The Grand Tour of Europe – Today

The GRAND TOUR OF EUROPE – the very words evoke images reminding us of what we perhaps think of as being the golden days of the Romance of Travel.

It was probably during the 17th Century that the origins of the Grand Tour of Europe, as we now understand it to have been, actually started. In due course, and as the travellers returned with wonderful tales of what they had seen, a Grand Tour developed to become an essential part of the education and learning process of the sons and daughters of the wealthy and privileged of the day.

Of course, travel then was something completely different from anything that we can all enjoy today. Imagine a world with only the horse as your method of transport on land. A time also when it could sometimes take three days just to cross the Channel! A Grand Tour then inevitably often took years and was fraught with quite as many perils as pleasures.

How different things are today. Now we are blessed, as never before, with an ease of transport which the original Grand Tourists could never have dreamed of. Perhaps it is in fact only NOW that we can ALL enjoy the golden age of travel? The pleasures and attractions of the Grand Tour are all still where they were centuries ago. The perils exist no longer. What better time to properly reintroduce the Grand Tour of Europe again?

Event Centric has been asked by a client to explore the full spectrum of the origins of the Grand Tour and then to formulate an operation which will properly recreate the experience. We list below some of the publications which describe much of the origins of the Grand Tour. Of course, a modern day Grand Tour of Europe has the great advantage that it can be taken in stages, over many years if well planned. One of the great changes that has happened over the last 300 years or so is that, as we get older, many of us now have more time, and often more money, than most of our ancestors ever had. What better way to enjoy a retirement than to plan one's own Grand Tours?

After several years of research into the various aspects of what the modern traveller requires, in order to receive the ultimate benefit from the Grand Tour Concept, the next stage of the development has recently lead to the creation of a new Operation, GRAND TOUR WORLD. www.grandtourworld.com. Presently this new website is designed to be used exclusively by potential suppliers for the time being.

I look forward to the day when it will dawn upon everybody that they can have odysseys and Grand Tours and share the fruits of the world. The capacity to see, to open up the vision of reality that an artist offers, is innate in us all.
(Sister Wendy Beckett)

For further details, please send an email to info@grand-tour-of-europe.com with the subject line "Grand Tour of Europe enquiry".

A comprehensive and very readable account of the Grand Tour is available here (link will open in new window), which also includes an audio presentation of the subject matter. Some of the many publications relating to the Grand Tour are listed below.

Edward Chaney The Evolution of the Grand Tour London: Routledge (2000)
William Edward Mead The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century Michigan: University of Michigan Library (2009)
Jeremy Black The British Abroad Stroud: The History Press Ltd (2003)
Jeremy Black Italy and the Grand Tour London: Yale University Press (2010)
Brian Dolan Ladies of the Grand Tour London: Flamingo (2010)
Tony Perrottet The Sinner's Grand Tour New York: Broadway Paperbacks (2011)
Sister Wendy Beckett Sister Wendy's Grand Tour London: BBC Books (1994)
Francesco da Mosto Francesco's Italy London: BBC Books (2006)
Francesco da Mosto Francesco's Venice London: BBC Books (2007)
Francesco da Mosto Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe (DVD) London: 2entertain (2008)
Francesco da Mosto Shakespeare in Italy (DVD) London: 2entertain (2012)
Kevin McCloud Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour of Europe London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2009)
Brian Sewell Brian Sewell's Grand Tour (DVD) London: WAGtv (2006)
Tobias Smollett Travels Through France and Italy London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks (2010)
Balfour Patrick Grand Tour - Diary Of An Eastward Journey London: Read Books (2007)
Lloyd Lewis On The Grand Tour 1765-1766 London: Read Books (2007)
Patrick Delaforce The Grand Tour McCarta (1990)
Carole Paul The Borghese Collections and the Display of Art in the Age of the Grand Tour Farnham: Ashgate Publishing (2008)
Frederick A Pottle Boswell on the Grand Tour-Germany and Switzerland, 1764 New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co (1953)
Christopher Hibbert Grand Tour Littlehampton Book Services (1969)
William Fitzgerald Lord Kildare's Grand Tour: The Letters of William Fitzgerald 1766-1769 London: The Collins Press (2000)
Graham Clarke Graham Clarke's Grand Tour London: Phaidon Press (1989)
Andrew Wilton Grand Tour: Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century London: Tate Publishing (1996)
Anne S.W. LeClercq (Ed) Elizabeth Sinkler Coxe's Tales from the Grand Tour, 1890-1910 Columbia: University of South Carolina Press (2006)
James T. Tice (Ed) Giuseppe Vasi's Rome: Lasting Impressions from the Age of the Grand Tour Oregon: University of Oregon Press (2010)
Anthony Burgess Age of the Grand Tour Elek (Paul) (Scientific Books) Ltd (1967)
Flavio Conti World of Pleasure (The grand tour) Littlehampton Book Services (1969)
Michael G. Brennan The Origins of the Grand Tour: The Travels of Robert Montagu, Lord Mandeville (1649-1654), William Hammond (1655-1658), Banaster Maynard (1660-1663) London: Hakluyt Society (2005)
Ian Strathcarron Joy Unconfined!: Lord Byron's Grand Tour Re-Toured London: Signal Books (2010)
Christopher Hibbert Grand Tour Littlehampton Book Services (1974)
Rosemary Sweet Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c.1690-1820 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2012)
Clare Hornsby The Impact of Italy: the Grand Tour and Beyond The British School at Rome (2000)

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