Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was a primarily 17th to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination. It was undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tutor or family member) when they came of age (around 21 years old). The custom, which flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transport in the 1840s and was linked to a standard itinerary, served as an educational rite of passage. Although it was primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men from other Protestant Northern European nations and, from the second half of the 18th century, by some North and South Americans.

By the mid-18th century, the Grand Tour had become a regular part of aristocratic education in Central Europe as well, though it was limited to the higher nobility. The tradition began to decline in Europe as enthusiasm for classical culture faded, coinciding with the rise of accessible rail and steamship travel, an era that saw Thomas Cook turn the "Cook's Tour" into a byword for early mass tourism starting in the 1870s. However, with the rise of industrialization in the United States during the 19th century, American Gilded Age nouveau riche embraced the Grand Tour for both men and women, including those of more advanced years, as a way to gain exposure and association with European sophistication. Even individuals of lesser means attempted to imitate the pilgrimage, as satirized in Mark Twain's popular travel book The Innocents Abroad in 1869.

The primary value of the Grand Tour lay in its exposure to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent. It also provided the only opportunity to view specific works of art, and possibly the only chance to hear certain music. A Grand Tour could last anywhere from several months to several years. It was commonly undertaken in the company of a cicerone, a knowledgeable guide or tutor.

Map of the "Grand Tour"

History

Rome for many centuries had already been the destination of pilgrims, especially during Jubilee European clergy visited the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome.

In Britain, Thomas Coryat's travel book Coryat's Crudities (1611), published during the Twelve Years' Truce, was an early influence on the Grand Tour but it was the far more extensive tour through Italy as far as Naples undertaken by the 'Collector' Earl of Arundel, with his wife and children in 1613–14 that established the most significant precedent. This is partly because he asked Inigo Jones, not yet established as an architect but already known as a 'great traveller' and masque designer, to act as his cicerone (guide).

Larger numbers of tourists began their tours after the Peace of Münster in 1648. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the term (perhaps its introduction to English) was by Richard Lassels (circa 1603–1668), an expatriate Roman Catholic priest, in his book The Voyage of Italy, which was published posthumously in Paris in 1670 and then in London. Lassels's introduction listed four areas where travel furnished "an accomplished, consummate Traveller": the intellectual, the social, the ethical (by the opportunity of drawing moral instruction from all the traveller saw), and the political.

As a young man at the outset of his account of a repeat Grand Tour, the historian Edward Gibbon remarked that "According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman." Consciously adapted for intellectual self-improvement, Gibbon was "revisiting the Continent on a larger and more liberal plan"; most Grand Tourists did not pause more than briefly in libraries. On the eve of the Romantic era, he played a significant part in introducing. William Beckford wrote a vivid account of his Grand Tour that made Gibbon's unadventurous Italian tour look distinctly conventional.

The typical 18th-century stance was that of the studious observer traveling through foreign lands, reporting his findings on human nature for those unfortunates who stayed at home. Recounting one's observations to society at large to increase its welfare was considered an obligation. The Grand Tour flourished in this mindset. In essence, the Grand Tour was neither a scholarly pilgrimage nor a religious one. Grand Tourists in the 18th century often traveled with an entourage, which could include tutors and servants, yet they still relied on guidebooks. Popular guidebooks for the Grand Tour were prolifically published from the mid-18th century onward, although guidebooks for major Italian cities had been in circulation since 1660. These frequently included detailed urban maps, increasingly facilitating more independent and self-guided experiences of cities and their ruins. Grand Tour guidebooks were used by young aristocrats but also served the bourgeois purpose of helping the reader make an authoritative choice. Grand Tour hot spots included Paris and Rome, with European capital cities often serving as stopovers, necessitating travel across the Alps and enticing Grand Tourists to gaze at natural sights such as Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius. Climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and purchasing souvenirs formed part of the traveling experience.

The Grand Tour provided a liberal education and the chance to acquire things that were otherwise unavailable, lending an air of accomplishment and prestige to the traveler. Grand Tourists would return with crates full of books, artworks, scientific instruments, and cultural artifacts—from snuff boxes and paperweights to altars, fountains, and statues—to be displayed in libraries, cabinets, gardens, drawing rooms, and galleries designed for that purpose. The trappings of the Grand Tour, especially portraits of the traveler painted in continental settings, became the essential emblems of worldliness, gravitas, and influence. Artists who thrived in the Grand Tour market included Carlo Maratti, who was first patronized by John Evelyn as early as 1645, Pompeo Batoni, the portraitist, and vedutisti such as Canaletto, Pannini, and Guardi. Those with fewer resources could return with an album of Piranesi etchings.

The "perhaps" in Gibbon's opening remark casts an ironic shadow over his resounding statement. Critics of the Grand Tour derided its lack of adventure. "The tour of Europe is a paltry thing," said one 18th-century critic, "a tame, uniform, unvaried prospect." The Grand Tour was said to reinforce the old preconceptions and prejudices about national characteristics, as Jean Gailhard's Compleat Gentleman (1678) observes: "French courteous. Spanish lordly. Italian amorous. German clownish." The deep suspicion with which the Tour was viewed at home in England, where it was feared that the very experiences that completed the British gentleman might well undo him, was epitomized in the sarcastic nativist view of the ostentatiously "well-travelled" maccaroni of the 1760s and 1770s.

It is also worth noting that the Grand Tour not only fostered stereotypes of the countries visited but also created a dynamic of contrast between northern and southern Europe. By constantly portraying Italy as a "picturesque place," the travelers unconsciously degraded it as a land of backwardness. This unconscious degradation is best reflected in the famous verses of Lamartine, in which Italy is depicted as a "land of the past... where everything sleeps."

In Rome, antiquarians like Thomas Jenkins were also dealers, able to sell and advise on marble purchases; their prices would rise if it became known that tourists were interested. The growing demand for antiquities during the Grand Tour also led to the development of dedicated tourist zones and early forms of tourism infrastructure around classical ruins and excavation sites. Coins and medals, which were more portable souvenirs and a respected gentleman's guide to ancient history, were also popular. Pompeo Batoni built a career painting English milordi posed with graceful ease among Roman antiquities. Many continued on to Naples, where they viewed Herculaneum and Pompeii, but few ventured far into Southern Italy, and even fewer to Greece, which was still under Turkish rule.

After the advent of steam-powered transportation around 1825, the Grand Tour custom continued, but it became qualitatively different — cheaper, safer, easier, and accessible to everyone. Throughout much of the 19th century, most educated young men of privilege undertook the Grand Tour, and Germany and Switzerland were included in a more broadly defined circuit. Later, it became fashionable for young women as well; a trip to Italy, accompanied by a spinster aunt as chaperone, was part of upper-class women's education, as in E. M. Forster's novel A Room with a View.

British travelers were far from alone on the roads of Europe. On the contrary, from the mid-16th century, the grand tour was established as an ideal way to conclude the education of young men in countries such as Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. Despite this, the bulk of research conducted on the Grand Tour has focused on British travelers. Dutch scholar Frank-van Westrienen Anna has noted this historiographic focus, claiming that the scholarly understanding of the Grand Tour would have been more complex if more comparative studies had been conducted on continental travelers.

Recent scholarship on the Swedish aristocracy has shown that Swedish aristocrats, although relatively poorer than their British counterparts, acted similarly in many ways from around 1620 onward. After attending one or two prestigious universities, preferably Leiden and Heidelberg, the Swedish grand tourists traveled to France and Italy, where they spent time in Paris, Rome, and Venice, completing the original grand tour in the French countryside. King Gustav III of Sweden embarked on his Grand Tour in 1783–84.

Typical itinerary

The itinerary of the Grand Tour was not set in stone, but was subject to innumerable variations, depending on an individual's interests and finances, though Paris and Rome were popular destinations for most English tourists.

The most common itinerary of the Grand Tour shifted across generations, but the British tourist usually began in Dover, England, and crossed the English Channel to Ostend in Belgium, or to Calais or Le Havre in France. From there the tourist, usually accompanied by a tutor (known colloquially as a "bear-leader") and (if wealthy enough) a troop of servants, could rent or acquire a coach (which could be resold in any city – as in Giacomo Casanova's travels – or disassembled and packed across the Alps), or he could opt to make the trip by riverboat as far as the Alps, either travelling up the Seine to Paris, or up the Rhine to Basel.

Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland (1640–1702), painted in classical dress in Rome by Carlo Maratti. Upon hiring a French-speaking guide, since French was the dominant language of the elite in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, the tourist and his entourage would travel to Paris. There, the traveler might take lessons in French, dancing, fencing, and riding. The allure of Paris lay in the sophisticated language and manners of French high society, including courtly behavior and fashion. This helped refine the young man's manners in preparation for a leadership role at home, often in government or diplomacy.

From Paris, he would typically spend time in urban Switzerland, often in Geneva (the cradle of the Protestant Reformation) or Lausanne. ("Alpinism" or mountaineering developed later, in the 19th century.) From there, the traveler would face a challenging crossing over the Alps (such as at the Great St Bernard Pass), which required dismantling the carriage and larger luggage. If wealthy enough, servants might carry him over the rugged terrain.

Once in Italy, the tourist would visit Turin (and sometimes Milan), then might spend a few months in Florence, where there was a significant Anglo-Italian society accessible to traveling Englishmen "of quality" and where the Tribuna of the Uffizi gallery gathered in one space the monuments of High Renaissance paintings and Roman sculpture. After a side trip to Pisa, the tourist would continue to Padua, Bologna, and Venice. The British perception of Venice as the "locus of decadent Italianate allure" made it the epitome and cultural centerpiece of the Grand Tour.

From Venice, the traveler went to Rome to study the ancient ruins and the masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Rome's Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Some travelers also visited Naples to study music and, after the mid-18th century, to appreciate the recently discovered archaeological sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and perhaps for the adventurous, to attempt an ascent of Mount Vesuvius. Later in the period, the more adventurous, especially if provided with a yacht, might attempt to explore Sicily to see its archaeological sites, volcanoes, and baroque architecture, as well as Malta or even Greece itself. However, Naples – or later Paestum further south – was the usual terminus.

As they head north again, the tourist may cross the Alps once more into the German-speaking regions of Europe, stopping in Innsbruck, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Potsdam, possibly taking time to study at the universities in Ingolstadt or Heidelberg. From there, travelers could explore Holland and Flanders (with more gallery visits and art appreciation) before crossing back over the Channel to England.

Published accounts

Published accounts of the Grand Tour provided illuminating detail and an often polished first-hand perspective of the experience. Examining some accounts offered by authors in their lifetimes, Jeremy Black detects the element of literary artifice in these and cautions that they should be approached as travel literature rather than unvarnished accounts. He lists as examples Joseph Addison, John Andrews, William Thomas Beckford (whose Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents was a published account of his letters back home in 1780–1781, embellished with stream-of-consciousness associations), William Coxe, Elizabeth Craven, John Moore, tutor to successive dukes of Hamilton, Samuel Jackson Pratt, Tobias Smollett, Philip Thicknesse, and Arthur Young.

Although Italy was written as the "sink of iniquity", many travelers were not kept from recording the activities they participated in or the people they met, especially the women they encountered. To the Grand Tourists, Italy was an unconventional country, for "The shameless women of Venice made it unusual, in its own way." Sir James Hall confided in his written diary to comment on seeing "more handsome women this day than I ever saw in my life", also noting "how flattering Venetian dress [was] — or perhaps the lack of it".

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian women, with their unfamiliar methods and routines, were opposites to the western dress expected of European women in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; their "foreign" ways led to the documentation of encounters with them, providing published accounts of the Grand Tour.

James Boswell in the 18th century courted noble ladies and recorded his progress with his relationships, mentioning that Madame Micheli "Talked of religion, philosophy... Kissed hand often." The promiscuity of Boswell's encounters with the Italian elite is shared in his diary and provides further detail on events wwhich occurred during the Grand Tour. Boswell notes "Yesterday morning with her. Pulled up petticoat and showed whole knees... Touched with her goodness. All other liberties exquisite."[33] He describes his time with the Italian women he encounters and shares a part of history in his written accounts.

Lord Byron's letters to his mother, along with accounts of his travels, were published in the early 19th century. Byron spoke of his first enduring Venetian love, his landlord's wife, mentioning that he has "fallen in love with a very pretty Venetian of two and twenty — with great black eyes — she is married — and so am I — we have found & sworn an eternal attachment ... & I am more in love than ever... and I verily believe we are one of the happiest unlawful couples on this side of the Alps." Many tourists engaged in sexual relations while abroad but were generally well-behaved, including Thomas Pelham and scholars like Richard Pococke, who wrote lengthy letters about their Grand Tour experiences.

Inventor Sir Francis Ronalds' journals and sketches of his 1818–20 tour to Europe and the Near East have been published online.[36][37] The letters written by sisters Mary and Ida Saxton of Canton, Ohio in 1869 while on a six-month tour offer insight into the Grand Tour tradition from an American perspective.[38]

Immediately following the American Civil War, U.S. author and humorist Mark Twain undertook a decidedly modest yet highly ambitious "grand tour" of Europe, the Middle East, and the Holy Land, which he chronicled in his immensely popular satire Innocents Abroad in 1867. Not only was it the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime, but it also became one of the best-selling travel books of all time.

In literature

Georges Bastard, Cinquante jours en Italie ("Fifty days in Italy"), 1878, one of the many reports of the Grand Tour in Italy. Margaret Mitchell's American Civil War-based novel, Gone With The Wind, refers to the Grand Tour. Stuart Tartleton, in a conversation with his twin brother, Brent, suspects that their mother is not likely to provide them with a Grand Tour, since they have been expelled from college again. Brent is not concerned, remarking, "What is there to see in Europe? I'll bet those foreigners can't show us a thing we haven't got right here in Georgia". Ashley Wilkes, on the other hand, enjoyed the scenery and music he encountered on his Grand Tour and was always talking about it.

Popular culture

In 1998, the BBC produced an art history series Sister Wendy's Grand Tour presented by British Carmelite nun Sister Wendy. Ostensibly an art history series, the journey takes her from Madrid to Saint Petersburg with stop-offs to see the great masterpieces.

In 2005, British art historian Brian Sewell followed in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists for a 10-part television series, Brian Sewell's Grand Tour. Produced by the UK's Channel Five, Sewell traveled by car and focused his attention solely on Italy, stopping in Rome, Florence, Naples, Pompeii, Turin, Milan, Cremona, Siena, Bologna, Vicenza, Paestum, Urbino, Tivoli, and concluding at a Venetian masked ball. Material related to this can be found in the Brian Sewell Archive held by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

In 2009, the Grand Tour featured prominently in a BBC/PBS miniseries based on Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Set mainly in Venice, it portrayed the Grand Tour as a rite of passage.

External links

• Grand Tour online at the Getty Museum
• In Our Time: The Grand Tour: Jeremy Black, Edward Chaney and Chloe Chard
• https://web.archive.org/web/20180723020015/http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/grandtour_tourism/grandtour.html Title: The Grand Tour, Date: July 23, 2018 , English course taught at the University of Michigan
• Wanderings in the Land of Ham by a daughter of Japhet, London : Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858. A description of an Oriental Grand Tour at the Internet Archive Digital Library.

More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Grand_Tour ]

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