For members of the social elite in 18th-century England, extended travel for pleasure came to be considered part of an ideal education as well as an important symbol of social status. Italy, and especially Rome - a fashionable, exciting, and comfortable city - became the focus of such early tourists' interest. In this book, historian Jeremy Black recreates the actual tourist experiences of those who travelled to Italy on a Grand Tour. Relying on the private diaries and personal letters of travellers, rather than on the self-conscious accounts of literary travellers who wrote for wider audiences, the book presents an authentic picture of how British tourists experienced Italy, its landscapes, women, food, music, Catholicism, and more. illustrations, the book highlights the discrepancy between the idealised view of the Grand Tour and its reality: what people were meant to do was not necessarily what they did, what the guide books described as splendid was not always so perceived. Black quotes British visitors as they reflect on their trips, and he discusses what their Italian experiences meant to them. And he considers the intriguing effects of tourism on British culture during this most exciting of centuries.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a journey to Italy was considered an indispensable part of a young man's education. On arduous coach journeys, they pursued the trail of ancient Rome and the Renaissance to Florence, Venice, Rome, and Naples. Artists soon followed them, and thus yearning also led Johann Wolfgang von Goethe south from 1786 to 1788. 'Goethe's Italian Journey' vividly conveys his profound enthusiasm but also depicts well-organized, early tourism. Just seventy years later, the first photographers captured stations on the Grand Tour on gelatin silver plates. Giorgio Sommer (1834-1914), like Goethe from Frankfurt am Main, and Carlo Naya (1816-1882) produced intensely poetic views of St. Mark's Square, the Colosseum, a smoking Vesuvius, and beautiful fisherwomen on Capri.

This catalogue looks at the Grand Tour, a vital aspect of European civilisation in the age of the Enlightenment, from the point of view of several countries and includes the work of foremost artists of the period.

A fascinating study of how British travellers experienced, described and represented the cities they visited on the Grand Tour.

The Grand Tour has become a subject of major interest to scholars and general readers interested in exploring the historic connections between nations and their intellectual and artistic production. Although traditionally associated with the eighteenth century, when wealthy Englishmen would complete their education on the continent, the Grand Tour is here investigated in a wider context, from the decline of the Roman Empire to recent times. Authors from Chaucer to Erasmus came to mock the custom but even the Reformation did not stop the urge to travel. From the mid-sixteenth century, northern Europeans justified travel to the south in terms of education. The English had previously travelled to Italy to study the classics; now they travelled to learn Italian and study medicine, diplomacy, dancing, riding, fencing, and, eventually, art and architecture. Famous men, and an increasing proportion of women, all contributed to establishing a convention which eventually came to dominate European culture. Documenting the lives and travels of these personalities, Professor Chaney's remarkable book provides a complete picture of one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of western civilisation.

This personal and well-informed selection and description of the most interesting towns and individual buildings and archaeological sites in Turkey is the definitive guidebook for the discerning traveler. The author has been visiting Turkey for nearly fifty years and is the perfect companion for those who want to know about more than the obvious attractions. This book will immeasurably enhance any thoughtful traveler's visit, but can also be read at home as an aid to planning, or recalling, a trip, or simply as a guide to the astonishing and multi-faceted artistic and architectural riches of that most fascinating country.

In the age of the Grand Tour, foreigners flocked to Italy to gawk at its ruins and paintings, enjoy its salons and cafés, attend the opera, and revel in their own discovery of its past. But they also marveled at the people they saw, both male and female. In an era in which castrati were "rock stars," men served women as cicisbei, and dandified Englishmen became macaroni, Italy was perceived to be a place where men became women. The great publicity surrounding female poets, journalists, artists, anatomists, and scientists, and the visible roles for such women in salons, academies, and universities in many Italian cities also made visitors wonder whether women had become men. Such images, of course, were stereotypes, but they were nonetheless grounded in a reality that was unique to the Italian peninsula. This volume illuminates the social and cultural landscape of eighteenth-century Italy by exploring how questions of gender in music, art, literature, science, and medicine shaped perceptions of Italy in the age of the Grand Tour.

"Travellers on the Grand Tour came to Italy to see antiquities as well as paintings, flora, and fortifications. They also encountered the most modern Italian music - for concertos, sonatas, operas, oratorios, and cantatas were all invited in the course of the seventeenth century. Passaggio in Italia traces the musical experiences of visitors to Italy, from a Frenchman present at the birth of monody in Florence, a Spaniard attending the public opera theatre in Venice, a Dutchman attending a Roman oratorio, to a Russian describing an organ in Padua and open-air music on the Bay of Naples. The itinerary includes a look at Barbara Strozzi singing for the men of a Venetian academy, the Dutch composer Constantin Huygens absorbing the new Italian music, and listening to Corelli in terms of late Roman Baroque architecture. Music herself travels between Italy and Spain and north to the Netherlands via performers or by print. Also inspired by the five Baroque operas and a Stradella oratorio that were presented for the Early Music Festival Utrecht in 2006, the book gives views onto the lives of the composers Francesco Lucio and Cavalli in Venice, travelling players in Venetian opera, Marazzoli's La Vita humana, and the changing nature of the oratorio in Rome."--Page 4 de la couverture.

This work examines the forms of language that map out Italy as an imaginative topography of pleasure within British and French travel writing, over the period 1600 to 1830. It considers the tour with reference to strategies of description and themes.

- Perfectly interpreted in a contemporary, enriching manner, The Grand Tour takes the viewer on an inspirational journey through Italy's most individual hotels scattered all over the peninsula, all whilst letting readers discover the myriad of culture that there is to learn from every corner of this great country - The Grand Tour proposes a distinct way of traveling, becoming an invaluable travel companion or a unique window on the world in the making Beginning in the late 16th century it became fashionable for the aristocracy to visit Italy; from Venice to Florence and Rome as the culmination of their classical education. Thus, the idea of The Grand Tour was born; a practice which taught art, architecture and culture to the noblemen of the time. In England, where grand architecture was increasingly seen as an aristocratic pursuit, gentlemen often applied what they had learnt from the villas of Palladio in Veneto, the evocative ruins of Rome and the grand churches in Florence, to their own country houses and gardens, purchasing antiquities and paintings whilst in Italy. The Italy of today still remains a romantic destination. In this book, each reader will be able to travel on a modern-day Grand Tour, staying in the most inspiring and unique properties of the country, absorbing their infinite culture, majestic beauty, unique designs and charming stories. A journey through Italy in its full splendor.