The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was a peculiarly English feature of aristocratic culture and, in the eighteenth century, an indispensable part of a young gentleman’s education. Christopher Hibbert’s lively book chronicles the delights and perils awaiting the young Englishman of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the continent of Europe. We follow the Tourists through the rigours of German country inns, the hazards of crossing the Alps, entanglements with courtesans in Venice and crooked antiquaries in Rome, and the exuberance and gaiety of Naples.The book follows the route taken by the intrepid travellers – France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Low Countries – and we see Europe through the eyes of such Tourists as John Evelyn, Edward Gibbon, Horace Walpole, and the irrepressible James Boswell, who, when in Rome, was somewhat disconcerted to find large parts of the Colosseum full of dung.Although the experience of the Tour confirmed many of our native prejudices against foreign customs, it did leave an indelible mark on our cultural life, a mark which was reflected in public and private art collections, in architecture, patronage, food, and fashion. The illustrations give an evocative picture of the Europe with which the Tourists were familiar; the stagecoaches and inns, the canals of Venice, the ‘pigstyes and palaces’ of Rome, and the castles of the Rhine.