The Grand Tour of the Eighteenth Century and its Influence on Architecture.

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Revisiting the Grand Tour

“Architecture you cannot avoid” (golding, 125)

Architecture is hard to be ignored, is the most public of the arts. It bears profound meaning and acquired knowledge of generations past, it is a reflection on time and people everywhere you travel. The lay traveller, whose emotions command attention to the visual force of the built environment can’t stand idle to the abstract impersonation of the object. The architect-traveller approaches the process from an equal visual perspective, but from a different focus and previous knowledge. In order to investigate the phenomenon of the impact of relevance for architecture to travel and experience for himself the object of his knowledge, particularly in an age of virtual visual knowledge, I would investigate the eighteenth century custom of the Grand Tour and one of most prominent figures, Sir John Sloane. Then I will analyze the figure of Rem Koohaas and the particular significance of his theories in relation the Grand Tour experience.

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was a phenomenon greatly associated to the young members of the British aristocracy and gentry of the eighteenth century. Although not a solely British custom, as it was also fashionable among other northern European countries, it was Britain who contributed with the larger numbers.

The custom and its social relevance started in the middle of the seventeenth century. One of its first relevant figures to embark on the trip was Inigo Jones, who most probably travelled for the first time in the late 1590s, but it was in 1613 when he travelled to Italy in the company of the Earl of Arundel, one of Britain’s greatest patrons of the arts of his time. Patronage became the driving force of this new phenomenon, guiding the young grand tourists’ curiosity and providing them with much needed access to the local establishment and sources of knowledge. The Grand Tour became a staple in the education of young gentlemen, and although they had to travel through other countries, Italy was its primary destination. By the mid 1700s, the trip had been formed of a series of expected destinations, including Paris as a first stop in the continent and followed by a journey down to Marseille, to then enter by sea into the Italian peninsula through Genoa. Italy at the time was formed by a collection of city-states that rivalled each other in the arts, architecture, wealth and power, which were therefore very suspicious of foreign visitors. The renaissance era that had started in Florence as consequence of the new focus in literature and historic texts by scholars went hand in hand with a desire for cultural and artistic achievements. The highlights of the trip were Florence along with Naples, Rome and Venice were the highlights of the trip. It was precisely Florence the common first stop, and the British consul Horace Mann, who welcomed travellers into the Alglo-Italian society, for almost a most of the century, which eased the arrival of grand tourists and prepare them to the main attraction of the trip, Rome.

Rome had regained its predominant position as Europe’s most popular place of pilgrimage a few centuries back with the return of the Pope from Avignon, but the city itself was only a mere shadow of what young British aristocrats might have imagined from their education, with considerably less vibrant cultural life but comparison with neighbouring city-states; but in turn provided travellers with the ruins the Roman Forum. In an age of limited access to culture, the grand tour provided with a unique opportunity to learn from the sources of this ancient texts, which were used as the main educational tool of places such as Oxford or Cambridge. The term, and to some extend the custom are said to have derived from the writings of Richard Lassels’s book ‘the voyage of Italy’ published in 1670, a little under a century prior to its height in popularity, which occurred between the 1740s ad 1790s (Borley, 13). Though it never experienced the popularity of the late eighteenth century, since it suffered an abrupt halt during the French revolution and the hostilities between France and England, a slight revival of tour took place in the 1820s for a brief time as new routes to Greece (with the demise of the ottoman empire) and the appearance of mass tourism (Thomas Cook established his international travelling agency in 1841), shifted the focus and tradition of the Tour.

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The lucky and audacious young aristocratic men who took part in the trip during these years where in search of leisure and drinking as much as in learning from the Italian masters, ‘pleasure and profit, or voluptas  and utilitas’ where the twin poles around…(the) debate on the pros and cons of foreign travel’ (Chaney, 58). Rare exceptions to this norm were the aspiring artists on travelling studentships that were made available by the different academies, or under direct patronage. The trip used to take between three and five years, and it was the opportunity to acquire education, manners and a ...

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