Talk:Grand Tour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Grand Tour is part of WikiProject Tourism, which is building a comprehensive guide to tourism-related articles on Wikipedia. To participate, you can edit the attached article, join or discuss the project.

Editors are currently needed to tag tourism-related articles with {{TourismProject}}.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Grand Tour article.
Article policies
Old door from Isfahan

Grand Tour was (or will be) featured on the Architecture Portal as Selected article during week 6 of 2007. For more information or to participate, visit WikiProject:Architecture

Contents

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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... — 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] Sources

I wrote most of this article and used Buzzard but I have other sources as well and they all say the same thing. By attributing these things to Buzzard in-line in the text it makes it seem somehow controversial, or specific to Buzzard - it is not, it is standard stuff you can find in any paper of encyclopedia article on the subject. If there is some reason to do it ie. you have conflicting information, than lets work that out where there is a known controversy (none that I am aware of). -- Stbalbach 17:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok I went back to my sources and added those and some cites - it should have been done, you are correct. -- Stbalbach 17:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

According to me, mass train transportation only began in the 1840's and not in the 1820's. The first continental railway (between Brussels and Malines/Mechelen was only built in 1835.81.242.177.229 (talk) 10:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added some details and references. The article doesn't yet attempt to describe the way in which the Grand Tour's itinerary changed 1660-1790; or the roles of British residents Joseph Smith at Venice, Sir Horatio Mann at Florence, Sir William Hamilton at Naples; or the pattern of purchases on the Grand Tour and their display in Britain; or the peripheries of the Grand Tour— Greece, Constantinople and the Levant, Spain and Portugal; and the twilight of the Grand Tour: the Cook's Tour. The guide-books and itineraries need mentioning, above all Richardson. Swedish and Danish Grand Tourists, Peter the Great, the comte du Nord. And the first female Grand Tourists. --Wetman (talk) 18:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)