THE AGE OF INTERCULTURAL TRAVEL

DEFINITION AND PERIOD

The Grand Tour was a journey to the Continent, primarily to France and Italy, to improve the social and cultural awareness of well-born young men, to enable them to make useful contacts, and generally to introduce them to foreign lands and cultures. The idea of a Grand Tour developed out of the growing awareness in the seventeenth century of other times and other places

During the first half of the eighteenth century, particularly after 1720, many young men embarked on a journey to the Continent for it became an accepted stage in their growing maturity. The term Grand Tour appeared in the French translation of Richard Lassels’ “Italian Voyage”. It was a sort of European Patronage. The greatest diffusion of The Grand Tour was in the XVII e XVIII centuries, called “golden age of travel”. It became an institution for rich European countries.

REASONS OF THE GRAND TOUR

A Youth target can be explained with the learning and acquisition character awarded to the Tour experience. The journey got value for its intrinsic properties independently by the satisfaction of this or that need, in the name of curiosity and knowledge. The universalistic idea of culture that the European man felt as necessary was so linked with the idea of education that often European crowns financed the travel. The engine that drove this powerful European migration can be thus summarized as curiosity.

THE PROFILE OF GRANDTOURIST AND HIS TUTOR

THE GRANDTOURISTHeir of an aristocratic family, who wanted to

expand his humanistic knowledge through the medium of the trip. A typical Grand Tourist was a young man with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature, some interest in art, and very healthy financial resources. The Baconian’s precepts became the philosophical basis that was given to the educational journey.

Bacon, in a essay entitled ‘’Of travel.’’ (1625) advised that the young man destined to the Grand Tour should have a good knowledge about the language of the destination country that he should be provided of paper guides and a guardian; he recommended that he got a diary, that he didn’t stay too much in the same town and that, during the travel his journal should be dense and heterogeneous.

THE BEAR-LEADERThey, often escorted by experienced and

eldest tutors, called bear-leaders, travelled Italian streets. Tutors, were often chosen among artists, men of letters, men of culture, that without material means, had that wise discernment to give to their young lords a sound guide. Bear-leaders were responsible for the safety and financial control of the young in their charges.

THE PLACES OF TRAVEL

At the beginning of the seventeenth century statistics assigned to France the greatest number of months of residence, followed by Italy. Then it required, German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria), Switzerland, occasionally Flanders, and as we said before,the height and purpose of the trip:Italy. There was also the possibility of a Petit Tour, that is a 'tour' reduced and shortened of some stages.

FRANCE Paris was the first stage in the journey, it represented the best centre of social customs, the noblest expression of cultural trends in the life of Europe.

ITALY Italy, called “open-air museum” by Bacon and

Goethe, was the pole of great interests for its monumental resources, witnesses of the history and art that made Italy the homeland of culture, in all her expressions.

The Grand Tour was a journey to the Continent, primarily to France and Italy, to improve the social and cultural awareness of well-born young men, to enable them to make useful contacts, and generally to introduce them to foreign lands and cultures. The idea of a Grand Tour developed out of the growing awareness in the seventeenth century of other times and other places

WORK MADE BYAlessandro SilverioLucrezia Lanni