Travelling for culture: the Grand Tour

In the eighteenth century and into the early part of the nineteenth, considerable numbers of aristocratic men (and occasionally women) travelled across Europe in pursuit of education, social advancement and entertainment, on what was known as the Grand Tour. A central objective was to gain exposure to the cultures of classical antiquity, particularly in Italy. In this free course, you’ll explore some of the different kinds of cultural encounters that fed into the Grand Tour, and will explore the role that they play in our study of Art History, English Literature, Creative Writing and Classical Studies today.This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A112 Cultures.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 Discovering the ancient world
• 1 Discovering the ancient world
• 1.1 The Colosseum in antiquity
• 1.2 The Colosseum in ancient poetry
• 1.3 The Colosseum on a Roman coin
• 1.4 The Colosseum and its meaning through time
• 1.5 What was the Grand Tour?
• 2 Portraits of the Grand Tour
• 2 Portraits of the Grand Tour
• 2.1 The Grand Tour portrait: people
• 2.2 The Grand Tour portrait: places and objects
• 2.3 The Grand Tour portrait: people and professions
• 2.4 The Grand Tour portrait: couples
• 2.5 The Grand Tour portrait: families
• 3 The poetry of the Grand Tour
• 3 The poetry of the Grand Tour
• 3.1 Byron at the Colosseum
• Looking at Byron’s verse in more detail: paraphrase
• 3.2 Rhyme
• 4 Postcards from the Grand Tour
• 4 Postcards from the Grand Tour
• 4.1 Rilke and the Archaic Torso of Apollo
• 4.2 Objects and the creation of stories
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Acknowledgements