According to Bruce Redford, the Tour offered a heady combination of aesthetic, social political, and sexual experience, and it provided its alumni with a life-long source of cultural and political authority. Yet from the beginning the Tour was also viewed with deep suspicion: it was feared that the very experiences that completed the British gentleman might well undo him.

The Grand Tour: the cultural rite of passage from London to Paris, Berlin, Venice, Florence, Rome, and down to the boot of Italy, which linked the Continent’s most spectacular artistic treasures. Sex and travel have always been intertwined, and never more so than on the classic Grand Tour of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today the Continent is still littered with salacious remnants of that golden age, where secret boudoirs, notorious dungeons, and forbidden artifacts lured travelers all the way from London to Capri. In The Sinner’s Grand Tour, celebrated historian and travel writer Tony Perrottet sets off to discover a string of legendary sites and relics that are still kept far from public view. In southern France, an ancient text leads him inside the château of the Marquis de Sade, now owned by fashion icon Pierre Cardin. In Paris, an 1883 prostitute guide helps him discover the Belle Époque fantasy brothel Le Chabanais and the lost “sex chair” of King Edward VII. Renaissance documents in the Vatican Secret Archives point the way to the Pope’s very own apartments in Vatican City, wherein lies the fabled Stufetta del Bibbiena, a pornography-covered bathroom painted by Raphael in 1516. With his unique blend of original research, sharp wit, and hilarious anecdotes, Perrottet brings us a romping travel adventure through the scandalous backrooms of historical Europe.

- 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.

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.

The tradition of the Grand Tour was started in 1608 by an intrepid but down-at-the-heels English courtier named Thomas Coryate, who walked across Europe, miraculously managed to return home in one piece, and wrote a book about his bawdy misadventures. With The Grand Tour, Tim Moore proves not only that he is Coryate's worthy successor but one of the finest and funniest travel writers working today. Armed with a well-thumbed reprint of Coryate's book, Moore donned a purple plush suit and set off in a second-hand and highly temperamental Rolls-Royce through France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland. Like Coryate, Moore possesses an astonishing ability to land himself in humiliating predicaments. His account of his hilariously memorable misadventures on Venice's canals on one fateful afternoon is by itself worth the price of admission. Moore brings new life to the Old World and in the process sends readers into paroxysms of laugher and delight.

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

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.