The Grand Tour and Sustainability

How the Grand Tour can become an inspiration to travel responsably

Leggi in italiano

Latelly, I've found some articles online that analyse the future of tourism. Some of them caught my attention because they took into consideration a concept that I myself thought about in this circumstance: the Grand Tour.

What’s the Grand Tour?

The Grand Tour was a journey made by the scions of European aristocracy in the 17^th century to complete their education in the artistic field and, having to face different situation and meet reality far from their home, to make it a real school of life. Italy was a principal and essential destination of the Grand Tour. For some months, travellers moved and stayed in Italian towns, learning about the art and the culture of the place.

Many people see the Grand Tour as the forerunner of mass tourism, but I don’t think it’s completely correct to consider it in this way. In reality, the Grand Tour was something that few people could afford, mostly nobles. Just think that these journeys lasted months and months, sometimes even years. In the 19^th century the Grand Tour opened also to people who weren’t part of aristocracy, to the bourgeois class, and travel started to be something not just for rich nobles, but for wealthy people, too.

Obviously, during these journeys some stereotypes formed and some of them still survive. For example, we Italians are still considered irrational and ruled by our passions by those who lean in these inaccurate considerations. Fortunately, some travellers and some female travellers in particular had a more opened and “responsible” approach toward the destination where they stayed and the locals they met. From this point of view, I found illuminating the book by Attilio Brilli Le viaggiatrici del Grand Tour (the female travellers of the Grand Tour), where you can see that female travellers were more attentive and opened toward this aspect of travel. They, mistreated by male equivalents, looked Italians and locals in general beyond their appearances. Travel was the opportunity to go out from the “prison” of their condition of women, in a period when man was at the centre of social activities, and overall it was a moment to open their horizons.

While I was reading this book, providentially gifted at the beginning of the quarantine, I thought about the way of travelling nowadays and about the ever-growing attention for a tourism that can be responsible toward the environment and destinations. I started to wander if it’s possible to reconnect with that way of travelling, slower, more careful, something that it’s not a hit and run travel. Obviously, it would be necessary to rethink the concept of travel as we’ve always known and to convert it in something different and new. Sure, it’s not possible to think about us as the nobles of the Grand Tour, going around for months, unless it’s our job. But those who haven’t so much time and, let’s say it, this economic availability, how can they do it? We should change the way we conceive travel and holidays, but also that in which we manage the time we dedicate to these activities.

In a particular period like the one we’re living, we’re realising that the solution to restart with tourism in Italy is to turn toward territoriality, that is to say toward what is close to us and, nevertheless, we may not know. I make a practical example: I live in Apulia, in the province of Taranto, I could say right in the middle of the region, at the border with Basilicata. Do you think that I know perfectly the two regions? Absolutely not! I’ve explored a good part of them, but surely there are so many things to see that an entire life wouldn’t be enough to know them perfectly. Who can say with absolute certainty to know perfectly his own region?

This is the right moment to make small Grand Tours and, as the scions of the past, to explore our territory, its natural and artistic beauties, to taste its local food and to be involved in its traditions. Everything done following the principles of responsible tourism.

Let’s start with means of transport

As luck would have it, our territory is revaluating ancient paths, making them accessible to be followed by bike, on foot, with donkeys, in a variety of sustainable ways. Why not follow a path like that to reach different destinations? Travels made in this way become a real life experience, that allows us to experiment new ways to live a journey.

Accommodation facilities

The principles of responsible tourism invite to pay attention to the type of accommodation facilities choosing those that operate in total environmental, social and economic sustainability of the locality where they work. In a moment in which every field has suffered a loss of productivity, a valid opportunity of recovery could be the collaboration between different local business realities to offer a service that is completely local. From tourist’s point of view, think how it could be beautiful to stop, after many hours of walking, in a facility that offers all the possible local typicality. A full immersion in the environment and in the culture of the place that you’re visiting. Personally, I’d be very enthusiastic of it. The choice of a sustainable alternative, obviously, isn’t just a tourist’s responsibility, but also of the business operators and I think that it’d be right to think to convert to a more responsible offer.

Art and culture

We’ve seen that the Grand Tour was focused on the knowledge of the art and the culture of the visited country. Italy was one of the favourite destinations because it was and is one of the richest in it, it’s  one of the best nations in this field, it’s always been! We’re so used to this richness that almost we don’t pay attention to it and give for granted what we have. This is the right moment to reconnect with what has characterized us for centuries: our culture. Museums, castles, cathedrals are there speaking to us, about our history, about the masterpieces that we’ve been able to realize and about that artistic genius that we all have inside as Italians. This is the moment to rediscover ourselves. If there’s something that we should learn from bourgeois travellers of the Grand Tour (those who travelled to travel and not to complete their studies), it’s that in order to know and to understand art and history, there’s no need to be academics, because a museum is there to explain right there what you are seeing and, so, learning.

Let’s take our time

We always complain not to have enough time. And what if, instead of running after the clock, trying to “use” time at our best, we take it to do, with calm and with our pace, what we desire. The more time passes the more we want speed, efficiency, the so called “all and now”, but there’s something deeply unnatural in this concept. We’re human beings, not computers: we need our time, like nature to bear fruit. Why don’t we grant us the time to make what we want? The society says that we must be faster and faster, that if we don’t run around, we’re not making enough and at the end we’re all stressed out. At least when we do something for ourselves, like a travel, a holiday, let’s give us the right time to enjoy the moment and if that time isn’t enough to make everything that we’ve planned, it means that we wanted to do too many things all together. Respect is not just for the environment, for culture or for local population, but also toward ourselves and giving us time is a great sign of respect toward ourselves.

The Grand Tour was born as a form of leisure and as a moment of growth on several fields. I think that when you consider it as a possibility to restart from a tourist point of view, you refer to its multifaceted characteristic, that allows it to be both a relief valve and the opportunity to know and to discover something more about the place where we live, about our typicality, about what we were and what we are.

Now I ask you what you think. Have you ever heard about the Grand Tour? Would you take into consideration this way of travelling? I wait for your answers in the comments.