A World Made by Travel: classical journeys and digital history

Giovanna Ceserani: A World Made by Travel: classical journeys and digital history

The Grand Tour of Italy attracted thousands of British travelers throughout the eighteenth century. Founded on classical ideals, these travels were a formative institution of modernity, contributing to a massive reimagining of politics and the arts, of the market for culture, of ideas about leisure, and about classical education and research. But the Grand Tour’s significance has been hard to track among rich but dispersed records, with the result that scholarship has long focused on the best documented, and mostly elite, travelers. This paper will share work from the ongoing Grand Tour Project, which has been developing digital tools and an interactive database to widen the scope of study to include thousands of diverse Grand Tour travelers. It will share case-studies from the recently published book A World Made by Travel: the Digital Grand Tour, while asking what the stakes are for the future of Classics in conducting and disseminating historical research in the digital age.

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