Talk:Grand Tour

"The Grand Tourist"

 * The description for the image Dunstanville.jpg doesn't cite any reference and the source image has a dead source link. I've posted a comment about this on the image's discussion page and added a "fact" template to the description until someone can find something to substantiate the claims made by the poster in its description. bwmcmaste (talk) 16:25, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Additionally, it would appear that the same issue exists with the image Shepherds beside Roman ruins.jpg. I have posted a comment about this issue on this image's discussion page and added a "fact" template to its description as well. bwmcmaste (talk) 16:32, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

a discussion
English changed to British: many noblemen doing the tour were from North Britain (nowadays usually known as Scotland) - dave souza 08:21, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Nowadays known as Scotland? It's been Scotland for a long while! Grunners 22:11, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Didn't rich American youth do this as well? I definately remember hearing about one of the residents of the Biltmore Estate doing it. -Tydaj 3 July 2005 20:41 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly, and the OED quoted below shows that the term was commonly used in that modern sense as a way to retrace the historical steps of the original. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia editor who originally wrote this entry, created it in the most narrow, exclusive sense, leaving out the later usage, which tried to bring back the term in modern times. We see this in spades throughout British and American literature after 1840, including the travel journalism of the time.  It was even omnipresent in early to mid twentieth century literature as well, but in the sense of a homage. Viriditas (talk) 16:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

another discussion
Is this even limited to the 18th century, to the nobility, or to the Anglophone world? I quote:
 * Sometime near the end of 1640 or the beginning of 1641 Van Vliet concluded his studies and, as befitted a fashionable young gentleman, subsequently embarked on his grand tour.
 * Cornelis Dekker, The Origins of Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries (Leiden: Brill, 1999), p.63

Which refers to it as a common practice of the Dutch middle classes in the 17th century, which is something one would never guess from the current article... &mdash; Haeleth Talk 16:46, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

When and why did the Grand Tour stop? World War I? Edward 17:29, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this article needs to be cleaned up on several fronts. First, it is unorganized. It does a decent job at the broad strokes but lacks certain things and contains others that should not have a place in an encyclopediac history article; i.e., point of view, opinion, etc. For example, Britons did not go to Paris to erase their "backwardness", and I am not British but this was certainly not viewed by the British of the time as a cultural trait of theirs. Paris was simply the center of continental European culture and high fashion. Writing of Grand Tourists as "backward" in this manner is no different to calling the French of the period snooty, snobby and elitist. There should also be some sourcing here. I've done extensive research on the period and this is the only place where I've read that Coryat's Crudities is credited with starting the craze for the Grand Tour. Any mention of "general credit" should give some credit somewhere. Among historical corrections, it should be pointed out that historians generally (and this can be easily backed up) consider the Grand Tour to be a phenomenon that reached its peak in the eighteenth century. The French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic Wars interrupted travel and tourism and is the usual markoff point for the Grand Tour. Remnants of it remained in the nineteenth but it was greatly transformed in both tradition and practice due to radical advancements and changes in technology and culture. The railway, the photograph, Cook's group tours and Baedeker's travel guides all contributed to eroding the old style of the Grand Tour, which could last for years and was practiced exclusively by aristocrats, into the movement of popular tourism that is familiar today. The common and broad itinerary was Dover-Calais-Paris-antique and Renaissance Italy (Rome, Florence, Naples). This should be noted. Perhaps most important is that the unique reasons of the Grand Tour be clearly defined, with reference, neutrality, historical perspective, and good writing. I might get around to this in awhile, but just thought I should think out loud here.

more discussions
Swedish aristocratic and merchant youth practiced such tours during 17th century (Peter Englund books about rise of Sweden as great power, describes such voyage of future kind). It is quite likely that the tradition is older and more widespread. Pavel Vozenilek 22:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And article Dutch Golden Age directly mentions Duth during 17th century. Pavel Vozenilek 22:41, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

OED reference
According to the article:
 * According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was coined by Richard Lassels (c 1603-1668)

Can someone with access to OED please verify that OED uses the term "coined" - there is not entire agreement about the origins of the term, as the history section discusses. Does the OED say "coined"? OED is not a replacement for real historical scholarship, it's more like tempting fast food scholarship. Green Cardamom (talk) 22:22, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * No, as you intimate, the OED just has Lassels as their earliest citation, and bracketed to indicate that it's being used as a foreign phrase, at that.

[Originally Fr. = ‘great circuit’; but now apprehended as an English phrase.]''' a. A tour of the principal cities and places of interest in Europe, formerly supposed to be an essential part of the education of young men of good birth or fortune. Chiefly in phr. to make the grand tour. [1670 R. LASSELS ''Voy. Italy Pref. avj, And no man under~stands Livy and Cæsar..like him who hath made exactly the Grand Tour of France and the Giro of Italy.] 1748 RICHARDSON Clarissa'' (1768) IV. 261 Should we not make the Grand Tour upon this occasion? 1748 SMOLLETT ''Rod. Rand.'' i. (1760) I. 3 You have made the grand tour. 1837 ''Penny Cycl. VII.'' 56/2 In 1714 he [Chesterfield] left the University to make the usual grand tour of Europe. 1869 ROGERS Pref. to Adam Smith's W.N. I. 12 Young men of fortune and fashion made what was called the ‘grand tour’ under the guidance of a tutor.

(italics copied from OED) Pseudomonas(talk) 10:15, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

In the intro Grand Tour ended by 1850?
"The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary." Isn't this just wrong- disagreeing with the main section of article. In fact once steam ships and railroads made the travel easier, faster and less expensive more people were able to and did in fact take the grand tour. Many more people took the grand tour in the second 1/2 of the 19th century than did 200 years earlier. Nitpyck (talk) 14:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Citation from New York Times
The article does not give any specifications to what date etc. the NYT article that is cited is from. Can anyone fix?

Kostanje's Article
This seems vaguely mad. Does it really deserve a whole paragraph? Furius (talk) 02:54, 7 December 2013 (UTC) I agree. At first I thought it was a spoof. It doesn't connect up with anything else in the article. Turf it out. At most he could be included among people who have written on the tour. As it is it is far too conspicuous for such a marginal idea. Campolongo (talk) 13:46, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I recommend the deWP article (rated as a Good Article)
I've just read the German version of this page, and it's very good; I recommend it highly (even Google's machine translation lets a lot of the value shine through). Unfortunately there are no in-line references, so it will be hard to incorporate material from that version into enWP with the current requirements on attribution. Still, it's well worth a read. Scarabocchio (talk) 17:02, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Proper noun? (article-title case)
I recognize that this article is not just about some trip that is really great (lay-language "grand" and "tour"), but is it actually a proper noun that merits each word capitalized, or just a phrase that has a specific meaning? DMacks (talk) 07:14, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Use in the context of 1898?
What would be the proper English-language term for similar tours taken by artists in late 19th century? e.g. Alexey Shchusev: "In August 1898 Shchusev and his wife started their sixteen-month Grand Tour, via Vienna, Trieste, Italy to Tunisia, and then via Italy to Paris, where Shchusev studied for six months at the Académie Julian." This is not the aristocratic Grand Tour of the rich and famous, but what is it then? Retired electrician (talk) 12:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC) It's certainly valid to continue to use the same term for 19th century, post-Napoleonic tours (your specific question), but I will try to tweak the Grand Tour article to make it clearer how much it changed in nature over time. Scarabocchio (talk) 16:21, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The earliest Grand Tours were around 1600 (Inigo Jones, Thomas Coryat, ..) so it's not surprising that what was understand by the term has changed over the 400 years. The base concept, a longish journey to visit/ see/ experience the "classical roots of Western Civilisation" remained the same, but the centrality of education/ learning was superceded by pleasure (in very broad terms). One great dividing line was the end of the Napoleonic Wars.  Here's The Westminster Review in 1825, pondering on why so many Brits made the Grand Tour after: "Immediately after the peace, so astonishing was the inundation of Britons, like a second irruption of the Goths, poured down upon Italy, that the poor Italians at first were seriously persuaded that the good people of England, in dread of an impending revolution at home, were hurrying away from their own country as fast as they could drive. Well, indeed, might a stranger marvel what business all these multifarious classes of persons could have in the same place. The spell which draws them here may be in one word explained. It is the fashion to go to Rome."

Other media
is it appropriate to add other media that features grand tours? a gentlemean's guide to vice and virtue by mackenzi lee takes place primerly on a grand tour 84.68.25.24 (talk) 21:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)