For hundreds of years Rome and Italy, as the center of European Christianity, had been a place of pilgrimage for many visitors. During the seventeenth century they also became the favorite secular destination of the aristocracy and gentry of France and England, who after experiencing a classical education sought to visit classical sites, believing that in so doing they became closer to the past they were learning about.
The term “Grand Tour” was first used in the French translation of A Voyage or a Compleat Journey Through Italy by Richard Lassels, published in 1670. The English were the pioneers of the Grand Tour, and most of the early accounts of similar journeys (for which there was a large market) were written by them in the late seventeenth century. Armchair travel was safer than the real thing; in those early days of European tourism, travel was indeed a risky business and included perilous ocean and mountain crossings, bandits, wars, disease, and death. However, by the end of the seventeenth century the paths were so well worn that there was enough infrastructure to support greater numbers of travelers: better and safer roads, regular coaches, accommodation, food, and protection.
In 1615 the great English scientist Francis Bacon wrote in his essay “Of Travel” that an educational trip abroad was a necessity for every young gentleman. But there were additional reasons alongside that of education. Aristocratic young men had to be kept busy until they inherited, so many traveled to get them out of the country to where they could gamble and “sow their wild oats” far enough away so as not to be troublesome. Others traveled for reasons of health and “social finishing,” their numbers swelling to include scholars and wealthy sons of the middle classes. The English remained the most numerous grand tourers, and they established the itinerary. The “Grand Tour” had to take in Paris and then Italy via the Mediterranean or the Alps. When in Italy tourers visited Florence, Venice, and Rome, and by the mid-eighteenth century they ventured farther south to Naples to view the newly discovered cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. A Grand Tour could take years, and it could involve a whole entourage, but at the very least it required a tutor or tour leader.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century there were even more reasons to travel. Italy itself was undergoing a period of great cultural development that was strongly supported by the impact of the classical world on its artists and intellectuals. As a result, the works of many great contemporary Italian artists in the areas of music, painting, sculpture, and architecture were becoming attractions in themselves.
The history of the Society of Dilettanti, founded in London in 1732, illustrates the significance of, and the changes to, the “Grand Tour” over time.
The Society was initially a dining and drinking club, and its members were young male graduate grand tourers from the upper and middle classes of England who had enjoyed Italy—and its wine, classical sites, and culture— and retained a passion for the place. There was also a hint of political radicalism in that many members disliked the conservatism and parochialism of English cultural and political life under the Whig government of Sir Robert Walpole. By 1736 there were forty-six members and thereafter membership was limited to just fifty-four, some of whom were also members of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and eventually trustees of the British Museum.
Sir Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester and one of the founders of the Society had taken six years to complete his Grand Tour and had returned to build the neo-Palladian Holkham Hall in Norfolk to house his collection of classical sculpture. Another founder, Lord Burlington, toured twice in 1715 and 1727 and pursued his interests in Roman central heating and gardens. Other members included the great collectors of sculpture Charles Townley and William Weddell and the art scholar Richard Payne Knight.
The Society gradually transformed itself into a serious participant in the Greek revival and into a respected learned group who sponsored both the research and the publication of knowledge of the classical world in England. Between 1751 and 1754 the Society funded an expedition by English architects James Stuart and Nicholas Revett to record the monuments of Athens (published between 1762 and 1816). In 1765 the Society funded Richard Chandler to survey the monuments of Ionia (or coastal Turkey), which they published between 1769-1779. These were monumental contributions to scholarship.
The Society also funded students from the Royal Academy to travel to Italy and paint. In England their interests and resulting publications and paintings influenced fashions in architecture, the decorative arts, clothing, and jewelry. On his return to London in 1759, Stuart designed the first neoclassical interior in Europe at Spencer House; it comprised wall decorations copied from Herculaneum and copies of Greek and Roman furniture.
The golden age of the Grand Tour was from the mid - to late eighteenth century. This corresponded with the most politically peaceful period in Europe for centuries. From 1713 and the Treaty of Utrecht until 1793 and the French Revolution, Europe experienced forty years without war. The character of the Grand Tour changed during this period. Eventually just touring was not enough—acquiring antiquities and souvenirs became another substantial reason for traveling to Europe—and the Society of Dilettanti began to fund archaeological expeditions and publish the results.
While many antiquities did make it back to England, this avaricious touring caused authorities throughout Italy to tighten access to classical antiquities and to pass laws to ensure that the best pieces stayed in Italy. The Vatican acquired many private collections, and a number of museums (among them the great Capitoline and Vatican museums) were created to house and display them. This led to a highly profitable trade in copies and fakes, and in Italy a whole school of artists, such as Batoni, Canaletto, and Piranesi, developed that catered to English tastes and was funded by English visitors. As time passed the Grand Tour itinerary was enlarged to include sites farther south in the Mediterranean. After Naples and the archaeological sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii, grand tourers moved on to Sicily, and then later into Greece.
In 1766 Sir Joshua Reynolds was elected a member of the Society of Dilettanti. Between 1777 and 1779 he painted two portraits of his fellow members that seem to mark both the Society’s heyday and predict its passing. The first
Joshua Reynolds. (Library of Congress)
Portrait was painted to mark the reception into the Society of Sir William Hamilton, the great eighteenth-century patron, aristocrat, diplomat, collector. The second shows a group of members, including Sir Joseph Banks, one of the great patrons of nineteenth century British science, who undertook a scientific expedition to the Pacific with Captain James Cook. Banks was the representative of a new age for, and a new kind of, collecting and collectors, that of institutionalized collecting by museums and the creation of disciplines within universities to educate those who studied the past. This kind of collecting and new breed of collectors would contribute to the establishment of scientific archaeology during the nineteenth century.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars finished the golden age of the Grand Tour, as once again Europe became unsafe for travelers. However, it was Napoleon’s own grand tour to Egypt, with an entourage of soldiers, scientific experts, and scholars, that turned the eyes of Europe toward the east and deeper into the past. It would be Egypt and the Near East that would absorb the antiquarian energies of Europe during the nineteenth century and contribute to the rise of archaeology.
See also Duke of Arundel Brings His Collection of Classical Antiquities to London (1613); Rediscovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii (1709-1800); Sir William Hamilton’s Collections (1764-1798).
Further Reading
Black, J. 1992. The British abroad: the grand tour in the 18th century. Stroud, UK: A. Sutton. Ford, B. 1981. The grand tour. Apollo CXIV/235: 390-400.
World History
