: University of London Press, 2020). More background in Henry French and Mark Rothery , Man’s Estate: Landed Gentry Masculinities, 1600–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 138–142.

32   Carl Thompson , Travel Writing: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 2011), 168–190.

  Goldsmith, “Dogs,” 6–7.

34 Children are sometimes mentioned in books of the Grand Tour, but the topic is rarely if ever scrutinized in depth. An exception is Gerrit Verhoeven , “Young Cosmopolitans: Flemish and Dutch Youths and Their Travel Behaviour,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 185–202.

For more about the widening social focus of the Grand Tour, see Sweet, “British Perceptions,” 839; Towner, “The Grand Tour” , 310.

  Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 311.

Towner estimates barely 0.2 percent or 0.3 percent of the British population was able to set out on a Grand Tour to Italy; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 304.

  Frijhoff, “Éducation,” 609–635; Quadflieg, “Approved Civilities,” 22.

39 For more about this educational aspect, see Gelléri, Lessons of Travel , 17–44; Sara Warneke , Images of the Educational Traveller in Early Modern England (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1–5 ; Jean Boutier , “Le Grand Tour des gentilshommes et les académies d’éducation pour la noblesse. France et Italie, XVIe-XVIII siècle,” in Grand Tour. Adeliges Reisen und Europaïsche Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert , Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), 237–253 ; Frijhoff, “Éducation,” 609–635. Colletta, “Introduction,” XII; Helga Quadflieg , “Approved Civilities and the Fruits of Peregrination: Elizabethan and Jacobean Travelers and the Making of Englishness,” in The Making of Modern Tourism: The Cultural History of the British Experience, 1600–2000 , ed. Hartmutt Berghoff (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 21–45 ; Doiron, L’Art de Voyager , 19–27.

Boutier, “Le Grand Tour,” 237; Stagl, “Un système de littérature normatrice,” 34–44; Quadflieg, “Approved Civilities,” 23–25; Stannek, Telemachs Brüder , 41–46.

41   Rosemary Sweet , “The Changing View of Rome in the Long Eighteenth Century”, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 33 (2010): 150–151 ; Arnold Esh , “Antiken-Wahrnehmung in Reiseberichten des 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts,” in: Grand Tour: Adeliges Reisen un Europaïschen Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert , eds. Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005)115–127 ; William Stenhouse , “Visitors, Displays, and Reception in the Antiquity Collections of Late-Renaissance Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly 85 (2005): 397–434.

  Quadflieg, “Approved Civilities,” 21–45; Maczak, “An expensive Leisure,” 766.

43 More background on these strategies in chapter 4 of John Gallagher , Learning Languages in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) ; John Gallagher , “Language and Education on the Grand Tour of Sir Philip Perceval,” in Adel und Mehrsprachigkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ziele, Formen, und Praktiken des Erwerbs und Gebrauchs von Fremdsprachen , eds. Helmut Glück , Mark Häberlein , and Andreas Flurschütz (Wolfenbüttel: Harrassowitz, 2018).

  Warneke, Images of the Educational Traveller , 49–51; Boutier, “Le Grand Tour,” 245–246; Frijhoff, “Éducation,” 633–634; Towner, “The Grand Tour,” 315.

45 More about art on the Grand Tour, Jason Kelly , The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology and Identity in the British Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 13–15 ; Black, Italy and the Grand Tour , 174–185; Edward Chaney , The Evolution of the Grand Tour. Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations Since the Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1998), 203–214 ; Redford, Venice and the Grand Tour , 20–21; Francis Haskell , “18th Century Art,” in The Age of the Grand Tour , eds. Anthony Burgess and Francis Haskell (London: Crown, 1967), 33–34 ; Black, “The Grand Tour,” 871; Cesare De Seta , “Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century,” in Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century , ed. Ilaria. Bignamini and Andrew Wilton (London: Tate Gallery, 1996), 13–19 ; John Stoye , English Travelers Abroad (1604–1667): Their Influence in English Society and Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 154–164.

47   Kelly, The Society of Dilettanti , 14–37; Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour , 203–214; Gerrit Verhoeven , “Mastering the Connoisseur’s Eye: Paintings, Criticism, and the Canon in Dutch and Flemish Travel Culture (1600–1750), Eighteenth-Century Studies 46 (2012): 29–56.

48   Sarah Goldsmith , “The Social Challenge: Northern and Central European Societies on the Eighteenth-Century Aristocratic Grand Tour,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour , eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 65–82.

49 More about this aftermath of the Grand Tour: Joachim Rees , “Wahrnehmen in fremden Orten, was zu Hause Vorthein bringen und nachgeahemet werden könne. Europareisen und Kulturtransfer adeliger Elitem im Altem Reich 1750–1800,” in Grand Tour: Adliges Reisen und Europaïsche Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert , eds. Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005), 513–539 ; Jill Bepler , “Travelling and Posterity: The Archive, the Library, and the Cabinet”, in Grand Tour: Adliges Reisen und Europaïsche Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert , eds. Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini (Ostfildern, Thorbecke, 2005), 194–198. For British travelers, see Colletta, “Introduction,” XIV; Stannek, “Vestis Virum Facit,” 332–342.

50   Corine Maitte , “The European ‘Grand tour’ of Italian entrepreneurs,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour , eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 161–182.

53 For more about the domestic travel culture, see Zoë Kinsley , Women Writing the Home Tour , 1682–1812 (Aldershot, Routledge 2008), 1–7 ; Katherine Grenier , Tourism and Identity in Scotland, 1770–1914: Creating Caledonia (Aldershot: Routledge, 2005), 17–36 ; Ian Ousby , The Englishman’s England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism (Cambridge: Thistle, 1990) 4–12

54   Gerrit Verhoeven , “Foreshadowing Tourism? Looking for Modern or Obsolete Features—or Some Missing Link—in Early Modern Travel Behaviour,” Annals of Tourism Research 42 (2013): 262–283.

55   Joachim Rees , Winfried Siebers , and Horst Tilgner , “Reisen in Erfahrungsraum Europa: Forshungsperspektiven zur Reisetätigkeit politisch-sozialer Eliten des Alten Reichs (1750–1800),” Das Achzehnte Jahrhundert 26 (2002): 35–62.

56 For more on these continental travels, see Kees Van Strien , Touring the Low Countries: Accounts of British Travelers, 1660–1720 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998).   Richard Bates , “The Petit Tour to Spa, 1763–1787,” in Beyond the Grand Tour: Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour , eds. Sarah Goldsmith , Rosemary Sweet , and Gerrit Verhoeven (London: Routledge, 2017), 127–146.

  Verhoeven, “Foreshadowing Tourism?” 262–283.

58 Domestic travel was, for example, more open to women; see Kinsley, Women , 1–7; Amanda Vickery , The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 251–252.

  Verhoeven, “Foreshadowing Tourism?” 262–283; Verhoeven, Europe within Reach , 117–120.

60   Irene H. Van Eeghen , “Het 18 de -eeuwse Amsterdamse reisgezelschap Semper Idem,” Maandblad Amstelodamum 45 (1958): 97–104.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

The grand tour.

Marble sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysos and the Seasons

Piazza San Marco

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal)

Autre Vue Particulière de Paris depuis Nôtre Dame, Jusques au Pont de la Tournelle

Jacques Rigaud

Imaginary View of Venice, houses at left with figures on terraces, a domed church at center in the background, boats and boat-sheds below, and a seated man observing from a wall at right in the foreground, from 'Views' (Vedute altre prese da i luoghi altre ideate da Antonio Canal)

The Piazza del Popolo (Veduta della Piazza del Popolo), from "Vedute di Roma"

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Vue de la Grande Façade du Vieux Louvre

View of St. Peter's and the Vatican from the Janiculum

Richard Wilson

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768)

Anton Raphael Mengs

Modern Rome

Giovanni Paolo Panini

Ancient Rome

Portrait of a Young Man

Pompeo Batoni

Gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli

Charles Joseph Natoire

Veduta dell'Anfiteatro Flavio detto il Colosseo, from: 'Vedute di Roma' (Views of Rome)

View of the Villa Lante on the Janiculum in Rome

John Robert Cozens

The Girandola at the Castel Sant'Angelo

Designed and hand colored by Louis Jean Desprez

Dining room from Lansdowne House

After a design by Robert Adam

The Burial of Punchinello

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Portland vase

Josiah Wedgwood and Sons

Jean Sorabella Independent Scholar

October 2003

Beginning in the late sixteenth century, it became fashionable for young aristocrats to visit Paris, Venice, Florence, and above all Rome, as the culmination of their classical education. Thus was born the idea of the Grand Tour, a practice that introduced Englishmen, Germans, Scandinavians, and also Americans to the art and culture of France and Italy for the next 300 years. Travel was arduous and costly throughout the period, possible only for a privileged class—the same that produced gentleman scientists, authors, antiquaries, and patrons of the arts.

The Objectives of the Grand Tour The Grand Tourist was typically a young man with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature as well as some leisure time, some means, and some interest in art. The German traveler Johann Joachim Winckelmann pioneered the field of art history with his comprehensive study of Greek and Roman sculpture ; he was portrayed by his friend Anton Raphael Mengs at the beginning of his long residence in Rome ( 48.141 ). Most Grand Tourists, however, stayed for briefer periods and set out with less scholarly intentions, accompanied by a teacher or guardian, and expected to return home with souvenirs of their travels as well as an understanding of art and architecture formed by exposure to great masterpieces.

London was a frequent starting point for Grand Tourists, and Paris a compulsory destination; many traveled to the Netherlands, some to Switzerland and Germany, and a very few adventurers to Spain, Greece, or Turkey. The essential place to visit, however, was Italy. The British traveler Charles Thompson spoke for many Grand Tourists when in 1744 he described himself as “being impatiently desirous of viewing a country so famous in history, which once gave laws to the world; which is at present the greatest school of music and painting, contains the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, and abounds with cabinets of rarities , and collections of all kinds of antiquities.” Within Italy, the great focus was Rome, whose ancient ruins and more recent achievements were shown to every Grand Tourist. Panini’s Ancient Rome ( 52.63.1 ) and Modern Rome ( 52.63.2 ) represent the sights most prized, including celebrated Greco-Roman statues and views of famous ruins, fountains, and churches. Since there were few museums anywhere in Europe before the close of the eighteenth century, Grand Tourists often saw paintings and sculptures by gaining admission to private collections, and many were eager to acquire examples of Greco-Roman and Italian art for their own collections. In England, where architecture was increasingly seen as an aristocratic pursuit, noblemen often applied what they learned from the villas of Palladio in the Veneto and the evocative ruins of Rome to their own country houses and gardens .

The Grand Tour and the Arts Many artists benefited from the patronage of Grand Tourists eager to procure mementos of their travels. Pompeo Batoni painted portraits of aristocrats in Rome surrounded by classical staffage ( 03.37.1 ), and many travelers bought Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s prints of Roman views, including ancient structures like the Colosseum ( 59.570.426 ) and more recent monuments like the Piazza del Popolo ( 37.45.3[49] ), the dazzling Baroque entryway to Rome. Some Grand Tourists invited artists from home to accompany them throughout their travels, making views specific to their own itineraries; the British artist Richard Wilson, for example, made drawings of Italian places while traveling with the earl of Dartmouth in the mid-eighteenth century ( 1972.118.294 ).

Classical taste and an interest in exotic customs shaped travelers’ itineraries as well as their reactions. Gothic buildings , not much esteemed before the late eighteenth century, were seldom cause for long excursions, while monuments of Greco-Roman antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, and the classical Baroque tradition received praise and admiration. Jacques Rigaud’s views of Paris were well suited to the interests of Grand Tourists, displaying, for example, the architectural grandeur of the Louvre, still a royal palace, and the bustle of life along the Seine ( 53.600.1191 ;  53.600.1175 ). Canaletto’s views of Venice ( 1973.634 ;  1988.162 ) were much prized, and other works appealed to Northern travelers’ interest in exceptional fêtes and customs: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo ‘s Burial of Punchinello ( 1975.1.473 ), for instance, is peopled with characters from the Venetian carnival, and a print by Francesco Piranesi and Louis Jean Desprez depicts the Girandola, a spectacular fireworks display held at the Castel Sant’Angelo ( 69.510 ).

The Grand Tour and Neoclassical Taste The Grand Tour gave concrete form to northern Europeans’ ideas about the Greco-Roman world and helped foster Neoclassical ideals . The most ambitious tourists visited excavations at such sites as Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Tivoli, and purchased antiquities to decorate their homes. The third duke of Beaufort brought from Rome the third-century work named the Badminton Sarcophagus ( 55.11.5 ) after the house where he proudly installed it in Gloucestershire. The dining rooms of Robert Adam’s interiors typically incorporated classical statuary; the nine lifesized figures set in niches in the Lansdowne dining room ( 32.12 ) were among the many antiquities acquired by the second earl of Shelburne, whose collecting activities accelerated after 1771, when he visited Italy and met Gavin Hamilton, a noted antiquary and one of the first dealers to take an interest in Attic ceramics, then known as “Etruscan vases.” Early entrepreneurs recognized opportunities created by the culture of the Grand Tour: when the second duchess of Portland obtained a Roman cameo glass vase in a much-publicized sale, Josiah Wedgwood profited from the manufacture of jasper reproductions ( 94.4.172 ).

Sorabella, Jean. “The Grand Tour.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grtr/hd_grtr.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Black, Jeremy. The British and the Grand Tour . London: Croom Helm, 1985.

Black, Jeremy. Italy and the Grand Tour . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Black, Jeremy. France and the Grand Tour . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Haskell, Francis, and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Wilton, Andrew, and Ilaria Bignamini, eds. The Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century . Exhibition catalogue. London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1996.

Additional Essays by Jean Sorabella

• Sorabella, Jean. “ Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe .” (April 2011)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe .” (August 2007)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Venetian Color and Florentine Design .” (October 2002)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Art of the Roman Provinces, 1–500 A.D. .” (May 2010)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Nude in Baroque and Later Art .” (January 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance .” (January 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Nude in Western Art and Its Beginnings in Antiquity .” (January 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Monasticism in Western Medieval Europe .” (originally published October 2001, last revised March 2013)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Interior Design in England, 1600–1800 .” (October 2003)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Vikings (780–1100) .” (October 2002)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Painting the Life of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Italy .” (June 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Birth and Infancy of Christ in Italian Painting .” (June 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Crucifixion and Passion of Christ in Italian Painting .” (June 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Carolingian Art .” (December 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Ottonian Art .” (September 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Ballet .” (October 2004)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Baroque Rome .” (October 2003)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Opera .” (October 2004)

Related Essays

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Artist or Maker

• Adam, Robert
• Batoni, Pompeo
• Cozens, John Robert
• Desprez, Louis Jean
• Mengs, Anton Raphael
• Natoire, Charles Joseph
• Panini, Giovanni Paolo
• Permoser, Balthasar
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• Tiepolo, Giovanni Domenico
• Wedgwood, Josiah
• Wilson, Richard

Online Features

• Connections: “Flux” by Annie Labatt
• Connections: “Genoa” by Xavier Salomon

Encyclopedia of Tourism pp 1–2 Cite as

The Grand Tour

• Kathryn Walchester 3  
• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 28 November 2023

The Grand Tour was primarily an educative tour of the European continent taken by young aristocratic Englishmen (Hibbert, 1969 ,13-25; Black, 1992 ). The first use of the term in English was used in a guide book. It highlighted the tour which included the classical cities of Rome and Naples, visited so as to underpin the conventional education in the classics undertaken by young men from the British upper classes. It followed a standard route and often included Paris and cities in Germany, and the Belgian resort of Spa (Lassells 1698: 24).

The young tourists would often be accompanied by their tutor or “bear leader,” who both acted as guide, teacher, and chaperon. This latter function was particularly significant given that foreign travels by rich young men soon attracted an array of licentious opportunities, including drinking, gambling, and sexual experimentation, facilitated by enterprising locals (Hibbert, 1969 , 15-6). As a result, the young Grand Tourists gained a negative...

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Black, J. 1992. The British abroad: The grand tour in the eighteenth century . Stroud: Sutton.

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Hibbert, C. 1969. The grand tour . London: Hamlyn.

Seaton, A.V. 2019. Grand tour. In Keywords for Travel Writing Studies , 108–110. London: Anthem.

Towner, J. 1985. The grand tour: A key phase in the history of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 12: 297–333.

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Walchester, K. (2023). The Grand Tour. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_904-1

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EDITORIAL FEATURE

How Tourism Hasn’t Changed Since The Grand Tour 

Sun, sea, sex and art .

The Grand Tour of Europe saw a flood of British, German and even American tourists to France, Italy and, in some rare cases, even further south to Greece.

So, what’s so special about this period of travel from the 17th-19th centuries? We know that man has traveled near and far since antiquity, feeding a human desire for discovery, but the Grand Tour was a somewhat more radical period in the history of travel. It gave rise to what we consider modern day tourism, and some of its trends have stayed with us for hundreds of years.

Here’s a look at 7 ways tourism hasn’t changed in over 300 years.

Grand Tour Travelers Popularized Itineraries We Still Use Today

Grand Tourists didn’t go to Italy with a pocket itinerary like:

See Sistine Chapel in the morning; take selfies from Pincian Hill at noon with Michelangelo’s Dome in background, have a glass of wine with locals at Piazza Navona overlooking Bernini’s Baroque architecture.

Or did they? 16th-century tourists embarked on 1-3 year European tours to learn about the highlights of master works of art – something not so different from a modern-day gap year, or study abroad trip.

One thing hasn’t changed in 300 years, must-see European cities have pretty much remained the same; we still dream about seeing Paris, Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples. Traveling nobility knew what they were doing when creating itineraries for some of the most notable art cities in the world.

The Grand Tourist’s Portraits Are Just Selfies in Disguise

Back in the day, if you had embarked on this expensive, formative journey through Italy to immerse yourself in art and culture, you wanted to lord it over others when you got back home. The wealthy (not to mention healthy) elite who could allow themselves such a lavish journey, proved it by commissioning portraits of themselves with famous Italian landscapes in the background. Sound familiar?

Arguably, the concept of the bragging selfie didn’t originate with the Grand Tour. Depicting oneself through art is as old as time, with ancient Greek and Roman busts giving us an idea of how people want to be remembered. But portraiture mixed with travel reached its height during the Grand Tour, with nobility packing artworks by Pompeo Batoni and Angelica Kauffmann , who both still adorn many a nobleman’s wall.

The Glorification of the “I Saw It First” Culture

Grand Tourists got to Italy by crossing the Alps on foot – no direct flights or highways back in the 17th century. Not an easy journey by any means. So why would they do it?

In a pre-photography world, it was a small price to pay to study the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, or to sit and sketch ancient ruins like the Colosseum, which most people only heard stories about. If you were one of the privileged few to have access to the Sistine Chapel or Botticelli’s Birth of Venus , you were indeed entitled to say, “I saw it first” .

Not an uncommon concept when it comes to modern day tourism. Keith Haring’s fans are more than happy to have themselves overheard during an exhibition at the Guggenheim saying, “I knew his work long before everyone else, when he was still just an unknown NYC graffiti artist on the streets.” The “I saw it first” culture gained some healthy traction during the Grand Tour and has, for better or worse, persisted for over 300 years.

Grand Tourists Were Travel Bloggers Without Internet

"My purpose in making this wonderful journey is not to delude myself but to discover myself in the objects I see." Goethe perfectly sums up travel writing. Grand Tourists and modern day tourists have something in common that separates them from those that went before – both share an interest in “storytelling” found in diaries and letters, a narrative inspired solely on lessons learned from travel.

The “original” travel writing, like Joseph Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy , Goethe and plenty more, have inspired generations to not only experience, but also chronicle, the beauty that travel and culture offers.

Travel for Pleasure, Not Business

What do you get when you mix a group of young, wealthy Brits with a group of Renaissance-inspired Italian artists? A good time .

The concept of travel for its own sake underpinned The Grand Tour, an idea that was previously almost unheard of. Spending time in art cities, exploring and enjoying new cultures, seeing masterpieces that you only heard stories about – this drive for enlightenment was at the heart of the tour.

From the 17th century onwards, travel for pleasure became more of a social-standing-boosting, fashionable trend than ever before, not only among the British but throughout Europe. 300 years later, we still have this need for breaks from the drudgery of work.

Naples Is Still an ‘Off the Beaten Path’ Destination

“See Naples and die”, as quoted in Goethe’s Letters from Italy , says it all. Naples, Italy wasn’t one of the must-see art cities on a nobleman’s itinerary during the Grand Tour, though it was home to extraordinary Caravaggio works, and funnily enough, this remains somewhat true today. Yes, modern day tourists flock to the Amalfi Coast but the authentic culture that Naples exudes is explored by too few both now and 300 years ago. Perhaps most travelers simply get stuck in the beauty of nearby Rome. Whatever the case, Naples and its authenticity captured the heart of Goethe and countless modern travelers after him, and will always remain an Italian gem.

Sun, Sex & Travel – Recreational Activities of the Grand Tour

Some speculate it was the sunny climate of Italy, others say the plentiful drink, but whatever the cause, the Grand Tour saw its fair share of “sinful” frolics behind closed doors. Tony Perrottet, author of The Sinner’s Grand Tour gives us a look at the naughty side of tourism back in the day.

Giving into temptation during these formative years was easy. After all, we’re talking pre-Victorians, when casual sex was glorified by the likes of Casanova from Venice and erotic bathroom frescoes – painted by the great Raphael himself – adorned the Vatican.

Grand Tourists by no means invented casual sex during travel, but they did give rise to plenty of stories that modern day travelers may find themselves still blushing at 300 years later.

Learn more about The Grand Tour:

- The Art That Made Grand Tourists Flock to Italy - 9 Books and Films Inspired by the Grand Tour - The Grand Tour of Italy

The Educated Traveller

History of the grand tour .

In the early years of the 18th and 19th centuries it was fashionable, for wealthy British families, to send their son and heir on a tour of Europe. A trip that was designed to introduce the young ‘ milord ‘ to the art, history and culture of Italy. The British educational system was based on Latin and Greek literature and philosophy. An educated person was taught the classics from a very early age. Whilst the original Grand Tourists were mostly male, there were a few enlightened families who sent their daughters to ‘the continent’ too. Aristocratic families regarded this journey to Europe as an opportunity to complete their education. The journey was known as the ‘Grand Tour’. The young gentlemen and a few ladies were often accompanied by a ‘learned guide’ a person who could act as a tutor and chaperone. These guides, usually highly educated, were known in Italian as ‘ cicerone’  and it was their job to explain the history, art and literature of Italy to their young charges.

A ‘Grand Tour’ generally included visits to Rome, Naples, Venice and Florence. On the journey south Geneva or Montreux in Switzerland were popular stopping off points too. Think Daisy Miller in Henry James novella of the same name. Wealthy families traversed Europe, often for months on end, absorbing every possible palace, party and picnic in the process. For many it was a very long and decadent party for others it was a necessary departure from their homeland until the dust of a divorce, bankruptcy or other social scandal had settled.

THE JOURNEY – Young gentlemen would make the journey south from The British Isles, either by ship or overland by horse and carriage. There are numerous reports of these young travellers being made chronically ill by travel sickness, rough seas and ‘foreign food’. In the 1730s and 1740s roads were rough and full of potholes, carriages could expect to cover a maximum of 15-20 miles per day. Highwaymen and groups of brigands often preyed on travellers, hoping to steal money and jewels. In the days of the ‘Grand Tour’ travel wasn’t for the faint-hearted .   Crossing the Alps was a particular challenge. Depending on the age and level of fitness of travellers, it may have been necessary to hire a sedan chair to be carried, literally, by strong local men over various Alpine passes. In fact the ‘chairmen of Mont Cenis’ close to Val d’Isere were known throughout the Alps for their strength and dexterity. These ‘chair carriers’ worked in pairs and groups of four, six or even eight men – they physically carried the ‘Grand Tourists’ over the Alps.

TRAVELLING – Having endured a crossing of the Alps the young ‘milordi’ would head to Milan or Turin where the local British consulate would offer a warm welcome. However,  the really attractive destinations were further away, particularly Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples. These cities were renowned for their entertainment, lavish parties and sense of fun. There’s a fantastic cartoon, by David Allen (above) showing a young aristocrat arriving in Piazza di Spagna, Rome. His carriage is instantly surrounded by local touts, street performers, actors and actresses, all anxious to separate young ‘Algernon’ from his trunk full of cash! It’s interesting to remember that the Italians have been welcoming tourists to their lands for centuries. They’ve learned a thing or two about helping newly arrived foreigners!

VENICE – In Venice the British Consul Joseph Smith was an art collector and supporter of local artists. Smith lived in a small palace on the Grand Canal, filled with paintings, art, books and coins. He was patron of Canaletto, probably the most famous and popular Venetian painter of his day. Canaletto painted ‘vedute’ scenes of Venice. Every Grand Tourist wanted to leave with a Canaletto painting as a souvenir of the Grand Tour. Smith’s art collection was so impressive that a young King George III purchased the entire collection in 1762, when he was himself on the Grand Tour. So Joseph Smith’s art collection became the basis of the British ‘Royal Collection’ of art much of which can still be seen at Buckingham Palace or in the National Gallery, London today. Whilst in Venice the young Grand Tourists would attend concerts, visit churches and wherever possible attend a ball or two. Venice at Carnival time was a particular fascination – an opportunity to put on a mask and be whoever you wanted to be!

A typical Grand Tour of Europe could last up to two years and would always include several months staying in each city visited.

Florence was popular for its renaissance art, magnificent country villas and gardens, whilst Rome was essential for proper, classical, ancient ruins. Venice was the party city, especially at the time of Carnival. Naples was regarded as the home of archaeology, excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum began in the 1730s and Vesuvius was quite active at this time. Plumes of volcanic gases and occasional lava flows would illuminate the mountain after dark. The Grand Tourists would position themselves on the lower slopes of the volcano to watch the nightly spectacle.

IN ROME – many of the Grand Tourists funded excavation work in and around the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. Many of the Grand Tourists wanted to acquire a Roman statue or sculpture to take home as a souvenir. There were numerous stonemasons working in and around the basement of the Colosseum, creating modern and ‘antique’ marble sculptures. Even in the 18th century demand exceeded supply in the ‘genuine Roman sculpture market’. Many Grand Tourists left for home with an ‘original’ antique Roman statue, which years later, under expert examination turned out to be a fake! The artist Panini painted several imaginary compositions of young Grand Tourists surrounded by paintings of Roman buildings and ruins. Each of the ‘ruins’ in the paintings was based on an actual Roman building. For example, in the painting below The Pantheon is clearly visible just to the right of the two standing gentlemen. Above the Pantheon is the Colosseum. On the left of the painting above the two seated gentlemen the Roman arches of Constantine and Septimius Severus can be seen.

Roma Antica – by Giovanni Paolo Pannini c. 1754 – Stuttgart Art Museum

The Grand Tour inspired many travellers to take a greater interest in Roman history and art. The study of archaeology was born at this time with extensive excavations taking place in Pompeii, Herculaneum and in the area of the Roman Forum in Rome. The British School at Rome was established to learn more about the Roman ruins and to fund excavations. The School still exists today. Below is another painting by Pannini showing the wonders of Modern Rome (1750s) – featuring details of Baroque fountains, palaces and elegant piazzas. These exceptionally detailed paintings effectively catalogue the ‘ancient marbles’ discovered in Italy by the middle years of the 18th century.

NAPLES – for fun and excitement on the Grand Tour was very popular. Lord Hamilton, British Ambassador in Naples was a wonderful host and put on spectacular parties and musical evenings. His second wife Emma Hamilton would dress in Roman and Greek style clothing and perform a series of ‘Attitudes’ where guests had to guess her identity. It was here at the Hamilton residence that Emma attracted the attention of Lord Nelson, British naval hero of the day, and they became lovers.

Meanwhile Vesuvius , the volcano that dominates the Bay of Naples was having an active phase in the 1760s and 1770s, most days steam could be seen rising from the crater and frequently, especially after nightfall, streams of glowing lava could be observed. Lord Hamilton wrote several articles on Vesuvius and the lava flows that he witnessed. Many visiting painters were inspired to paint Vesuvius and the surrounding area. The science of vulcanology was in its infancy. The spectacle that Vesuvius offered visitors most nights must have seemed quite extraordinary to the early Grand Tourists – typically away from home in strange and different lands for the first time.

From Naples it was relatively easy to arrange transport on a British ship back to England. So Naples was a popular end point for the 18th century Grand Tour. The young aristocrats would board a ship bound for England and assuming no rough seas they’d be home within a few weeks. Typically they’d have extensive luggage including marble statues and friezes from Rome, paintings and glassware from Venice, even lava samples and pumice stone from Naples . All these souvenirs would be displayed with great pride in the family home. The impact on British country houses of the Grand Tour can still be seen today. Almost every stately home in Britain has several paintings by Canaletto, commissioned during the Grand Tour. Many stately homes have a sculpture gallery, often specially built to accommodate the Roman statues and marble work brought back from the Grand Tour.

In a sense the Grand Tour was the start of modern tourism, it was a journey taken to learn and experience new and different styles of art, architecture and culture. A journey designed to understand and learn about Europe. The Grand Tour was a couple of years enjoying the best that Europe (especially Italy) had to offer. Parties, ladies, fine food and wine – and family members at a distance – a letter from mama or papa would take weeks to arrive. The young aristocrats had freedom, fun, sun and souvenirs. What finer way to complete a young gentleman’s education. Head home with a sack full of souvenirs and a full and varied experience of life – this was escapism at its best!

• ‘Milordi’ is a term referring to aristocratic men, literally meaning ‘my lords’. In the days of the Grand Tour the term ‘milordi’ was an ironic and satirical way of referring to young, aristocratic men, travelling in Europe with (generally speaking) more money than sense.
• Cicerone or bear-leader  was a popular term for a man who escorted young men of rank or wealth on their travels on the  Grand Tour . The role of cicerone or bear-leader blended elements of  tutor, chaperone and companion. These tutor-companions were often hired to keep the young ‘milordi’ out of trouble and to ensure that they didn’t do anything to embarrass their families. The name Cicerone originally comes from ‘Cicero’ referring to the famous Roman orator, politician, thinker and writer., who lived from 106-43 BC.

Many of London’s museums have exceptional collections of Italian and Greek paintings and sculptures as a result of the Grand Tour. The National Gallery has an amazing collection: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/paintings-in-depth/the-grand-tour

• I’ve written about Herculaneum at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD.
• I’ve also written other articles about Naples and Herculaneum:
• Herculaneum – a very bright future…..
• Naples, A Crazy Prince and fantastic pizza…
• To learn more about unique travel opportunities and tailor-made journeys check out our sister web site:  Grand Tourist  for ideas and examples of exceptional travel experiences.
• The picture at the top of this article (reproduced below) is by German 19th century painter Carl Spitzweg. It is a wonderful, and humorous portrayal of earnest English tourists soaking in the atmosphere at a ruined temple site (it could be Paestum, south of Naples). Although I think it might be Agrigento, Sicily. The artist has captured the mood of the ‘Grand Tourists’, just look carefully at the characters!

Herculaneum, Roman seaside town, buried by eruption of Vesuvius 79 AD (left). Map (right) shows areas excavated by 1908

• NOTE: Journeys in Europe are designed by our sister company www.grand-tourist.com drop us a line to discuss your perfect grand tour.
• Written: 23-11-17
• Updated: 15-11-20 / 10-01-2022 / 10-12-2023

#grandtour #grandtourist #educatedtraveller #archaeology

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30 thoughts on “ history of the grand tour  ”.

So THIS is where the name for your tour company originated! I feel like a GRAND TOURIST when I’m traveling with you, Janet–learning as I travel just like the folks from centuries ago! Thanks for this terrific background article!

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I was going to say the same as Mary Lou Peters, and congratulate you on your four bears (Darn that predictive text – I had actually dictated “congratulate you on your forebears”!) – A truly riveting and informative article – superb reading – thank you so much for that!

Thank you John – appreciated!

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Excellent, enjoyably breezy summary of a very important 18th century phenomenon, really enjoyed it, thank you.

Hi Arran – thank you so much for this kind comment. I’m delighted you enjoyed my summary!

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Hello Miss Onion – thanks for finding my blog. Please can you put the source as educated-traveller.com Thank you. Also the book about the Grand Tour is by Brian Dolan (Katie Hickman just wrote a review) If you want a little more background on the Grand Tour just ask – I run a travel business called Grand Tourist as well as writing my blog! Have a good day.

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Thanks for linking to my ‘History of the Grand Tour’. Curiously I too was an undergraduate at Oxford, although not one of the drunken ones. Were you a Rhodes or a Fulbright Scholar? The authors who wrote for the original Grand Tourists were people like John Murray and Baedeker. In fact you couldn’t call yourself a serious ‘tourist’ without a small red volume of either writer tucked under your arm!

Absolutely amazing piece. Thank you for providing such interesting information!

Thank you Natalia x

Thank you for including my article in your list. I am fascinated by the Grand Tour – possibly Adam Smith’s decision to leave his post and become a private tutor, meandering around Europe, was not such an unusual one. Certainly the Italian cities of Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples were filled with eager ‘tourists’ anxious to learn and often to finance restoration of ancient buildings. It must have been a very interesting time.

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Tuesday 30 april 2013, the grand tour.

“There is a divine, lately passed through Paris, bear-leading some sprig of the nobility. They are bound for Italy.” 

“...a needy divine…who has the good fortune to be in charge of a young gentleman making the Grand Tour.” 1

A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see. 2

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

14 comments:

Recently picked up a copy of Piozzi's 'Observations and reflections made in the course of a journey through France, Italy, and Germany' (vol. II, London, 1789) in a car boot sale for £4.00 two years go. A bit battered, but a great find!

Wow! The wonder of car boot sales - what a great find. :)

Wonderful post. I tweeted.

Great post about a subject I'm researching for the novel I'm writing. Thank you!

Glad you found it useful. Wouldn't it be nice to go on a Grand Tour? For research purposes of course!

or maybe just to sow some wild oats, we need to save the environment afterall!

Wonderful article, very well researched. I just found this website and am enjoying it very much. In addition I bought your novel! I've had difficulty finding historical fiction that's historically accurate, so I'm looking forward to reading it!

Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy A Perfect Match. The sequel is written and with my beta reader and I'm hoping will be published in the autumn.

very very helpful article. really helped me with my assignment on The Grand Tour for my Graduation program. very simple words used to explain no jargon used. thank you so much

may i please learn about the grand tour being linked to Switzerland please

If a gentleman had come of age during the Napoleonic Wars, would his Tour be delayed until they had ended, or would he never go on one?

The heyday of the Grand Tour came to an end with the Napoleonic Wars. People flocked to the continent during the rare times of peace but travel was difficult at other times.

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The Grand Tour: Everything You Need to Know

Gokce Dyson 28 November 2022 min Read

Carl Spitzweg, Englishmen in Campania , ca. 1835, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany.

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Nowadays, it is very common to take a gap year before or after university studies to travel and expand your horizons. Dedicating a year or two before committing to a full-time job means you can experience different cultures, learn languages, and enjoy having a bit of fun before settling down. Back in the day, with similar objectives, many noblemen embarked on a journey across Europe before entering adulthood. It was called the Grand Tour. 

The Grand Tour evolved between the 17th and 18th centuries as a custom of a traditional trip. The purpose of the Grand Tour was to provide male members of upper-class families with a formative experience. The term was first used by the Catholic priest and travel writer Richard Lassels in his guidebook The Voyage of Italy . The book came out in 1670 and described young lords traveling to Italy to see art, architecture, and antiquity. Lassels completed the Grand Tour five times during his lifetime.

In England, for example, the general view held by the aristocrats was that foreign travel completed the education of an English gentleman. However, some people were also quite skeptical about the tour. They feared the amount of money spent to make the Grand Tour possible could ruin the young nobility.

Although the Grand Tour was largely associated with English travelers, they were far from being the only ones on the road. On the contrary, wealthy families in France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark also saw traveling as an ideal way to finish the education of their societies’ future leaders.

Itinerary of the Grand Tour

The traditional route of the Grand Tour usually began in Dover, England. Grand tourists would cross the English Channel to Le Havre in France. Upon arrival in Paris , the young men tended to hire a French-speaking guide as French was the dominant language of the elite during the 17th and 18th centuries. In Paris, they spent some time taking lessons in fencing, riding, and perhaps dancing. There, they became accustomed to the sophisticated manners of French society in courtly behavior and fashion. Paris was a crucial step in preparing for their positions to be fulfilled in government or diplomacy waiting back in England.

From there, tourists would buy transport, and if they were prosperous enough, they would hire a tutor to accompany them. The travelers would then get back on the road and cross the Alps, carried in a chair at Mont Cenis before moving on to Turin.

Italy was exceedingly the most traveled country on the Grand Tour. A Grand tourist’s list of must-see cities in Italy included Florence , Venice , and Naples . And then, there was Rome . Each Italian city offered immense importance in experiencing art and architecture, and Rome had it all.

Touring Italy

Once arriving in Italy, noblemen traveled to Florence followed by Venice, Rome, and Naples. Florence was popular for its Renaissance art, magnificent country villas, and beautiful gardens. Young aristocrats were able to gain entry to private collections where they could observe the legacy of the Medici family. Venice , on the other hand, was the party city. There was, however, a second reason to visit Venice. During their travels, grand tourists often commissioned art to take back home with them. Wealthy ones brought sketch artists along with them. Others purchased ready-made artworks instead. Giovanni Battista Piranesi created numerous prints and sketches depicting the ancient ruins in Rome. The works of the Venetian artist were popular among noblemen.

Rome was considered the ultimate stop during the Grand Tour. The city had a harmonious mixture of past and present. One could experience modern-day Baroque art and architecture and ancient ruins , dating back thousands of years at the same time. It was lauded as home to Michelangelo’s and Bernini’s most prized works. Gentlemen visited spots like the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and Porta del Popolo. William Beckford described his feelings in a letter when he was on his Grand Tour:

Shall I ever forget the sensations I experienced upon slowly descending the hills, and crossing the bridge over the Tiber; when I entered an avenue between terraces and ornamented gates of villas, which leads to the Porto del Popolo… William Beckford, letter from the Grand Tour, 1780.

The next stop on the route was Naples. When Italian authorities began excavations in Herculaneum and Pompeii in the 1730s, grand tourists flocked there to delve into the mysteries of the ancient past. Naples became a popular retreat for the British who wanted to enjoy the coastal sun. Travelers such as J. W. Goethe praised the city’s glories:

Naples is a Paradise: everyone lives in a state of intoxicated self-forgetfulness, myself included. I seem to be a completely different person whom I hardly recognize. Yesterday I thought to myself: Either you were mad before, or you are mad now. J. W. Goethe, Google Arts& Culture .

Returning home, young gentlemen crossed the Alps to the German-speaking parts of Europe and visited Innsbruck, Vienna , Dresden, and Berlin . From there, they stopped in Holland and Flanders before returning to England.

With the introduction of steam railways in Europe around 1825, travel became safer, cheaper, and easier to undertake. The Grand Tour custom continued; however, it was not limited to the members of wealthy families. During the 19th century, many educated men had undertaken the Grand Tour. It also became more popular for women to travel across Europe with chaperones. A Room with A View, written by English novelist E. M. Forster, tells the story of a young woman who embarks on a journey to Italy in the 1900s.

Legacy of the Grand Tour

Grand tourists would return with crates full of books, oil paintings, medals, coins, and antique artifacts to be displayed in libraries, cabinets, drawing rooms, and galleries built for that purpose. The marble sarcophagus shown above was brought back from Italy to England by the third duke of Beaufort who found this item during his Grand Tour stop in Pompeii. Impressed by the European art academies on his Grand Tour, Joshua Reynolds founded the Royal Academy of Arts in London upon his return in 1768. The Grand Tour inspired many travelers to take a greater interest in ancient art. The British School in Rome was established to learn more about the Roman ruins and it still exists today.

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Gokce Dyson

Based in Canterbury, Gokce holds a bachelor's degree in History and Archaeological Studies and a master's degree in Museum and Gallery Studies. She firmly believes that art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. If Gokce is not tucked into a cosy corner with a medieval history book, she can be found spending her evenings doing jigsaw puzzles.

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Tourism Through the Ages: The Human Desire to Explore

• Read Later  

Although taking a summer vacation is now a standard aspect of modern-day civilization for many, it wasn’t always that way. Tourism was far less common in ancient times than it is today, but that certainly doesn’t mean it didn’t occur at all. Even in ancient times, people had a natural curiosity about the world around them and yearned to explore. 

However, tourism didn’t necessarily look the same then as it does now. So what did tourism look like, and where did ancient peoples like to travel the most? What was the perception of tourists in ancient times versus today? 

What was Ancient Tourism Like?

Tourism as we think of it has not always existed. In fact, travel was not possible for most people in ancient times. Travel was often difficult and full of dangers such as disease , starvation, dehydration, or death by wild animals. Because of this, travel was often seen as too risky unless absolutely necessary, such as for relocation, or religious, political, or medical purposes. 

However, travel did still happen. Armies would travel to take over new lands or conquer new cities. Tradesmen would travel to popular trade spots throughout their countries to sell goods for profits, while others would travel there to buy utilitarian or luxury items for their homes. Others would travel for important religious ceremonies that they were required to attend. Travel of this nature was considered a need within society, rather than a want, so not tourism as such. 

Lydgate and Pilgrims to Canterbury. Early ‘tourism’ was frequently for religious ceremonies and pilgrimages. (Jim Forest / CC BY NC ND 2.0 )

As time went on, technology advanced. With the expansion of roads and the development of more efficient travel using boats , chariots , and carriages, travel for leisure, or tourism, became an intriguing possibility. However, many individuals struggled with the same tourism questions we do today: if they could even afford to travel, and if they could, where they would go. 

Early tourists tended to avoid cities with political or civil unrest as it could be dangerous in the event of an uprising. It’s unsurprising these would be eliminated as tourism destinations . They would also avoid cities their own regions had hostility towards, as that was also considered risky business. They would instead choose regions that were not known to be dangerous, just to see what was out there. 

Although technological advancements made travel easier than walking or horseback, it was still perilous and time-consuming. Travelers would often bring small weapons for protection, along with any money they planned to spend. Travel would take from a few days to a few weeks (or even a few months!), depending on how far they planned to venture out. This also meant having to take preserved food with them to last the journey, or knowing where to stop along the way to find food when hungry. There were few to no establish tourism ‘rest stops’ in ancient times.

• Colosseum Will Have a Floor For The First Time in 1500 Years!
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The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World ( artbalitskiy / Adobe Stock)

Tourism Destinations of the Ancient World

There were many tourism destinations available in ancient times, but some were more popular than others. Particularly, ancient tourists enjoyed tourism spots that served multiple purposes. This started as early as the times of the ancient Egyptians , who often traveled for government activities but would stay in foreign areas longer than necessary to enjoy the local shops, restaurants, games, and other forms of entertainment. 

This desire to stay abroad for entertainment continued with the Roman Empire. The Romans developed a system of roads that covered approximately 50,000 miles, in order to make travel easier. At the time, traveling 30 miles would take about a day, and they used that information to establish an inn system. Through this system, an inn would be placed approximately every 30 miles, so that you always knew you had a place to rest in the evenings as you traveled out. 

With more tourism establishments like inns along the roads , travel felt safer as well. There would be more people present in case of an emergency, and a lower chance of running out of food or water. The risk of natural predators would be lower as well, since travel would no longer take place through endless plains or overgrown wilderness. The Roman system became so well-established that people from surrounding areas would visit Rome, just to see the roads, inns, and other established infrastructure. 

Language and currency were an important part of tourism at this time as well. If your destination used a different currency or spoke a different language, you would likely be a bit reserved about spending much time there (if any time at all!). As a result, common tourism areas did business in several common languages, so they could be more inclusive of visitors and receive more tourism.

Tourism in the Middle Ages: Risky Business

After the fall of the Roman Empire , tourism was not the same. In fact, tourism hardly happened at all anymore because there was too much risk involved. Nations were at war with one another, and traveling to a new place meant inevitable danger for the traveler and their family. Lots of the efficient transportation infrastructure were now destroyed, and languages were more separated than ever. 

Travel returned to being a necessity rather than a vacation. Religious and political motives were the primary causes of any travel, as nations attempted to overtake one another. Trade routes had to be re-established, although many were still unwilling to risk the trek. It wasn’t until Marco Polo took the risk and began to write about his solo tourism in the 13th century that people began taking interest in exploration again. 

By the Renaissance , trade began to take hold once more, and so merchants were willing to travel further than before. Additional trade and tourism businesses opened, and commercialism steadily increased, especially in Europe. People that would visit these trading posts to purchase new and luxury goods would wonder what the rest of the world was like, especially the sources of their favorite goods. This then ushered in the Grand Tour Era. 

• Why Did Ancient People Travel Thousands of Kilometers for Incense?
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Exotic new products entering Renaissance markets fed a desire for tourism, Jan van Kessel the Elder 1650-1660 ( Public Domain )

The Grand Tour Era: Tourism for the Rich and Famous

The Grand Tour Era, as can be assumed by its name, was a major point in history for tourism. Between 1613 and 1785, the Grand Tour Era established tourism as a norm throughout many societies. However, it wasn’t always easy. Traveling at this time was mostly reserved for the upper classes, as travel and lodging had increased in price due to high demand. Rooms that could be provided for an average family were instead reserved for those able to pay the most.

Tourism was also held in high regard at this time because it was often used as a form of education. The children of the wealthy would travel abroad to gain an understanding of the world around them, making them more knowledgeable and well-rounded. Someone who’d had the opportunity to engage in tourism was seen as having a higher status than most, since they were perceived as more educated. 

The most popular tourism regions at this time included Germany, Italy, France, and Switzerland. Europeans would often travel to these countries by carriage because it was more comfortable. Their carriage would be driven by an experienced chauffeur familiar with the routes, to make travel as efficient as possible. Tourists would frequently bring someone with them that would care for them, whether a servant or a more experienced traveler. 

British Gentlemen in Rome, circa 1750 ( Public Domain )

Ushering in a New Era: The Industrial Revolution to Modern Times

Towards the end of the 18th century, tourism faced new challenges. The Industrial Revolution had changed tourism forever. Since people had more stable employment, they couldn’t take off for long periods of time to travel. Workers were stuck in their factories and businesses all week, unable to leave without jeopardizing the entire organization. Teamwork was essential and left no flexibility for vacationing. 

However, the Industrial Revolution also helped people to travel more easily too. With new technology, travel became more efficient. Plus, for many workers, higher salaries contributed to their ability to go on a nice vacation. Additionally, business trips were increasing, to open more businesses and factories. 

After several decades tied down to work and missing out on tourism experiences, workers began tiring of their overworked schedules. With more money came greater desire to expand one’s worldview. Planes, cars, and boats could be used to travel more quickly and comfortably than before. Office jobs also became more popular for their greater flexibility, and paychecks began to be used to see the world. 

A 1922 Thomas Cook ad for a three-week trip on the Nile for £70 ($80) ( Public Domain )

At this point, tourism became an essential part of a fulfilling life. Countries such as France became hot spots for tourism because they had advanced technology and roads compared to other regions. Thomas Cook, an English businessman, inspired those without tourism experience to take a leap and go on an adventure. Later, paid work leave established for many in the 20th century ensured that more families could take the time to travel. It was the biggest increase in tourism since the Grand Tour Era.

Throughout the 20th century, hotels and motels became more common businesses worldwide, further fueling the tourism industry. Later, the development of credit cards helped lower-income families afford vacations more easily. Credit cards also helped universalize currency, so traveling between countries and buying necessities became more efficient. In the 21st century, traveling has become more accessible than ever. 

1957 postcard showing tourism airline interior (Joe Haupt / CC BY SA 2.0 )

Tourism Today: Roadside Attractions, Cruises, #VanLife, and more

Tourism in ancient times could be difficult, but those early tourists certainly made the most of it. Today, travel and tourism are certainly much simpler than they were back then. There is more available information about different countries that can be considered before taking a trip, and most frequent travelers are looking for more than just new scenery. Tourism agencies now seek to put together packages for those looking for adventure, romance, or knowledge. 

The biggest difference between ancient and modern tourism is purpose. While ancient people traveled as a way to learn about the world around them, modern tourists seek to gather and savor experiences. Experiencing new places and cultures is more fulfilling than simply learning about the place online. If nothing else, travel nowadays is certainly much more efficient and luxurious than ever before. After all, aren’t you glad you don’t have to take a chariot everywhere?

Top image: Vintage postcard showing European tourism destinations. Source: Freesurf /Adobe Stock

By Lex Leigh

A Historical View of Tourism . Study.com. (n.d.). Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/a-historical-view-of-tourism.html

Gyr, U. (December 13, 2010). The History of Tourism: Structures on the Path to Modernity . EGO. Available at: http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-on-the-road/the-history-of-tourism/ueli-gyr-the-history-of-tourism

Rodriguez, C. P. (June 16, 2020). Travelling for Pleasure: A Brief History of Tourism . Europeana. Available at: https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/travelling-for-pleasure-a-brief-history-of-tourism

Stainton, H. (May 27, 2022). The Fascinating History of Tourism . Tourism Teacher. Available at:   https://tourismteacher.com/history-of-tourism-2/

Tourism . (n.d.) Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/tourism

Lex Leigh is a former educator with several years of writing experience under her belt. She earned her BS in Microbiology with a minor in Psychology. Soon after this, she earned her MS in Education and worked as a secondary... Read More

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The fascinating history of tourism and aviation

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The history of tourism is absolutely fascinating. Why do we go on holiday to the Caribbean? How was the cruise developed? Why did we start travelling by plane? This article answers all of these questions and more about the history of tourism.

Ancient times

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The history of tourism is a long one. Whilst we may not always have had high speed trains, aircraft and luxurious cruise ships , people have long had the desire to be tourists .

The history of tourism can largely be attributed to technological developments in transport. The more roads that are built, the more places people can drive. The more airports that open, the more places that people can fly to.

The history of tourism is also closely related to the global economic, social and political outlook. Someone with lots of money is more likely to travel somewhere for a holiday than someone who does not have much money, for example. Likewise, many tourists are not likely to travel to a destination that is suffering from political instability.

There are many ways that the tourism industry and grown and developed over the years. In this article I will explain some of the elements of the history of tourism.

When did the history of tourism really begin? We can’t pinpoint it and, for obvious reasons, we can only really guess about tourism in ancient times. There are no selfies and no travel brochures to look back on, but we do know that people DID travel in ancient times. Historians have found records that provide an insight into the reasons that people travelled, and how this evolved into tourism.

We know that cultures and nations moved their armed forces around in order to conquer other areas, and to control trade routes and various resources. This created foundations for future travel. As the Egyptian , Roman and Eastern Mediterranean Empires emerged, necessary travel turned into tourism. The Phoenicians, for example, travelled not only to develop trade routes but also because of curiosity. They had a desire to discover what lay beyond that area of the Mediterranean. 

And other peoples likely did the same. The Mayas in modern day Mexico , and members of the Shang Dynasty in modern day China, travelled to see what was beyond their own borders. They also wanted to spread their civilisations, of course. Historians have been able to find evidence of ancient travels – artefacts from other places turning up in excavations, that couldn’t be there unless the ancient people had their own form of tourism.

It is hard to know when simple travel turned into what we would define as tourism . As mentioned, the Empire Era (beginning with the Egyptians, including the Greeks and stretching unit the eventual form the Roman Empire) was influential in the development of travel and tourism . As time went on, people travelled more. They travelled for various reasons: commercial, educational, governmental and religious purposes. With consolidated governments in different central locations established as early as the Egyptian Kingdoms (4850-715 BC), travel was a necessity.

And because travel was a necessity, so too were basic necessities. Lodging and food needed to be provided to those visiting from other areas, which likely gave way to a realisation that you could travel to another place just because. This is especially true of the Greeks (900-200 BC). They wanted to find fun in new locations – they promoted the use of a common language, and their money became a form of common currency.

Places that were important in terms of government activities turned into what we might call tourist attractions . With shops, places to eat and drink, sports to watch, gaming and even theatre, there was plenty to do if you travelled to a different area. This only evolved further with the ancient Romans. During their empire (500 BC – 300 AD), good roads were developed and water routes improved. Inns were opened, around 30 miles apart from each other – a relatively easy days journey in between, so you always had a place to rest at night. Horses could even be hired here.

Roman roads expanded into a 50,000-mile system. With their currency now almost universally accepted, and common languages such as Greek and Latin being used, travel constantly became easier and less stressful. Then came the common legal system. This allowed for people to feel safer and more protected as they traveled – whether that be for pleasure, business or adventure. Cities throughout the Roman empire (such as Pompeii) became destinations for the middle and upper classes to explore during their downtime.

This can teach us something about the way we travel today. Tourism booms when people have more free time (such as during school holidays) and currencies are easily exchangeable. There are common languages, and the existence of law allows for a feeling of personal safety. If any of these factors were to be removed, people would be less inclined to travel. This was seen during the Middle Ages, when tourism was in decline.

Throughout the Middle Ages (5-14th centuries AD) travel – and by extension tourism – was pretty much nonexistent. It became dangerous after the fall of the Roman Empire. While there had been a commonality among nations, there were now autonomous areas thanks to a feudal system. Transport was fragmented; so was language and currency. This made travelling to somewhere different much more difficult than it had been.

And when people did travel, it wasn’t for leisure. With the Roman Catholic Church gaining power, there were nine crusades in attempt to retake the Holy Land between 1096 and 1291 AD. But they all failed, and left people with a desire to see the world outside of their own locality. People were keen to experience different civilisations.

Merchants – like Marco Polo – started to travel far and wide after the failed crusades. Polo’s travels in particular (1295-1295 AD) were reported on, and people started to become more interested in travelling again.

So travel was reborn. During the Renaissance (14-16th centuries AD) more merchants travelled further afield. This was in part due to the church and royalty controlling larger geographic areas than they previously had done. Trade routes also started to reopen. Commercial activity grew, and people continued to venture out of their own towns and territories. 

The first real tourist , according to historians, was Cyriacus of Ancona. He journeyed around the Mediterranean, eager to learn about Greek and Roman history. His desire to learn about what had come before – and to see what remained – encouraged others to think about how travel could benefit education. And so, the Grand Tour Era emerged…

The Grand Tour era is an important part of the history of tourism. The era of the Grand Tour (1613-1785) was when tourism as we know it really came into play. Starting with the most wealthy in society, people travelled to learn. It was fashionable, and soon became a status symbol in its own way.

Those who were ‘coming of age’ would travel throughout Europe to see art, architecture, science and more in countries other than their own. Generally the most visited places were France , Switzerland , Germany and Italy . Each ‘Grand Tour’ would last a couple of years. People would travel by carriage, and be accompanied by someone older to take care of them.

This changed slightly with the introduction of the industrial revolution in around 1750. Economic and social structures were changed forever. The revolution meant that lengthy journeys such as a Grand Tour trip were no longer particularly viable for many people. Factory life and business management, and indeed modern industrialism as a whole, led to people becoming more tied down.

Transport changed too – it became more efficient as economies grew and technology advanced. Markets stretched across borders and individuals had higher incomes; travel was now for business and leisure, but with less free time trips were shorted. The tourism industry had to develop rapidly to ensure they could meet the newfound needs of potential customers.

The next stage in the history of tourism is all about mobility. As time moved on, the economy (and personal wealth) continued to grow. Increased leisure time and more accessible travel meant that tourism boomed. Because less people were tied down to all-consuming jobs such as farm work and more had moved on to working in offices, jobs and factories, there was more free time available. The Mobility Era (1800-1944) was defined by an increase in travel to new locations both near and far.

With new roads, passenger trains , stagecoaches and sailing ships becoming more common, tourism continued to grow. France and Great Britain had fantastic road and railroad systems which made the idea of travel even more available to people.

Then along came Thomas Cook , who can definitely be credited with bringing travel and tourism to the general public- Thomas Cook is one of the most famous names in the history of tourism! He was the first to introduce a tour package – travel and accommodation, with food often included too. In 1841 he arranged for a tour of around 570 people to travel from Loughborough to Leicester. For a shilling the journey included food and entertainment. There was instant demand for more of the same, and so the full-time business of arranging and providing travel services was born!

The Mobility Era continued to make changes. Cars and air travel were introduced next; with Henry Ford’s mass production for the Model T (1914), individuals had more freedom to travel. And thanks to Orville and Wilbur Wright ’s successful test of the aeroplane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, commercial air travel was also introduced. This meant the time it took to travel long distance was much shorter, and thus people were more mobile.

Another important time in the history of tourism is the modern era. The ability to move around and see new places was a start. Mass tourism continued to develop in the first half of the 20th century. George Westinghouse introduced the idea of paid leave from work, with a firm belief that allowing staff paid time off would be beneficial to productivity levels overall. This gave the working and middle classes in certain countries the time and money to fulfil their travel dreams – so the demand for tourism grew.

And as World War II came to an end in the 1940s, those who had been forced to travel during the war where keen to replicate this experience in a more positive way. They were now eager to travel for fun! They also wanted to share this with their loved ones, whether that be through travelling together or sharing stories that made these people want to travel too.

With gas/petrol no longer rationed, economies growing and cars once again being mass-produced, people travelled around in their cars – this was especially true in America, where the motel business really took off. This is similar, in a way, to the inns during the Empire Era.

Many factors contributed to the exponential growth of the travel industry. Hotels and motels took to the franchising model of business expansion, and jet travel was properly introduced in the 1950s, becoming popular throughout the 1960s.

Another fifties introduction helped: the credit card. Originally the Diners Club card, this provided travellers with the means to buy things wherever they were in the world without the hassle of currency exchange and carrying cash. To this day, credit cards are the preferred way to spend money when travelling.

So people had time, they had money – travel was safe and accessible. Tourism has simply continued to grow ever since. We now have mass tourism, and the people who engage in it can be split into two groups. These are ‘organisation mass tourists’ who make use of package deals and pre-prepared itineraries, and ‘individual mass tourists’. The second group travel independently but do use mass tourism services (airlines, hotel companies etc) which have been promoted in the media.

Travel is still ever-changing, though. People no longer necessarily travel just for the sake of travel – they want an immersive experience , adventure and the chance to give back to the local community . Tourism, and the travel companies with the industry, have to keep up with the different demands. 

Throughout the 21st century, Internet access has become more common and new borders have opened. There is always increased wealth and mobility of citizens. As different countries become attractive to tourists, their economy grows – which, in turn, makes the destination more attractive. This is why tourism is SO important !

There are always peaks and troughs when it comes to tourism. Terrorism, health scares and political/economic instability often discourage travel. There are now increased security procedures at airports, borders and attractions which can be off-putting for some people. But, for the most part, people love to travel.

In the post-modern tourism era, consumers are more savvy, more fussy and more aware. Nowadays, people care more about environmental conservation , community impact , economic leakage and other such issues and are far more considerate when they plan and undertake their travels.

Also, people now search for experiences that are authentic and are looking to experience a range of different types of tourism . Organisations working within the sector can now offer far more smart tourism experiences, such as virtual tourism – which was widely used during the Coronavirus outbreak of 2020.

Similarly, consumers are more Internet savvy in the post-modern era, meaning that they are leaning towards independent research and dynamic packaging as opposed to using the traditional package tourism methods that were so popular for so many years. In fact, as a result of this change in buying behaviour, many tour operators and travel agents have gone out of business, including the famous Thomas Cook.

The history of aviation

An account of the history of tourism wouldn’t be complete without discussing the integral role that aviation has played. So, lets dig a bit deeper into the history of aviation specifically…

What most people don’t realise when considering the history of tourism is that aviation and flight has actually been around for thousands of years! Dating back to the ancient years in Greek mythology is the story of Icarus and Daedalus who attempted to create a pair of wings using wax and feathers.

While this invention sadly ended in tragedy, one thing it shows is that humans have been interested and intrigued by flight for centuries. It took us a bit of time to master the skies, however and it is thanks largely to the famous Wright Brothers and to various military developments that we have the aviation industry that we do today.

The first aircraft known to be made by men was the kite. Created in China , the time is not known but many say it was sometime in the 5th Century, these kites are similar to the kites we still use today. Taking it a step further, the Chinese invented “man-lifting kites” which today are known as hot air balloons.

By the 1700s, aviation as we know it today was in full swing and inventors were exploring different devices, inventions and failures. At this time, there were two main categories of aviation: lighter than air aviation and heavier than air. This was an important time in the history of tourism.

In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers revealed their hot air balloon which didn’t need man to power it and the balloon flew over Annonay, France. This really started a wave of inventors who were interested in creating crafts that could fly without man powering it.

Later in that year, the brothers set up what is known as the first manned flight, with a tethered hot air balloon. A few weeks later, the brothers launched a manned flight with two astronauts onboard, that was untethered. Although the flight didn’t last very long because the fire began to burn the fabric, this is the beginning of modern-day aviation.

On this date, Orville and Wilbur Wright changed the face of aviation and what it is today, making this day as a pivotal moment in the history of tourism.

Successfully completing four flights in their “flyer”, these brothers lasted mere seconds in the air in their aircraft and covered some 800 feet. Setting a new standard for aviation, these flights relied on power and control to work. This was brand new in the world of aviation and a very exciting achievement!

Because of the efforts of the Wright brothers, in 1914, the first passenger flight was used in the United States. Traveling from St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida , these flights only lasted a few months but paved the way for what we know today as transcontinental aviation and marked an important development in the history of tourism.

The 1920’s and 1930’s were a time of major improvements and inventions in the aviation industry. Aircraft designs that were ahead of their time and influenced aircrafts that we see today, were being used to allow people to travel from one place to another comfortably.

During the time of World War II, many cities and countries had established their own airports and military aircrafts were being repurposed as commercial planes and personal planes. The War was a time of using these aircrafts to travel from one country to the next and the growth of international aviation during this time is monumental. This was a huge time in the history of tourism!

Not long after this time period, the Convention on International Civil Aviation was founded and still stands today. Also known as the Chicago Convention , this agency was established to regulate standards, safety and efficiency of all civil flights. Today, the agency has made significant improvements in the world of aviation and has allowed for safer and more economical airliners.

After the post World War II era there were substantial developments to the history of tourism and aviation. In the 1970’s, many aircraft became digitised and had computer systems built into the craft. Because of the creation of these systems, better aircraft have been made and the designs of airplanes have become sleeker, safer and more comfortable over the years.

Computer simulations of flights have also led to the design of lighter aircraft and airplanes that are stronger. Today’s aviation industry offers one of the safest forms of transportation and has taken huge strides over the years.

The history of aviation aviation has been and continues to be a huge part of the economy for the entire world and has seen major improvements over the years. Without the discoveries from inventors that came before us, airplanes and travel may not be where they are today.

Recent years have seen the development of double decker aircraft, cleaner and greener aircraft and aircraft that can operate longer distances…. will be have supersonic aircraft in the future? Biofuels? Only time will tell- the history of tourism is not complete yet!

As you can see, the history of tourism is long and fruitful. While the industry has had its ups and downs, largely due to outside factors such as economic recession, war or a virus outbreak, it has continued to play an ever-important role in our lives. If you enjoyed this article on the history of tourism, I recommend that you take a look at these articles too-

• The fascinating history of Thomas Cook
• The fascinating history of the hotel industry
• History of transportation
• The fascinating history of Aviation

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Sample the best food Grand Rapids has to offer during Taste of GR Walking Tours

Foodies of Grand Rapids can rediscover their favorite restaurants or discover new flavors at the Taste of GR Walking Tours taking place now through October.

The walking tours take guests to 4 or 5 places around town, where knowledgeable guides will share history and culture as people move from one spot to the next.

Discover hidden gems and popular hotspots while indulging in a range of culinary delights. From savory bites to sweet treats, this Walking Food Tour has a flavor to satisfy every food pallet.

Walking Food Tours take place twice a month April through October. Groups will meet at the Downtown Grand Rapids location shared with the group upon booking the tour.

The cost is $65 per person. Book a tour here.

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