TAKING THE GRAND TOUR

Professor Roey Sweet reveals why young British men journeyed to Europe as an important part of their education

- Roey Sweet

What was the Grand Tour? What kind of person embarked on it?

The Grand Tour is a term historians retrospectively apply to travel undertaken from the late 16th and early 17th century, and was not widely used by contemporaries until the middle of the 18th century. It really refers to an extended period of European travel usually associated with young men from the British upper-classes. On the tour they were expected to acquire taste, education, social experience and all the kinds of cultural capital that would make one qualified to be a member of the elite. Most of them would have had a travelling tutor whose role it was to provide education, a point of contact with the parents and to exercise restraint over the young man’s behaviour. But they weren’t the only people making tours of Europe at this time. People began to travel for health, to publish travel writing (which was a very popular genre of literature) and some simply to gain experience of other countries. In the second half of the 18th century there was increasing prosperity in England. So the social profile of who can afford to travel broadens to include middle-class professions such as merchants, professionals, lawyers, minor gentry and also families, including women. So it’s not just about the education of elite young men.

How did the concept of the Grand Tour begin?