The Grand Tour lives on for students in Italian language schools in Italy

During the late 17th century, and throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it became popular, indeed customary for young members of the British nobility and landed gentry to embark on a lengthy sojourn overseas that was coined The Grand Tour. During its heyday, The Grand Tour became immensely popular among wealthy young men from northern European countries outside England too. The primary purpose of the Grand Tour was to complete the education of an exclusive band of elite travellers by giving ‘gentlemen’ an aesthetic education through living abroad and absorbing the cultures they were visiting and improving their foreign language skills. 

A typical  itinerary for a ‘gentleman’ embarking on the Grand Tour would be to start in Paris, venture across the alps to Geneva, and then on to Italy, where the tourist would visit Turin, Florence, Padua, Bologna, Venice, Pisa and Rome before venturing south to the newly excavated archaeological sites of Pompeii, and later in the period, Sicily. The Grand Tour could take anything from several months to three years or more! Travellers were particularly keen to visit Sicily, with its ancient heritage, picturesque scenery, and wildlife, and for the opportunity to climb Mount Etna.

Goethe, the giant of German literature in the 18th century, travelled widely throughout Italy between 1786 and 1788. His 1817 memoir Italian Journey is considered by many to be the first travel book, providing a fascinating portrait of a country he admired more than any other for its profound cultural impact on the world. “To have seen Italy without seeing Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.” Goethe’s travels through Sicily document an itinerary that is remarkably similar to the type of experience that Italian language students seeking full cultural and language immersion courses can expect to receive at The Italian Academy and other Italian language schools in Italy. 

Ostensibly, the days of the Grand Tour are now consigned to the past, however, its legacy lives on and The Grand Tour leaves a heritage that makes it arguably one of the most influential reasons for the proliferation of language schools across the world, and, in particular,  Italian language schools in Italy. In the modern, hyper connected, increasingly globalised world of the 21st century, man’s appetite for travel, for learning new languages, for full cultural immersion in a culture other than their own, has become so much easier, affordable and accessible to a broad spectrum of the population.  

And the Grand-Tourist of the 18th century and the modern language school student have much more in common than may, at first glance, be supposed. The Grand Tour was inspired by an attraction to ancient civilisations, a desire to explore and absorb classical heritage, to find new ways of looking at the world by observing and living in different cultures and achieving mastery of foreign languages. These self-same ambitions are as relevant and applicable for Italian language students today as was the case in the 18th century!

Whereas the opportunity for students to complete their education by spending many months and even years abroad was once the preserve of the wealthy upper classes, these days more or less everyone who has the desire to learn a new language and immerse themselves in a new culture and heritage can achieve their goal simply  by attending Italian language schools in Italy.  Truly, even today, The Grand Tour lives on for students in Italian language schools in Italy.