The Grand Tour
Eighteenth century
Dr. Johnson’s Opinion
• “A man who has not been in Italy, is always
conscious of an inferiority, from his not having
seen what is expected a man should see.” (Dr.
Johnson)
Eighteenth Century
• The golden age of the Grand Tour; institutionalized..
• Italy the site of Europe’s cultural inheritance of antiquity
and the Rinascimento.
• The age of neo-classicism. Greco-Roman Ideals
of beauty. Visit of Rome and its ruins. Visits to
museum collections.
• Imitation of classical models in architecture
(Palladio)
• Contacts with contemporary italian art in the famous
galleries (Uffizi) and in the painters’studios
The Grand Tour
• The idea of travel as personal enlightenment first
took hold in early eighteenth-century England,
and quickly became a cultural necessity as the
culmination of every young gentleman’s
education.
• The ultimate travel destination was Italy, by way
of France and Switzerland, with the classical
landscape and art of Rome, Naples, Florence, and
Venice as the crowning cultural experience of
what became known as “The Grand Tour.”
FIRST USE OF THE TERM IN LASSELS’
VOYAGE
• The first use of the “Grand Tour” as a phrase appears in
one of the earliest of English travel guides, Richard
Lassels’ The Voyage of Italy, first published in Paris in
1670.
• Lassels was one of the most important formulators of
the Grand Tour and stressed the advantages, away
from home, of young lords learning the intellectual,
social, ethical, and political realities of the world.
• He talks of “this great booke, the world” and the
importance of acquiring those personal attributes
required of the true cosmopolitan gentleman.
The Early Grand Tourists: Evelyn
• John Evelyn (1620–1706), in addition to his
famous diary and wide achievements, was among
the earliest of the “Grand Tourists.” He left Oxford
in November of 1643 for London to begin the first
of his many trips to Italy and the Continent.
• The route he followed would become the classic
path of the Grand Tour: London to Dover; Calais
to Paris; then over the Alps to Rome and Venice.
The Early Grand Tourists: Coryat
• Among the earliest of travel was Coryats
Crudities, first printed in London in 1611
• It concentrates on the Grand Tourwas the
coming of age of young gentlemen in terms of
erotic as well as cultural enlightenment
• Coryate further notes: “As for the number of
Venetian Courtezans it is very
• great, for it is thought there are … at the least
twenty thousand, whereof many are esteemed so
loose, that they are said to open thghteenthr
quivers to every arrow....”
Evolution of GT in the 18th cent.
• Grand Tour becomes a habit and a status symbol for the
wealthy upper middle-classes. Extended to women and .
families.
• No longer accompanied by an instructor but by a courier or
valet de place (interpreter, cicerone, factotum)
• The concepts of the sublime and the picturesque elaborated in
England by Burke and Gilpin respectively lead to the search for
natural beauties and the admirantion of landscape which were
accessible even for people without a classical education.
• The visit of natural attractions becomes an essentil part of
travelliing in Italy (the Alps, Vesuvius, some waterfalls,the
Campagna near Rome (nature interspersed with ruins)
• Nature interspersed with ruins an essential element of the
picturesque as in many famous paintings (Rosa, Poussin, Claude
Lorraine)
The “material” Grand Tour:
Necessities:
health certificates (otherwise quarantine)
- passports and safe-conducts in order to cross
the borders of the Italian states
- letters of introduction
- letters of credit
- A courier or valet-de-place.
Practicalities
Means of transportation:
- carosse (6 passengers); coche (coach, 16 passengers +
luggage); caleche or calash (2 seats); public coach (pick
up and deposit passengers en route)
- small chaises had to be dismantled before passing the
Alps
- luggage: large amount of boxes (books: see Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu)
Where to stay:
- inns, taverns (with their “infinite numbers of gnats,
bugs, fleas, and lice, which infest us by night and by
day” – S. Sharp)
The Journey
How to get to Italy:
- By sea: from Marseille or Nice, then Genoa, Leghorn (thus
continuing to Florence and Tuscany) or Civitavecchia (to
proceed to Rome)
- By land: crossing the Alps (N.B. the passage of Mount
Cenis), then Turin and Milan
- Sailing rivers: the Po allowed travellers to reach Ferrara and
Ravenna, and then proceed to Padua, while sailing the
Brenta they could arrive in Venice
The “classical” itinerary
(about 3 years long):
- Descend along the Appennines through Florence and Bologna (or
reaching Ancona and Loretto), then arrive in Rome, proceed to
Naples, finally return to Rome and arrive in Venice for the Carnival
- Tuscany
- Around Rome: Tivoli, Frascati, Albano, Nemi
- Around Naples: Pozzuoli, Pompei, Ercolano, Paestum
- The South (Sicily, Calabria): usually out of the “beaten track”
Italy in the Eighteenth Century: a “patchwork” of states,
a “geographical expression”
Some Grand Tour landmarks in details
• FLORENCE : Uffizi
• ROME The focus of the Grand Tour
- Could visit the Colosseum by moonlight or torchlight
- The presence of the Pope and Holy Week ceremonies.
- VENICE: A world in itself (Doge)
- Fascinating decline.
- Carnival, gondolas and casinos
• NAPLES
- Ruins of Ercolano and Pompeii (discovered in 1731 and 1748.
Ascent of the Vesuvius. Importance of the British envoy Sir
william Hamilton and his wife Emma,)
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON
(1731-1803)
Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other
Volcanoes (1773)
Campi Phlegraei (1776)
Interest turns to landscape and sublime vistas
Emma Hamilton
(1765-1815)
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Emma, Lady Hamilton (1790-91)
A Venetian eighteenth-century “casino”
Francesco Guardi, Concerto di Dame al Casino dei Filarmonici (1782)
Next
• See presentation Writers of the Grand Tour
Evolution (Nineteenth Cent.)
– 1815-1861: Politicl tourism
• Italy a paradise for radicalssuch as (Byron, and Shelley.
– The revolutionary myth, fascination with secret societies,
carbonari and other political utopias I
– Many foreign visitors support or take part in Italian wars of
Independence
• From the Forties, mass tourism
– . With the introduction of steam, railways, travel (in england and
Scotland) becomes faster and more accessible.
– Extension of railways to Europe.
– 1842 Thomas Cook introduces organized travel.
– Soon Cook’s organizes a mass version of the classical Grand Tour
Nineteenth Century
• Diversification of tourists in Italy. Not only British,
Fench and German but also north-Aamericans,
Russians and tourists from Eastern Europe.
• Young women alone or with a chaperon. A female
initiation rite.
• Towards the end of the century climatic, thermal
or healthc tourism . Spending the winter season
in the Riviera or on the lakes. Grand Hotesl,
casinos (e.g. San Remo).
The attraction of an Italian journey
•
•
•
•
Archeologiy and antiquities
Visual and plastic arts.
Music.Especially the opera .
Climate. One visits Italy to find a milder climate
– To spend the winter
– To be cured of tubercolosis
• For its natural beauties (from second half of
Eighteenth century)
– Initially the Alps, the lakes, the Campagna
– Nineteenth century: the islandd (Capri especially),
Tuscan countryside, the coasts and seaside resorts.