This week’s edition of Culture.pl has an interesting historical article by Jakub Zarzycki, titled The Grand Tour, or the ‘Great Journey’ Through Europe. Here are some excerpts from the introduction.
The concept of a Grand Tour was introduced in the 1770s by an Englishman, Richard Lassels, to describe a journey serving to supplement education, develop aesthetic taste, acquire practical skills, broaden the knowledge of foreign languages and acquire general refinement by young noblemen – this was one of the most important social and cultural phenomena in the 17th and 18th centuries. Young Polish nobles also made such journeys.
As noted by Anna Markiewicz in the book Educational Journeys in the Times of Jan III Sobieski: Peregrinationes Jablonovianae (Podróże Edukacyjne w Czasach Jana III Sobieskiego: Peregrinationes Jablonovianae), Richard Lassels ‘included in this term the meaning of the journey – it was grand because of the duration and length of the route, but it was also supposed to be a grand event, a journey of a lifetime’. In the 17th and 18th centuries, such journeys were very popular, if not common, among the richest stratum of the European and Polish nobility. From this designation, other terms were also coined, which still function today – the English ‘tourist’ being someone taking part in a Grand Tour.
The very premise of the Grand Tour was very simple. As Markiewicz wrote, the following were visited:
France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and England. A great foreign trip was then the last stage of education of European elites, undertaken in order to gain knowledge, skills, to get to know the world, foreign countries, their cultures, customs and language. Young people visited foreign universities, courts, academies and military camps.
In the 1730s, Stanisław Lubomirski explained the goals of such an expedition to his sons Aleksander and Jerzy: ‘One should [become familiar with] anything about [the functioning of] a good institution, polish wit and good spirit, and comprehend all wisdom and decorum.’
The point was therefore to see what principles of a foreign system (political or social) could be useful in Poland, to acquire knowledge and skills indispensable in public life, and also to acquire refinement and a certain ability to ‘be in the world’.
Trips in the 17th century – which needs to be emphasized – were, for social, moral and financial reasons, reserved only for young men from wealthy noble families.
However, in the 18th century, the Grand Tour underwent changes – the educational aspect (i.e. gaining specific knowledge) becomes less important, and what matters most is developing the right taste, which is why Italy becomes the most important destination. As Marek Bratuń notes in the article Grand Tour: Birth – Development – Dusk (Grand Tour: Narodziny – Rozwój – Zmierzch): ‘The main purpose of the Grand Tour in the 18th century are the broadly understood arts that contribute to the development of good taste, the most perfect forms of which were preserved under the Italian sky.’ It is also connected with the archaeological excavations of the times, in Pompeii (1738) and Herculaneum (1748), bringing a new wave of interest in the art of antiquity.
The activity of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his work devoted to the history of ancient art, published in 1755, was also significant. The proof of this influence is the work published in 1815, titled On the Art of the Ancients, or Polish Winckelmann (O Sztuce u Dawnych czyli Winkelman Polski) by Stanisław Kostka Potocki, one of the pioneers of Polish archeology and aficionado of ancient art.
Marek Bratuń also adds that ‘it is the primacy of aesthetics in the Italian Grand Tour of the second half of the 18th century […] that will effectively transform the original educational journey into an aesthetic and tourist journey, without a preceptor; in the footsteps of the departing gentlemen, the braver ladies would also follow.’
This tendency is also noticed by Agata Roćko in the article Polish Grand Tour of ‘Fashionable Ladies’ (Polski Grand Tour ‘Dam Modnych’), writing that ‘Polish ladies have already followed on the beaten track of the Grand Tour, just like the ladies in Europe, even though their journeys were not educational and cognitive, but rather aesthetic and touristic.’ Among Polish travelers, one can mention, for example, Izabela Lubomirska née Czartoryska (she went to Italy with Kostka Potocki in the years 1785 to 1786) or Teofilia Konstancja Morawska née Radziwiłł (author of Diary of a European Journey in the Years 1773-1774 [Diariusz Podróży Europejskiej w Latach 1773-1774]).
The trips themselves over the course of time ceased to be reserved only for the aristocracy, becoming in the 19th century also available to the moderately wealthy nobility and the wealthier bourgeoisie. Thanks to this, the phenomenon has been permanently recorded in the history of the Old Continent, because it is then that modern travel around Europe begins to take shape as a typical activity consisting in going to a foreign place and visiting it, completely unrelated to a specific reason (e.g. pilgrimage, a diplomatic deployment or commercial mission). In a way, the idea of such an ‘uninvested’ trip (because its purpose was to see art and visit interesting places) continues to this day – this type of tourism is a typical cultural activity of the European middle class, and a trip to Italy remains its quintessence.
