The
grand tour of Europe was a trend that began in the late 1600s and continued
through the end of the enlightenment period. Numbers of tourists sharply rose
during the enlightenment period. The Grand tour was a large trip through
mainland Europe. The itinerary of these trips generally included Paris, Venice,
and Rome as the major locations visited. These tours were almost entirely taken
by the wealthy aristocracy although in the later enlightenment the trend
expanded into some wealthy middle class as the trips were very expensive and
took multiple years. The travelers were usually young men and the trend was
most popular with British aristocrats.
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| William Beckford's Grand Tour credit: Wikipedia Grand Tour |
Paris to study the social etiquette of the very highest crust of society and to debate politics and philosophy. Italy became a place that represented the old world but more specifically the interest of the tourists was almost solely fixed on the history of the classical world. Travelers seemed to develop an attitude of Italy being a The enlightenment era was a place kept in the past and isolated from progress.
The Grand Tour of Europe was the
earliest beginning of the modern tourism industry. As steam and rail
transportation became more commonly used it decreased the exorbitant fees to
take the grand tour and allowed more middle class travelers. The Enlightenment
Period saw the rise of a burgeoning world market and the Grand Tour is
reflective of a growing attitude to travel, absorb, and learn other places and
cultures. As the idea of globalization and a globalized world becomes ever more
apparent we can see some of the origins of our modern globalized world in the Grand Tour
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| The Pantheon in Rome Credit: Wikipedia Grand Tour |
The Grand Tour is such a fascinating phenomenon. Do you think there are still examples of travels with more or less set itineraries that young people go on?
ReplyDeleteThe formatting of this post could be cleaned up a bit. As we all get used to posting on this blog, let's work to make it look nice, and share our strategies.
The Grand Tour sounds similar to what a lot of college students do nowadays. Backpacking through Europe, staying in hostels, learning about the culture of various countries... It's a timeless vacation itinerary.
ReplyDeleteYeah Nadira, I was thinking about backpackers too. There are also ecotourists traveling to different places around the world.
DeleteThis Grand Tour Business certainly seems a lot similar to the sort of backpacking stuff people do these days, but it also looks a lot less accessible than it does today. Not only was transportation much worse back then, but from this post, I deign that it was an almost entirely high upper-class thing. I also find it interesting that the Tour Was most popular with the British, who are both an island nation and obsessed with exploration and colonization in a lot of ways.
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