Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was an educational ‘rite of passage’ undertaken by wealthy young European men mainly from the British aristocracy, although later it became fashionable amongst other European elites and also with people of means from the USA.

It flourished from about 1660 until the 1830s when the advent of steam transport – both ships and rail opened it up to wider participation which meant its’ social cachet was reduced. Throughout the 19th Century most educated young men of privilege undertook a Grand Tour. Later it also became a fashionable part of upper-class young women’s education, who would undertake the Grand Tour with a chaperone, usually a spinster aunt.

There was a fairly standard itinerary which was designed to ensure that the young gentlemen should enhance their Oxbridge education with exposure to both the cultural legacy of antiquity and the Renaissance as well as the polite and aristocratic society of the European continent – particularly France, which throughout the 18th Century was considered to be at the apogee of cultural development.

For the British aristocrats, it started in Dover, and then progressed through Paris to Italy where visits were made to all the famous centres of Venice, Florence and Rome. Later, the newly discovered archeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum were included. The Tour would then return via the Alps through Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Belgium taking in famous sites, galleries and works of art. A Grand Tour could last months or years, depending on whether participants decided to stay and study at universities along the way.

One of the main activities of the earlier Grand Tours was to acquire objects and art to take home and adorn country estates and grand London homes increasing their owners’ prestige and social standing. Crates of paintings, sculptures, books and other objects found their way back to England to adorn libraries, drawing rooms and even special galleries built for their display. Many Italian artists made a good living from providing portraits of the young gentlemen in ‘classical’ settings. The popularity of such collections of art and cultural objects waned with the demise of neoclassicism in the later 19th Century.