The Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France

In the eighteenth century, modern tourism was born as the English flocked to see the European mainland, the majority of them following what was commonly called "the Grand Tour." Geographically, it was a generally agreed-upon route that reached its climax in Italy; but the tour was also seen as a route to self-knowledge and as an unrivaled opportunity to form valuable social contacts. Thomas Nugent's *The Grand Tour* was the single most important book articulating this new phenomenon of mass travel. It achieved the authoritative status of a Baedeker long before Karl Baedeker's birth. Nugent's great work, here reprinted for the first time since the eighteenth century, is a vital document in the history of tourism and the culture of eighteenth-century Britain.